I am neither mysticrose nor SeanT. I advise against further speculation
How curious - no one on this thread has discussed a connection between Leon and mysticrose or SeanT, simply the connection between SeanT and mysticrose. I am completely bemused as to why you think it has anything to do with you?
I believe the WOTBH has a strict embargo against speculation of this sort.
Amazon is going to pull their Web service from Parler tonight according to Parler. Parler think they'll be able to get up and running again in about a week.
If they switch to Google Cloud or Azure they will face the same problem. To go to a fully decentralised service would require them to rebuild their tech to a much greater extent, which I doubt is a week job.
All this action will have been carefully coordinated by the big tech firms, so i expect to hear Google and Microsoft come out shortly and say they are banned from using their web hosting services
So banned from the apps stores and banned from all the services that allow scalablility on the internet.
A recent buzzword in the industry (especially from vendors who lost the public cloud race) is hybrid cloud, where you architect your services to run on (and migrate between) different public and private clouds. It is sinister that cloud providers can put companies out of business overnight but not more so than payment providers cutting off sex workers on Pornhub.
Dealing with many of those involved on Wednesday's rioting should be quite straightforward since many of them were happy to film themselves in the act. But how to deal with Trump who ultimately is the person who ought to bear responsibility?
Personally I would want to throw the book at him but already there are many saying that prosecuting Trump would only divide people further etc. The US could be facing a major crisis.
The dividing people further argument was dumb when Ford used it as part of pardoning Nixon*, and it would be dumb here.
Yes it will inflame some people further, but 'hold people accountable for their actions' should not be controversial, even if it will upset a lot of people. You cannot really move on until you address something. I hope enough realise that over there. * The tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States
Nice pice @AlastairMeeks, but you forgot Napoleon III's disastrous attempt to conquer Mexico in the 1860s, and his downfall during the even more disastrous war with Prussia in 1870.
I think it is 2m this week. I'd been told at the beginning of the week that the NHS was due supply of over 2m and that there was confidence that all of the doses could be used with the existing network which is build for between two and three million per week.
Assuming it's not a maths error from Hancock (which wouldn't surprise me) and we've hit 2m this week it should be a stepping stone to 4m per week by the end of January so that by the time we get to week 12 and second jabs there's almost 40m people who've had the first one and the remaining 15m first can be done alongside as second jabs ramp up and additional capacity can be added for a few weeks to get everyone a first jab by the end of May and fully immunised with two jabs by the end of August.
That timeframe seems to be what Hancock was referring when he said by autumn all adults would get it.
I reckon it was all down to Gordon Brittas and his hashtag he has been tweeting all week...that got it done.
From Alastair's initial paragraph I thought he was going to inveigh against dog walkers. They appear to be increasing exponentially. All too often I seem to be the only dog-free person in the park and therefore an object of deep suspicion. "Where's your little bag of poo?" their accusing eyes seem to say, "Where's your mangey tennis ball, and that stupid stick thing to launch it with? Where's your 20m leash for snaring passers-by? It's alright, he won't hurt you, he just wants to be friendly."
I think we're right to view you with deep suspicion if that's your attitude.
Oh I dunno. I'm a dog owner and I totally get it. There was a tongue-in-cheek article last year about viewing walkers who don't have a dog at their heel as, basically, rapists in the wings.
Someone 'Off-topic'd' this so I'm going to bump it up just to annoy whoever it was. As Alastair began his piece on the subject of dog walking it's hardly off-topic.
It has been mentioned that if you're out running without a dog, that's fine. But tongue-in-cheek or not, prior to the pandemic if you were single and out walking without a dog some people did eye you with suspicion. Holding a dog lead, or a poo bag, or better still an actual dog close by and suddenly you're a person fit for an eyeball to eyeball conversation.
You are also a person who's dog may be about to bite someone.
"He's just being friendly" is the standard pre-bite line.
2 - Probably agree with @IanB2 - the last lot of dog legislation was a dog's breakfast. There was lots of shouting from the RSPCA about "puppy farms", but various parts also killed the economics of small-scale dog breeding. I know of plenty of people doing 1-3 litters a year from home who have just stopped.
And the pups are now being bred on puppy-farms overseas...
I have had several extremely nasty encounters with dogs. One slavering Rottweiler in Pelenque in Mexico tried to bite my face off, he hurled himself at me then his chain tightened just in time - he was an inch from my eyes. Similar experience in Greece. And a couple of nearly-as-bad encounters on walks in the British countryside, with yes, laughing owners saying ‘oh he’s really friendly really’ when their Great Dane is drooling, snarling, boggle eyed and clearly trying to knock me down to maul me
Feck that
Ever since, on long walks, I carry an Ontario Rat foldable knife. A mean beast of a blade that could gut a Doberman in a few seconds. I don’t care if it is illegal. If people are allowed to walk around with dangerous weapons like aggressive, big, badly trained dogs, I will respond with protection.
The knives are also great for cutting common flowers or leaves, slicing toms in picnics, hewing out fossils, and edgeplay if you’re, uh, dogging
There's creepy posts, and there's downright disturbing. Who says you can't have both?
I have always thought that Trump was in the fascist tradition. On a policy front: the Muslim ban, kids in cages, America first; the bullying rhetoric and open support for the far right; disdain for democratic norms; use of propaganda; hatred of the free press; I could go on. To be honest, though, you can tell Trump is a fascist just by looking at his living room.
True. There is little doubt in my mind that he would have imprisoned opponents and banned critical media if he could have got away with it.
I've been chatting to people, esp youngsters ref breaking lockdown rules. Loads of people are not following them. As mentioned on here at the time, it was the Dominic Cummings moment which shattered the bond between people and politicians. Up until then the country was pulling together, united. A plethora of u-turns and bodges on top of the failure to censure Cummings disintegrated our common purpose.
Sorry but this is just rubbish. The idea that people - especially the young - were in any way pulling together and following the rules prior to the Cummings idiocy is just garbage. There was no palpable difference between before and after Cummings as far as attitudes to following the lockdown were concerned. All that happened was those who were going to ignore it no matter what had another excuse to try and justify it. Just go and look at all the reports and pictures from before Cummings to see how rubbish your claims are.
Young people across the world are thanking Dom for justification to party, it seems.
I have always thought that Trump was in the fascist tradition. On a policy front: the Muslim ban, kids in cages, America first; the bullying rhetoric and open support for the far right; disdain for democratic norms; use of propaganda; hatred of the free press; I could go on. To be honest, though, you can tell Trump is a fascist just by looking at his living room.
True. There is little doubt in my mind that he would have imprisoned opponents and banned critical media if he could have got away with it.
From Alastair's initial paragraph I thought he was going to inveigh against dog walkers. They appear to be increasing exponentially. All too often I seem to be the only dog-free person in the park and therefore an object of deep suspicion. "Where's your little bag of poo?" their accusing eyes seem to say, "Where's your mangey tennis ball, and that stupid stick thing to launch it with? Where's your 20m leash for snaring passers-by? It's alright, he won't hurt you, he just wants to be friendly."
I think we're right to view you with deep suspicion if that's your attitude.
Oh I dunno. I'm a dog owner and I totally get it. There was a tongue-in-cheek article last year about viewing walkers who don't have a dog at their heel as, basically, rapists in the wings.
Someone 'Off-topic'd' this so I'm going to bump it up just to annoy whoever it was. As Alastair began his piece on the subject of dog walking it's hardly off-topic.
It has been mentioned that if you're out running without a dog, that's fine. But tongue-in-cheek or not, prior to the pandemic if you were single and out walking without a dog some people did eye you with suspicion. Holding a dog lead, or a poo bag, or better still an actual dog close by and suddenly you're a person fit for an eyeball to eyeball conversation.
You are also a person who's dog may be about to bite someone.
"He's just being friendly" is the standard pre-bite line.
2 - Probably agree with @IanB2 - the last lot of dog legislation was a dog's breakfast. There was lots of shouting from the RSPCA about "puppy farms", but various parts also killed the economics of small-scale dog breeding. I know of plenty of people doing 1-3 litters a year from home who have just stopped.
And the pups are now being bred on puppy-farms overseas...
I have had several extremely nasty encounters with dogs. One slavering Rottweiler in Pelenque in Mexico tried to bite my face off, he hurled himself at me then his chain tightened just in time - he was an inch from my eyes. Similar experience in Greece. And a couple of nearly-as-bad encounters on walks in the British countryside, with yes, laughing owners saying ‘oh he’s really friendly really’ when their Great Dane is drooling, snarling, boggle eyed and clearly trying to knock me down to maul me
Feck that
Ever since, on long walks, I carry an Ontario Rat foldable knife. A mean beast of a blade that could gut a Doberman in a few seconds. I don’t care if it is illegal. If people are allowed to walk around with dangerous weapons like aggressive, big, badly trained dogs, I will respond with protection.
The knives are also great for cutting common flowers or leaves, slicing toms in picnics, hewing out fossils, and edgeplay if you’re, uh, dogging
Bless. Do you need some attention?
Yes, I do. I’m bored. I’m alone in bed. It’s Sunday in January in a global plague. I quite fancy an argument. Anything. Either that or some China White heroin.
Read most of this (vg) Header thinking it was Cyclefree and then it turns out to be Alastair Meeks. I'm losing it. What I'm not losing, though, is my facility to coin the right term for things. The one I've long used for Donald Trump - when I'm in a detached mood - is wannabe fascist and I'm sticking with this. This is what he has been - along with all the other things he undoubtedly is - ever since that ride down the golden escalator in 2015.
Thankfully he has not managed to drop the "w" qualifier and although one should not be complacent about it it's clear he never will. He's finished in politics now. This is the upside of the simultaneously frightening and shambolic events of last week. It was a complete mess of an affair. A very tittish coup. The real deal strongmen such as Putin and Xi would have been pissing themselves watching it on TV. "Oh Don, Don, Don. You crazy boy. Why didn't you get in touch?"
Only 98...if that's the line in the sand, twitter is screwed.
People are going to have to realise businesses dont need to be fair or consistent. If they dont want to be associated with treasonous scum that is within their right. It is not much different from the pub landlord can bar who they like.
Well that’s not entirely accurate. There are laws which require at least a degree of fairness and consistency from businesses, though in this case, possibly not. And the comparison of multinational quasi monopoly businesses with a local pub isn’t a very useful way of looking at what’s a real problem.
I wouldn’t argue with Twitter’s actions, but I’m rather more troubled. about infrastructure businesses like AWS setting themselves up as censors.
Unsurprisingly a two line post was not intended as full legal overview of the rights of multi national businesses. My post is far closer to the reality of the freedom of businesses to choose or ban their customers than the countless posts demanding they be fair and unbiased. If people want to follow a violent revolutionary cause expect to be forced out of the mainstream, just as Jihad is for example.
And mine was about the power of quasi monopolistic commercial enterprises to determine the boundaries of free speech. I have zero sympathy for the Parler idiots, but I won’t pretend this isn’t a serious issue for political discourse in free societies.
Amazon is going to pull their Web service from Parler tonight according to Parler. Parler think they'll be able to get up and running again in about a week.
If they switch to Google Cloud or Azure they will face the same problem. To go to a fully decentralised service would require them to rebuild their tech to a much greater extent, which I doubt is a week job.
All this action will have been carefully coordinated by the big tech firms, so i expect to hear Google and Microsoft come out shortly and say they are banned from using their web hosting services
So banned from the apps stores and banned from all the services that allow scalablility on the internet.
A recent buzzword in the industry (especially from vendors who lost the public cloud race) is hybrid cloud, where you architect your services to run on (and migrate between) different public and private clouds. It is sinister that cloud providers can put companies out of business overnight but not more so than payment providers cutting off sex workers on Pornhub.
WebRTC-based services will probably have a big effect too - you don’t need masses of bandwidth for video if your service viewers are providing the upload to each other.
From Alastair's initial paragraph I thought he was going to inveigh against dog walkers. They appear to be increasing exponentially. All too often I seem to be the only dog-free person in the park and therefore an object of deep suspicion. "Where's your little bag of poo?" their accusing eyes seem to say, "Where's your mangey tennis ball, and that stupid stick thing to launch it with? Where's your 20m leash for snaring passers-by? It's alright, he won't hurt you, he just wants to be friendly."
I think we're right to view you with deep suspicion if that's your attitude.
Oh I dunno. I'm a dog owner and I totally get it. There was a tongue-in-cheek article last year about viewing walkers who don't have a dog at their heel as, basically, rapists in the wings.
Someone 'Off-topic'd' this so I'm going to bump it up just to annoy whoever it was. As Alastair began his piece on the subject of dog walking it's hardly off-topic.
It has been mentioned that if you're out running without a dog, that's fine. But tongue-in-cheek or not, prior to the pandemic if you were single and out walking without a dog some people did eye you with suspicion. Holding a dog lead, or a poo bag, or better still an actual dog close by and suddenly you're a person fit for an eyeball to eyeball conversation.
You are also a person who's dog may be about to bite someone.
"He's just being friendly" is the standard pre-bite line.
2 - Probably agree with @IanB2 - the last lot of dog legislation was a dog's breakfast. There was lots of shouting from the RSPCA about "puppy farms", but various parts also killed the economics of small-scale dog breeding. I know of plenty of people doing 1-3 litters a year from home who have just stopped.
And the pups are now being bred on puppy-farms overseas...
I have had several extremely nasty encounters with dogs. One slavering Rottweiler in Pelenque in Mexico tried to bite my face off, he hurled himself at me then his chain tightened just in time - he was an inch from my eyes. Similar experience in Greece. And a couple of nearly-as-bad encounters on walks in the British countryside, with yes, laughing owners saying ‘oh he’s really friendly really’ when their Great Dane is drooling, snarling, boggle eyed and clearly trying to knock me down to maul me
Feck that
Ever since, on long walks, I carry an Ontario Rat foldable knife. A mean beast of a blade that could gut a Doberman in a few seconds. I don’t care if it is illegal. If people are allowed to walk around with dangerous weapons like aggressive, big, badly trained dogs, I will respond with protection.
The knives are also great for cutting common flowers or leaves, slicing toms in picnics, hewing out fossils, and edgeplay if you’re, uh, dogging
There's creepy posts, and there's downright disturbing. Who says you can't have both?
I wonder whether Adonis thinks "at any cost"? Does he care if we could only rejoin without the rebate or via abandoning our currency?
To Adonis that's actually a benefit. I've seen some of his more out there tweets suggesting that the Euro, no rebate and Schengen would secure us inside and make it nigh on impossible for any future vote to leave to succeed in execution.
Dealing with many of those involved on Wednesday's rioting should be quite straightforward since many of them were happy to film themselves in the act. But how to deal with Trump who ultimately is the person who ought to bear responsibility?
Personally I would want to throw the book at him but already there are many saying that prosecuting Trump would only divide people further etc. The US could be facing a major crisis.
I agree. However an impeachment so late in his term seems to me a bit futile. I know it might bar him from future federal office. My preferred option would have been his cabinet taking the office from him. That does not look like any chance of happening. Just hoping he does nothing terrible in his last few days.
Only 98...if that's the line in the sand, twitter is screwed.
People are going to have to realise businesses dont need to be fair or consistent. If they dont want to be associated with treasonous scum that is within their right. It is not much different from the pub landlord can bar who they like.
Well that’s not entirely accurate. There are laws which require at least a degree of fairness and consistency from businesses, though in this case, possibly not. And the comparison of multinational quasi monopoly businesses with a local pub isn’t a very useful way of looking at what’s a real problem.
I wouldn’t argue with Twitter’s actions, but I’m rather more troubled. about infrastructure businesses like AWS setting themselves up as censors.
Unsurprisingly a two line post was not intended as full legal overview of the rights of multi national businesses. My post is far closer to the reality of the freedom of businesses to choose or ban their customers than the countless posts demanding they be fair and unbiased. If people want to follow a violent revolutionary cause expect to be forced out of the mainstream, just as Jihad is for example.
And mine was about the power of quasi monopolistic commercial enterprises to determine the boundaries of free speech. I have zero sympathy for the Parler idiots, but I won’t pretend this isn’t a serious issue for political discourse in free societies.
But they are not controlling free speech. Amplification and social acceptance of speech is different to free speech. It was ever thus, whether the media was print newspapers, TV stations or churches.
So, come on, own up, which pb-ers are responsible for this?
"This has to be the worst book I have read in years. So poorly written that I thought it must have been written as an exercise on a creative writing course. You can just imagine the author ticking off the set pieces, unreliable narrator? Check. Change of narrator? Check. Relationship problem? Check. Do I want to write a thriller, a ghost story a romance or a travelog? I know! I'll do them all! With regard to the references to Skye, I can only assume they took a handful of names, threw them into the air then stuck them onto the first place they thought of. This book is the literary equivalent to day time TV. Just awful."
Or this
"In fact, no star ... what was so tiresome was the inclusion of three, sometimes four adjectives before every noun and as many adverbs with every verb. Also the characters were shallow and unconvincing. A waste of time."
I enjoyed The Ice Twins. My only quibble is the cliche of a location on a remote island so no mobile phone connection. Have you noticed how many situations in films/TV shows/books set in the 80s or earlier could be easily resolved now by a mobile phone call?
It has led to genuine changes in the structure of many tv shows and movies, as they either have to have a period setting, expensive to pull off convincingly, or actually explain why it won't work, which quickly looks silly or cliched. Or you have change the scenarios enough that a call won't solve it, which is harder.
Ice Twins was ok, not my type of thing though really.
Amazon is going to pull their Web service from Parler tonight according to Parler. Parler think they'll be able to get up and running again in about a week.
If they switch to Google Cloud or Azure they will face the same problem. To go to a fully decentralised service would require them to rebuild their tech to a much greater extent, which I doubt is a week job.
All this action will have been carefully coordinated by the big tech firms, so i expect to hear Google and Microsoft come out shortly and say they are banned from using their web hosting services
So banned from the apps stores and banned from all the services that allow scalablility on the internet.
A recent buzzword in the industry (especially from vendors who lost the public cloud race) is hybrid cloud, where you architect your services to run on (and migrate between) different public and private clouds. It is sinister that cloud providers can put companies out of business overnight but not more so than payment providers cutting off sex workers on Pornhub.
The credit card processors making moral judgements has been happening for age from gambling to crowd funded support for creators on YouTube...all legal, but normally due to some pressure group, they cut them off.
e.g. When I was a professional gambler I had to use things like Neteller to move my money around the various sites.
Amazon is going to pull their Web service from Parler tonight according to Parler. Parler think they'll be able to get up and running again in about a week.
See my comment earlier - if I was an AWS customer I would be paranoid given the timeframe AWS are insisting on.
How many AWS customers promote and facilitate terrorism?
No idea. But since at least one does, what would we say if the carriers like Verizon blocked all traffic to AWS datacentres?
I've been chatting to people, esp youngsters ref breaking lockdown rules. Loads of people are not following them. As mentioned on here at the time, it was the Dominic Cummings moment which shattered the bond between people and politicians. Up until then the country was pulling together, united. A plethora of u-turns and bodges on top of the failure to censure Cummings disintegrated our common purpose.
Sorry but this is just rubbish. The idea that people - especially the young - were in any way pulling together and following the rules prior to the Cummings idiocy is just garbage. There was no palpable difference between before and after Cummings as far as attitudes to following the lockdown were concerned. All that happened was those who were going to ignore it no matter what had another excuse to try and justify it. Just go and look at all the reports and pictures from before Cummings to see how rubbish your claims are.
An example of the curious "nothing has any effect" fallacy which rears its head from time to time on PB. Cf minimum alcohol price policies which have all the "social drinkers" chanting that real alcoholics are going to buy the stuff at any price anyway. It is virtually impossible to tease out from the data the effect of the Cummings thing, what with confounders and stuff, either way, and the sensible thing is to default to a consideration of the kind of effect we would *expect* it to have had. A question easily answered (unless you want to claim that it would tend to reinforce compliance with the rules?)
I think classifying Trump as a scumbag is quite sufficient and it is then possible to move on. As Alastair says angsting over what particular kind of scumbag he is doesn't seem enormously productive (unless you are using it as the basis of your thesis in political science, which no doubt many will do).
My strong impression is that despite the desperation of several more liberal media outlets to find ever more extreme ways of shouting about how shocking last Wednesday's coup was the response in America seems largely meh.
Why? I think that the completely disorganised and incompetent nature of the Capitol invasion didn't look anything like a conventional coup. It was not a complete joke, some people died including a police officer doing his duty but even there people who died of medical emergencies were counted amongst the dead to try and dramatise it. The studios competed into the night, the participants were "terrorists", "rioters" (quick, think of another emotive word) but they looked like bozos wearing ridiculous costumes and acting like arseholes. It was hard to take such idiots seriously.
This by no means indicates that those that triggered this shambles should not bear the consequences. Trump should be impeached and banned from public office. He should go to jail (but probably won't). The Republic is less secure than it was on Tuesday. The envelope of the possible has been extended, the Rubicon has been crossed. It is no longer as inconceivable that a leader will try to use a mob to effect political change as it was on Tuesday. This is a very bad thing, no question. But Trump simply remains a scumbag, he is not genuinely worthy of our attention no matter how much he craves it.
I started to feel quite angry reading your post, so I read it again and felt a bit calmer because you do save yourself in the last paragraph and much of what you say is right. But there's one bit I can't leave unaddressed:
"The studios competed into the night, the participants were "terrorists", "rioters" (quick, think of another emotive word) but they looked like bozos wearing ridiculous costumes and acting like arseholes. It was hard to take such idiots seriously."
Yes, someone wearing a fur hood and horns does look ridiculous, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take those revolting against democracy seriously. A clown with a loaded gun is still a person with a loaded gun. This has actually been a recurring theme of the past few years. Breathless media descriptions of the "alt right" focusing on their sharp suits. People taking Trump as a joke because he's orange and has ridiculous hair. A lesson for a a wannabe dictator is to adopt some style that is slightly comical, because you can get attention from it, which helps you get your message across.
But the message is the important thing. And, more tellingly, the armour-clad fascists behind the clown, they're the ones who will do the damage.
It's not good enough to focus only on the grinning idiot carrying a lectern when the place was crawling with people who literally wanted to kill senators and the vice-president. We cannot allow fascism to walk behind a fluffy mascot.
Except there didn't prove to be any armour-clad fascists behind the clowns. All that there was behind the clowns was more clowns right up to the clown in chief.
Dozens, probably hundreds of those clowns are going to go to jail and rightly so. I am not excusing what they did.
Sorry, but that's not true. There were people in there armed and wearing bulletproof vests. There were people in there with murder in their hearts. I cannot be sure that there was an overlap between the two, but I strongly suspect there was.
I don't know what a "conventional" coup looks like, as they're all different and many attempts are full of stupidity, miscalculation and weird accidents. But the allegation is:
1) Trump whipped up people with (false) claims that the election was stolen 2) He purged the Pentagon after the election and put minions in key positions 3) He prepared his people to think something would happen on Jan 6th that would result in him staying 4) He told his people to march on Congress 5) He celebrated the intrusion into Congress when it was happening 6) The people he'd placed in step (2) denied authorization for a response
The key part of this is (2) and (6). If they're correct, as they seem to be, I think it's very clearly a straightforward coup attempt, even if parts of the plan seem to have come out of the underpants-collecting gnomes powerpoint.
Yeah. It doesn't matter that the coup failed. It WAS a coup. And despite the underpants gnomes in Trump's head drawing up the plan and the end of Finding Nemo "What now" response from most of the insurrectionists once they got inside, it almost succeeded.
Had they managed to grab any members of Congress then the coup may have succeeded. Those flexicuffs weren't there by accident. We would have had hostages paraded on social media by these lunatics, perhaps even a show "trial". Trump could have declared martial law and ordered in the troops.
It would have ended bloody. Likely with members of Congress as well as insurgents dead. Any hope of ratifying the election gone. And this is why the GOP members who were part of the plot have to be disbarred from office. Their position is untenable according to the constitution. Yes it won't help "bring the country together". But failed revolutionaries usually end up dead, so anything north of that is them getting off lightly.
I think this is why this needs to be pursued with every tool in the legal arsenal by Congress and the lawmakers. It does appear to be becoming apparent this was far more than just a situation that got out of hand and was carefully (although thankfully poorly) planned in advance. As such Trump does need to be impeached and there then needs to be a formal investigation started at a Federal level to uncover the exact details of the plot.
I suspect that, unusually perhaps in these sorts of circumstances, most of those who actually did the invading were unaware that they were part of an actual planned coup attempt. But there will be people below Trump who were put into those positions and who were aware of what was going to be attempted and they should be on trial alongside him.
Right now it looks like the authorities are still treating this as a demo that got out of hand - arresting the indians but not the chiefs and charging them with normal criminal acts. They need to reorient their whole view of this and concentrate on the plot.
Agreed. The coup was plotted at the top, not by the clowns in fancy dress, and attempts to reorient blame on to the invaders who took selfies not hostages simply distract from the real conspirators around and inside the Oval Office.
I still can’t decide. Coup, or just coup-like theatre that got out of hand. There is evidence both ways.
In either case, this needs more investigation than Watergate or Vietnam.
... in this instance I think Trump is a busted flush.
That might be the case, but it still leaves the Coup Caucus in the GOP, who might ensure that the next attempt to overthrow an election result they don't like is more successful. For that reason I agree with Robert Reich that the reckoning for coup instigators, and those who would provide comfort to them, has to be extensive and robust.
Incidentally, have the Republicans allowed the State Senator in Pennsylvania to be seated, that they had earlier gone against the state courts to keep from taking his seat?
I wonder whether Adonis thinks "at any cost"? Does he care if we could only rejoin without the rebate or via abandoning our currency?
To Adonis that's actually a benefit. I've seen some of his more out there tweets suggesting that the Euro, no rebate and Schengen would secure us inside and make it nigh on impossible for any future vote to leave to succeed in execution.
Starmer looks as if his cushion just went "Whoopee".
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
I don't know what a "conventional" coup looks like, as they're all different and many attempts are full of stupidity, miscalculation and weird accidents. But the allegation is:
1) Trump whipped up people with (false) claims that the election was stolen 2) He purged the Pentagon after the election and put minions in key positions 3) He prepared his people to think something would happen on Jan 6th that would result in him staying 4) He told his people to march on Congress 5) He celebrated the intrusion into Congress when it was happening 6) The people he'd placed in step (2) denied authorization for a response
The key part of this is (2) and (6). If they're correct, as they seem to be, I think it's very clearly a straightforward coup attempt, even if parts of the plan seem to have come out of the underpants-collecting gnomes powerpoint.
Yeah. It doesn't matter that the coup failed. It WAS a coup. And despite the underpants gnomes in Trump's head drawing up the plan and the end of Finding Nemo "What now" response from most of the insurrectionists once they got inside, it almost succeeded.
Had they managed to grab any members of Congress then the coup may have succeeded. Those flexicuffs weren't there by accident. We would have had hostages paraded on social media by these lunatics, perhaps even a show "trial". Trump could have declared martial law and ordered in the troops.
It would have ended bloody. Likely with members of Congress as well as insurgents dead. Any hope of ratifying the election gone. And this is why the GOP members who were part of the plot have to be disbarred from office. Their position is untenable according to the constitution. Yes it won't help "bring the country together". But failed revolutionaries usually end up dead, so anything north of that is them getting off lightly.
My speculation - and it's a guess right now - is that when the full story is told, the guy who shot that female protestor may come to be seen as having made the critical intervention.
There's a video from another angle (to the one I saw on the night) currently on the CNN site. The double doors to the House (or the corridor to the House) are barricaded and covered by officers inside with pistols drawn. The crowd of protestors outside, having failed to push open the doors, smash in the pane of glass of the right hand door. It happens quickly, but if you stop the video you can just see the woman being lifted up towards the hole where the glass had been, when she is shot (in the neck according to reports) and falls backwards out of view.
We know the woman was quickly removed from the building and can assume that the protestors in the vicinity were preoccupied with getting her evacuated immediately after. We also know that, although the chamber was later entered, by that time the politicians had evacuated as none of them were captured.
Word of that shooting would have spread like wildfire through the mob, and brought home the fact that this was now 'real'. I am guessing that many of the protestors may have started leaving the building at that point. And that among the more determined, none of them wanted to volunteer to be the next to get shot.
If this purely speculative account of what might have happened is anywhere close, that shooting turned the tide.
A very interesting account. It brings home just how close things were. The report that came through while I was on here, that guns had been drawn in the chamber, came in very shortly after the news that all the politicans had been evacuated.
I have to say I was impressed by the restraint shown, particularly with the reputation of law enforcement in the USA, exacerbated by the proliferation of weapons. I'm guessing it is because these are very, very highly trained individuals. To fire one shot and no further suggests it was necessary and no panic was involved. You could imagine that after one is shot there might be many more.
I don't think Trump is a fascist. I don't think he has any attachment to any political philosophy. I don't think he has any sense of patriotism, let alone nationalism. He is entirely and totally in it for himself. There is nothing else. Because of that he will associate with anyone and anything that he believes will further his own interests. He took the election defeat as a personal humiliation (as it was) and because of that has sought to do whatever possible to overturn it, up to and including insurrection. Last Wednesday was a coup, but it was not one designed to promote an ideology or secure the interests of a class. It was all about Trump not being able to handle being a loser. That's why he authorised it. Though it was probably not why others took part.
I've been chatting to people, esp youngsters ref breaking lockdown rules. Loads of people are not following them. As mentioned on here at the time, it was the Dominic Cummings moment which shattered the bond between people and politicians. Up until then the country was pulling together, united. A plethora of u-turns and bodges on top of the failure to censure Cummings disintegrated our common purpose.
Sorry but this is just rubbish. The idea that people - especially the young - were in any way pulling together and following the rules prior to the Cummings idiocy is just garbage. There was no palpable difference between before and after Cummings as far as attitudes to following the lockdown were concerned. All that happened was those who were going to ignore it no matter what had another excuse to try and justify it. Just go and look at all the reports and pictures from before Cummings to see how rubbish your claims are.
Young people across the world are thanking Dom for justification to party, it seems.
They speak of little else on Sydney's Northern Beaches.....
I think classifying Trump as a scumbag is quite sufficient and it is then possible to move on. As Alastair says angsting over what particular kind of scumbag he is doesn't seem enormously productive (unless you are using it as the basis of your thesis in political science, which no doubt many will do).
My strong impression is that despite the desperation of several more liberal media outlets to find ever more extreme ways of shouting about how shocking last Wednesday's coup was the response in America seems largely meh.
Why? I think that the completely disorganised and incompetent nature of the Capitol invasion didn't look anything like a conventional coup. It was not a complete joke, some people died including a police officer doing his duty but even there people who died of medical emergencies were counted amongst the dead to try and dramatise it. The studios competed into the night, the participants were "terrorists", "rioters" (quick, think of another emotive word) but they looked like bozos wearing ridiculous costumes and acting like arseholes. It was hard to take such idiots seriously.
This by no means indicates that those that triggered this shambles should not bear the consequences. Trump should be impeached and banned from public office. He should go to jail (but probably won't). The Republic is less secure than it was on Tuesday. The envelope of the possible has been extended, the Rubicon has been crossed. It is no longer as inconceivable that a leader will try to use a mob to effect political change as it was on Tuesday. This is a very bad thing, no question. But Trump simply remains a scumbag, he is not genuinely worthy of our attention no matter how much he craves it.
I started to feel quite angry reading your post, so I read it again and felt a bit calmer because you do save yourself in the last paragraph and much of what you say is right. But there's one bit I can't leave unaddressed:
"The studios competed into the night, the participants were "terrorists", "rioters" (quick, think of another emotive word) but they looked like bozos wearing ridiculous costumes and acting like arseholes. It was hard to take such idiots seriously."
Yes, someone wearing a fur hood and horns does look ridiculous, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take those revolting against democracy seriously. A clown with a loaded gun is still a person with a loaded gun. This has actually been a recurring theme of the past few years. Breathless media descriptions of the "alt right" focusing on their sharp suits. People taking Trump as a joke because he's orange and has ridiculous hair. A lesson for a a wannabe dictator is to adopt some style that is slightly comical, because you can get attention from it, which helps you get your message across.
But the message is the important thing. And, more tellingly, the armour-clad fascists behind the clown, they're the ones who will do the damage.
It's not good enough to focus only on the grinning idiot carrying a lectern when the place was crawling with people who literally wanted to kill senators and the vice-president. We cannot allow fascism to walk behind a fluffy mascot.
Except there didn't prove to be any armour-clad fascists behind the clowns. All that there was behind the clowns was more clowns right up to the clown in chief.
Dozens, probably hundreds of those clowns are going to go to jail and rightly so. I am not excusing what they did.
Sorry, but that's not true. There were people in there armed and wearing bulletproof vests. There were people in there with murder in their hearts. I cannot be sure that there was an overlap between the two, but I strongly suspect there was.
Bombs, guns, deaths, guillotine, zip tie handcuffs, chants to kill the VP not enough evidence for some apparently! Just some clowns on a day out.....
Something doesn't quite add up. If we can get from bugger all to 2 million in a week, why is Hancock saying it will be Autumn until every adult has been offered a vaccine slot. You would have thought if first statement is true and we will have 3-4 different vaccines supplying us by April, we can get to 3-4 million capacity and be done by summer.
Under promise, over deliver? Perhaps.
Is it it 2 million were done last week? Or we have hit 2 million total? Which is very different.
If it was two million done last week then a lot of people who have been slagging off the government are going to have to eat humble pie. I doubt that's what Hancock meant as it would be almost too good to be true. I would absolutely love to be wrong though.
I think its 2 million done total.
He definitely did say though we are now at ability to do 200k / day jabs, with further massive expansion next week...it is all about supply.
There's no way we've done 2M in a week. At that rate, we'd be done by Easter.
Yes....i can believe his claim capacity is now 200k / day though. I think come April, with 3-4 different vaccines being supplied, we will be able to do multiple millions in a week.
Too late! Need to ramp it up now. Rapid vaccination is the only game in town. (Not French ravers, not tea-drinking Derbyshire blondes, not Dominic Cummings)
You better tell AZN subcontractors to get a shift on then.
As I have said repeatedly on here, managing, checking and securing the pipeline is in large part the role and responsibility of government. This isn’t A4 paper in a Basingstoke back office FFS, it’s the most important public project of our time, and the government has allowed it to fall behind the curve.
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
The monopolies are trying to have it every which way. Not a publisher, so we have no responsibility and happy to make apps that facilitate encrypted anonymous communications used by terrorists and won't work with governments to police it or even help in terrorist cases..you see it all about rights of individuals for privacy, free speech etc...very slippery slope you see if we give governments a backdoor or seen to be siding with those thst rule over us.
But at the same time happy to deplatform others for the same.
So, come on, own up, which pb-ers are responsible for this?
"This has to be the worst book I have read in years. So poorly written that I thought it must have been written as an exercise on a creative writing course. You can just imagine the author ticking off the set pieces, unreliable narrator? Check. Change of narrator? Check. Relationship problem? Check. Do I want to write a thriller, a ghost story a romance or a travelog? I know! I'll do them all! With regard to the references to Skye, I can only assume they took a handful of names, threw them into the air then stuck them onto the first place they thought of. This book is the literary equivalent to day time TV. Just awful."
Or this
"In fact, no star ... what was so tiresome was the inclusion of three, sometimes four adjectives before every noun and as many adverbs with every verb. Also the characters were shallow and unconvincing. A waste of time."
I enjoyed The Ice Twins. My only quibble is the cliche of a location on a remote island so no mobile phone connection. Have you noticed how many situations in films/TV shows/books set in the 80s or earlier could be easily resolved now by a mobile phone call?
It has led to genuine changes in the structure of many tv shows and movies, as they either have to have a period setting, expensive to pull off convincingly, or actually explain why it won't work, which quickly looks silly or cliched. Or you have change the scenarios enough that a call won't solve it, which is harder.
Ice Twins was ok, not my type of thing though really.
Another problem for thriller/spy/mystery writers - which encompasses probably most fiction writers (as so many novels have an unfolding mystery at the heart) is the bloody internet. Sherlock Holmes would spend his entire time just Googling. Not much fun to read.
Elizabeth Bennet would go on Facebook on Instagram, immediately discover Darcy is actually a lovely, kindly guy with a magnificent house, and so Pride & Prejudice ends in chapter 2.
Mobile Phones and t’net are now a REAL problem in fiction, movies, drama
I think it is 2m this week. I'd been told at the beginning of the week that the NHS was due supply of over 2m and that there was confidence that all of the doses could be used with the existing network which is build for between two and three million per week.
Assuming it's not a maths error from Hancock (which wouldn't surprise me) and we've hit 2m this week it should be a stepping stone to 4m per week by the end of January so that by the time we get to week 12 and second jabs there's almost 40m people who've had the first one and the remaining 15m first can be done alongside as second jabs ramp up and additional capacity can be added for a few weeks to get everyone a first jab by the end of May and fully immunised with two jabs by the end of August.
That timeframe seems to be what Hancock was referring when he said by autumn all adults would get it.
I reckon it was all down to Gordon Brittas and his hashtag he has been tweeting all week...that got it done.
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
I've been chatting to people, esp youngsters ref breaking lockdown rules. Loads of people are not following them. As mentioned on here at the time, it was the Dominic Cummings moment which shattered the bond between people and politicians. Up until then the country was pulling together, united. A plethora of u-turns and bodges on top of the failure to censure Cummings disintegrated our common purpose.
Sorry but this is just rubbish. The idea that people - especially the young - were in any way pulling together and following the rules prior to the Cummings idiocy is just garbage. There was no palpable difference between before and after Cummings as far as attitudes to following the lockdown were concerned. All that happened was those who were going to ignore it no matter what had another excuse to try and justify it. Just go and look at all the reports and pictures from before Cummings to see how rubbish your claims are.
An example of the curious "nothing has any effect" fallacy which rears its head from time to time on PB. Cf minimum alcohol price policies which have all the "social drinkers" chanting that real alcoholics are going to buy the stuff at any price anyway. It is virtually impossible to tease out from the data the effect of the Cummings thing, what with confounders and stuff, either way, and the sensible thing is to default to a consideration of the kind of effect we would *expect* it to have had. A question easily answered (unless you want to claim that it would tend to reinforce compliance with the rules?)
Okay I accept that so let me being more precise in my criticism. Mysticrose claimed:
"As mentioned on here at the time, it was the Dominic Cummings moment which shattered the bond between people and politicians. Up until then the country was pulling together, united."
This is utter bullshit. We had had a torrent of examples of people ignoring the rules, complaints that the young in particular were not following them and raves, parties and street demos in the news continuously. People were not 'pulling together' and there was certainly no bond between the people and politicians to be shattered.
I said at the time Cummings should have resigned and still believe that. But the idea this was some sort of earth shattering revelation about the political classes which destroyed people's faith in the rules is, as I said, just bullshit.
Cummings was, at best, just another feeble excuse from those who were always going to say bollocks to the rules anyway.
Read most of this (vg) Header thinking it was Cyclefree and then it turns out to be Alastair Meeks. I'm losing it. What I'm not losing, though, is my facility to coin the right term for things. The one I've long used for Donald Trump - when I'm in a detached mood - is wannabe fascist and I'm sticking with this. This is what he has been - along with all the other things he undoubtedly is - ever since that ride down the golden escalator in 2015.
Thankfully he has not managed to drop the "w" qualifier and although one should not be complacent about it it's clear he never will. He's finished in politics now. This is the upside of the simultaneously frightening and shambolic events of last week. It was a complete mess of an affair. A very tittish coup. The real deal strongmen such as Putin and Xi would have been pissing themselves watching it on TV. "Oh Don, Don, Don. You crazy boy. Why didn't you get in touch?"
I had it down to Alastair by the second paragraph. As for Trump, I always described him as an incipient fascist, which I think answers Alastair’s descriptive and normative strictures.
I think it is 2m this week. I'd been told at the beginning of the week that the NHS was due supply of over 2m and that there was confidence that all of the doses could be used with the existing network which is build for between two and three million per week.
Assuming it's not a maths error from Hancock (which wouldn't surprise me) and we've hit 2m this week it should be a stepping stone to 4m per week by the end of January so that by the time we get to week 12 and second jabs there's almost 40m people who've had the first one and the remaining 15m first can be done alongside as second jabs ramp up and additional capacity can be added for a few weeks to get everyone a first jab by the end of May and fully immunised with two jabs by the end of August.
That timeframe seems to be what Hancock was referring when he said by autumn all adults would get it.
I reckon it was all down to Gordon Brittas and his hashtag he has been tweeting all week...that got it done.
I don't think Trump is a fascist. I don't think he has any attachment to any political philosophy. I don't think he has any sense of patriotism, let alone nationalism. He is entirely and totally in it for himself. There is nothing else. Because of that he will associate with anyone and anything that he believes will further his own interests. He took the election defeat as a personal humiliation (as it was) and because of that has sought to do whatever possible to overturn it, up to and including insurrection. Last Wednesday was a coup, but it was not one designed to promote an ideology or secure the interests of a class. It was all about Trump not being able to handle being a loser. That's why he authorised it. Though it was probably not why others took part.
Does one need an ideology to be classed as a fascist? I don’t think so.
So, come on, own up, which pb-ers are responsible for this?
"This has to be the worst book I have read in years. So poorly written that I thought it must have been written as an exercise on a creative writing course. You can just imagine the author ticking off the set pieces, unreliable narrator? Check. Change of narrator? Check. Relationship problem? Check. Do I want to write a thriller, a ghost story a romance or a travelog? I know! I'll do them all! With regard to the references to Skye, I can only assume they took a handful of names, threw them into the air then stuck them onto the first place they thought of. This book is the literary equivalent to day time TV. Just awful."
Or this
"In fact, no star ... what was so tiresome was the inclusion of three, sometimes four adjectives before every noun and as many adverbs with every verb. Also the characters were shallow and unconvincing. A waste of time."
I enjoyed The Ice Twins. My only quibble is the cliche of a location on a remote island so no mobile phone connection. Have you noticed how many situations in films/TV shows/books set in the 80s or earlier could be easily resolved now by a mobile phone call?
It has led to genuine changes in the structure of many tv shows and movies, as they either have to have a period setting, expensive to pull off convincingly, or actually explain why it won't work, which quickly looks silly or cliched. Or you have change the scenarios enough that a call won't solve it, which is harder.
Ice Twins was ok, not my type of thing though really.
Another problem for thriller/spy/mystery writers - which encompasses probably most fiction writers (as so many novels have an unfolding mystery at the heart) is the bloody internet. Sherlock Holmes would spend his entire time just Googling. Not much fun to read.
Elizabeth Bennet would go on Facebook on Instagram, immediately discover Darcy is actually a lovely, kindly guy with a magnificent house, and so Pride & Prejudice ends in chapter 2.
Mobile Phones and t’net are now a REAL problem in fiction, movies, drama
So, we now discover that the Welsh Government has already got 270,000 COVID doses
And used only 50,000 of them. They have so far used only 18 per cent of what has been delivered.
Sir "Round the Clock Vaccinations" has forgotten to mention to his Welsh colleagues that there is a great urgency to get jabs in arms.
If Wales has proportionality the same percentage of the vaccine as its percentage of the population then that would imply that there are nearly six million shots in the system.
Have there been any numbers released for the other home nations?
It would also mean that there are almost 40% of the jabs needed to hit the 15m head target already produced and ready to go.
So we’re back to distribution. Which I guess will be the media’s theme for the week.
Hancock just said 200k / day are now being vaccinated and a 1/3 of over 80s have been given at least first jab.
We should expect a large leap in the totals come tomorrow when the daily reporting starts.
Yet Lord Patten at 72 was on LBC bragging about how he had just made it to get his jab. Usual Tories, one rule for them and one for the rest.
Stop embarrassing yourself, he's on the vulnerable list due to him having had major heart surgery in the past.
Read most of this (vg) Header thinking it was Cyclefree and then it turns out to be Alastair Meeks. I'm losing it. What I'm not losing, though, is my facility to coin the right term for things. The one I've long used for Donald Trump - when I'm in a detached mood - is wannabe fascist and I'm sticking with this. This is what he has been - along with all the other things he undoubtedly is - ever since that ride down the golden escalator in 2015.
Thankfully he has not managed to drop the "w" qualifier and although one should not be complacent about it it's clear he never will. He's finished in politics now. This is the upside of the simultaneously frightening and shambolic events of last week. It was a complete mess of an affair. A very tittish coup. The real deal strongmen such as Putin and Xi would have been pissing themselves watching it on TV. "Oh Don, Don, Don. You crazy boy. Why didn't you get in touch?"
Eloquently put. And absolutely correct. Trump will leave office on Wednesday week as a spent, pathetic loser. A laughing stock.
I don't know what a "conventional" coup looks like, as they're all different and many attempts are full of stupidity, miscalculation and weird accidents. But the allegation is:
1) Trump whipped up people with (false) claims that the election was stolen 2) He purged the Pentagon after the election and put minions in key positions 3) He prepared his people to think something would happen on Jan 6th that would result in him staying 4) He told his people to march on Congress 5) He celebrated the intrusion into Congress when it was happening 6) The people he'd placed in step (2) denied authorization for a response
The key part of this is (2) and (6). If they're correct, as they seem to be, I think it's very clearly a straightforward coup attempt, even if parts of the plan seem to have come out of the underpants-collecting gnomes powerpoint.
Yeah. It doesn't matter that the coup failed. It WAS a coup. And despite the underpants gnomes in Trump's head drawing up the plan and the end of Finding Nemo "What now" response from most of the insurrectionists once they got inside, it almost succeeded.
Had they managed to grab any members of Congress then the coup may have succeeded. Those flexicuffs weren't there by accident. We would have had hostages paraded on social media by these lunatics, perhaps even a show "trial". Trump could have declared martial law and ordered in the troops.
It would have ended bloody. Likely with members of Congress as well as insurgents dead. Any hope of ratifying the election gone. And this is why the GOP members who were part of the plot have to be disbarred from office. Their position is untenable according to the constitution. Yes it won't help "bring the country together". But failed revolutionaries usually end up dead, so anything north of that is them getting off lightly.
I think this is why this needs to be pursued with every tool in the legal arsenal by Congress and the lawmakers. It does appear to be becoming apparent this was far more than just a situation that got out of hand and was carefully (although thankfully poorly) planned in advance. As such Trump does need to be impeached and there then needs to be a formal investigation started at a Federal level to uncover the exact details of the plot.
I suspect that, unusually perhaps in these sorts of circumstances, most of those who actually did the invading were unaware that they were part of an actual planned coup attempt. But there will be people below Trump who were put into those positions and who were aware of what was going to be attempted and they should be on trial alongside him.
Right now it looks like the authorities are still treating this as a demo that got out of hand - arresting the indians but not the chiefs and charging them with normal criminal acts. They need to reorient their whole view of this and concentrate on the plot.
Agreed. The coup was plotted at the top, not by the clowns in fancy dress, and attempts to reorient blame on to the invaders who took selfies not hostages simply distract from the real conspirators around and inside the Oval Office.
I still can’t decide. Coup, or just coup-like theatre that got out of hand. There is evidence both ways.
In either case, this needs more investigation than Watergate or Vietnam.
The right-wing bury-bad-news handbook 1. It was BLM, Antifa, Muslims, and leftists [0-2 hours] 2. It's too early to tell what really happened [2-24 hours] 3. It wasn't BLM, Antifa, Muslims, or leftists but they caused others to do it [1-3 days] 4. We should take the time to find out what really happened [3-21 days] (YOU ARE HERE) 5. What, you're still on about that? That was ages ago! [3 weeks-eternity]
I think it is 2m this week. I'd been told at the beginning of the week that the NHS was due supply of over 2m and that there was confidence that all of the doses could be used with the existing network which is build for between two and three million per week.
Assuming it's not a maths error from Hancock (which wouldn't surprise me) and we've hit 2m this week it should be a stepping stone to 4m per week by the end of January so that by the time we get to week 12 and second jabs there's almost 40m people who've had the first one and the remaining 15m first can be done alongside as second jabs ramp up and additional capacity can be added for a few weeks to get everyone a first jab by the end of May and fully immunised with two jabs by the end of August.
That timeframe seems to be what Hancock was referring when he said by autumn all adults would get it.
I reckon it was all down to Gordon Brittas and his hashtag he has been tweeting all week...that got it done.
This Gordon Brittas thing really isn’t working.
Have you listened to the two side by side?
He doesn't look that dissimilar either. Same hair cut, quite similar appearance.
I think it is 2m this week. I'd been told at the beginning of the week that the NHS was due supply of over 2m and that there was confidence that all of the doses could be used with the existing network which is build for between two and three million per week.
Assuming it's not a maths error from Hancock (which wouldn't surprise me) and we've hit 2m this week it should be a stepping stone to 4m per week by the end of January so that by the time we get to week 12 and second jabs there's almost 40m people who've had the first one and the remaining 15m first can be done alongside as second jabs ramp up and additional capacity can be added for a few weeks to get everyone a first jab by the end of May and fully immunised with two jabs by the end of August.
That timeframe seems to be what Hancock was referring when he said by autumn all adults would get it.
I reckon it was all down to Gordon Brittas and his hashtag he has been tweeting all week...that got it done.
But, Gordon Brittas' doesn't seem to be best friends with his Dodgy Welsh Uncle
Gordon Brittas: "Round the Clock Vaccines, Let's Get Britain Jabbed."
Mark Drakeford: "I am a little lonely. My name is Mark, and I am in charge of jabbing a small country. Give me a shout-out on twitter and we can be best friends! "
Gordon Brittas goes to the profile page and quietly selects 'Block' from the menu.
On topic: "Donald Trump has whipped up his supporters into a frenzy with baseless claims that the election was in some way stolen from him."
Does Trump actually think: 1) that the election was rigged and fraudulent and therefore stolen from him or 2) he would have won if it wasn`t for Covid and this isn't fair and so it was stolen from him.
I`m not quite sure which one (or both?) he truly believes.
If it were the latter he wouldn't be ranting about voting machines, pressuring election officials and throwing out law suits right left and centre.
He probably also thinks that Covid wrecked his chances but even that is delusional, it wasn't covid, it was his appalling response to covid that did for him.
So, come on, own up, which pb-ers are responsible for this?
"This has to be the worst book I have read in years. So poorly written that I thought it must have been written as an exercise on a creative writing course. You can just imagine the author ticking off the set pieces, unreliable narrator? Check. Change of narrator? Check. Relationship problem? Check. Do I want to write a thriller, a ghost story a romance or a travelog? I know! I'll do them all! With regard to the references to Skye, I can only assume they took a handful of names, threw them into the air then stuck them onto the first place they thought of. This book is the literary equivalent to day time TV. Just awful."
Or this
"In fact, no star ... what was so tiresome was the inclusion of three, sometimes four adjectives before every noun and as many adverbs with every verb. Also the characters were shallow and unconvincing. A waste of time."
I enjoyed The Ice Twins. My only quibble is the cliche of a location on a remote island so no mobile phone connection. Have you noticed how many situations in films/TV shows/books set in the 80s or earlier could be easily resolved now by a mobile phone call?
It has led to genuine changes in the structure of many tv shows and movies, as they either have to have a period setting, expensive to pull off convincingly, or actually explain why it won't work, which quickly looks silly or cliched. Or you have change the scenarios enough that a call won't solve it, which is harder.
Ice Twins was ok, not my type of thing though really.
Another problem for thriller/spy/mystery writers - which encompasses probably most fiction writers (as so many novels have an unfolding mystery at the heart) is the bloody internet. Sherlock Holmes would spend his entire time just Googling. Not much fun to read.
Elizabeth Bennet would go on Facebook on Instagram, immediately discover Darcy is actually a lovely, kindly guy with a magnificent house, and so Pride & Prejudice ends in chapter 2.
Mobile Phones and t’net are now a REAL problem in fiction, movies, drama
Easy. Set stuff in the fifties....
Which means TONS of research. And also means you can’t discuss modern issues.
But it is, indeed, one explanation why so many writers and screenwriters have moved into historical fiction and period drama
... in this instance I think Trump is a busted flush.
That might be the case, but it still leaves the Coup Caucus in the GOP, who might ensure that the next attempt to overthrow an election result they don't like is more successful. For that reason I agree with Robert Reich that the reckoning for coup instigators, and those who would provide comfort to them, has to be extensive and robust.
Incidentally, have the Republicans allowed the State Senator in Pennsylvania to be seated, that they had earlier gone against the state courts to keep from taking his seat?
They're going to wait to hear from a federal court. So much for States rights...
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
The monopolies are trying to have it every which way. Not a publisher, so we have no responsibility and happy to make apps that facilitate encrypted anonymous communications used by terrorists and won't work with governments to police it or even help in terrorist cases..you see it all about rights of individuals for privacy, free speech etc...very slippery slope you see if we give governments a backdoor or seen to be siding with those thst rule over us.
But at the same time happy to deplatform others for the same.
It's policing to "make us feel good". Facebook is a breeding ground for jihadist propaganda and is used a recruitment tool for terrorists. That's no different to Parler being used as a recruitment tool for Nazi terrorists. The law is the law, it needs to be applied equally, not on the basis of "we don't like these people so fuck their website".
A story which rather tellingly isn't being told in the right wing press. Various trade bodies who represent significant swathes of the economy saying the new rules are so unworkable that the government need to reopen negotiations. This quote from the CEO of Make UK is key:
"“There are customs experts with 30 years’ experience who are baffled by what the new regulations mean, let alone small- and medium-sized businesses who have never had to deal with the kind of paperwork that is now required. The great fear is that for many it will prove too much and they will simply choose not to export to the EU.”"
The government didn't understand how trade works and have ended up with a deal which they don't understand. Having soent years saying fuck business and branding warnings as Project Fear it'll be a painful revelation to find out that manufacturing and logistics experts actually did know what they were talking about after all.
This isn't just "apply the same paperwork as you would for anywhere else what's the problem?" as some parrots on here have re-squawked. This is a deal which does not work at a fundamental practical level for the supply chain of the UK.
Final observation. However bad this gets for the government, Labour will struggle to profit. As the omnishambles deal collapses and the stupidity of both it's structure and the details is laid bare, Labour attacks will be batted aside with a simple line. "You voted for it". Bravo Keith, bravo.
Hardly - the final vote was between leaving without a deal or leaving with a deal.
Both versions introduced whole piles of paperwork the only thing the deal avoided was tariffs on top of the paperwork.
Sadly politicians (and the general public) think it's tariffs that creates issues but as anyone who has exported things will know it's the paperwork that takes time and kills you.
The Tories have a majority of 80. The deal was going to pass regardless of whether the opposition gave their consent or not. So the vote was the deal with our agreement or the deal without the agreement.
An important lesson Labour didn't learn from the Coalition. The coalition did a lot of positive things and a whole pile of negative things. Tory bills backed by LibDem MPs are still hung around the neck of the LibDems years later. "You voted for it". This is the fate that Labour have chosen.
Or as was pointed out by others on here in December - if Labour had voted no the result was attacks that they never wanted us to Leave.
It really was a no win choice for Labour - but I did say continually that they should have just taken the day off and left the Tories to it.
Sadly because of the Covid announcements that wasn't an option.
I suggest that in a few years time 'You never wanted us to Leave' is going to be far less damaging than 'You voted for it".
It would be even better if in a few years no one is ever talking about Brexit again.
Yours, A former Remainer.
Does 'A former Remainer' = 'now a Rejoiner'?
No.
We all need to move on from Brexit. I'm done with it. It's over.
Listening to Starmer on Marr he rejects reintroducing free movement of Labour which of course would see the UK rejoining the single market and customs union, but he said he would want to improve on this 'thin' deal.
Marr pointed out that he had told the Daily Mirror he would bring back free movement of Labour and that his many supporters will be angered by his answer. He reiterated he would not bring free movement of Labour and it must follow that those who support closer ties or rejoining can only have one home and it is not Labour
Step forward the Lib Dems or SNP in Scotland
You need to move on , there is a deal. We know you are anti Labour in every regard , I think we all get it by now. Step forward with what ?
Actually you are quite wrong
I am reporting an exchange between Marr and Starmer and his refusal to reintroduce freedom of movement and to have closer ties with Europe
This is not anti Labour, this is where Starmer is and we all know there is a large cohort of Labour supporters who want closer ties or to rejoin the EU and Labour are not going to go there
Hence Lib Dems and SNP and Plaid are the home of those who desire EU membership
And Starmer is not at all a no go as Corbyn was and as of now I am open to persuasion by either of the main parties for my vote in 2024 subject to me keeping taking my pills and hopefully being vaccinated at sometime in the next few weeks
I don't think Trump is a fascist. I don't think he has any attachment to any political philosophy. I don't think he has any sense of patriotism, let alone nationalism. He is entirely and totally in it for himself. There is nothing else. Because of that he will associate with anyone and anything that he believes will further his own interests. He took the election defeat as a personal humiliation (as it was) and because of that has sought to do whatever possible to overturn it, up to and including insurrection. Last Wednesday was a coup, but it was not one designed to promote an ideology or secure the interests of a class. It was all about Trump not being able to handle being a loser. That's why he authorised it. Though it was probably not why others took part.
Trump of course backed the Democrats when Bill Clinton was President. He carried a lot of the blue collar white voters who voted for Reagan and Clinton on his nationalist, protectionist platform.
Indeed even in 2020 Trump won states like Ohio and Florida and Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa, West Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas which voted for Clinton in 1996 while Biden won Virginia, Colorado and Georgia which voted for Dole.
Something doesn't quite add up. If we can get from bugger all to 2 million in a week, why is Hancock saying it will be Autumn until every adult has been offered a vaccine slot. You would have thought if first statement is true and we will have 3-4 different vaccines supplying us by April, we can get to 3-4 million capacity and be done by summer.
I rather read it that by autumn, everyone will be offered a Covid shot, rather like a more widely available flu shot. So next winter should not be a Covid worry.
Way before then, we will have vaccinated everyone in the vulnerable groups that needs one.
Agreed. The next big battle, though, will be risk segmentation of the low-risk, non-vaccinated cohort.
You are absolutely right in your implication that once the vulnerable are vaccinated, lockdown should end. But, as Matthew Parris pointed out yesterday, that will require public pressure as Whitty and his acolytes will push for continued for restrictions.
It is imperative that they don’t win that one.
Indeed. Wish I could see that Parris article. I`m going to have to bite the bullet and subscribe to The Times I think.
I am very concerned that even with the vulnerable vaccinated the appetite for restrictions will endure. This is partly due to Sunak`s financial support.
A story which rather tellingly isn't being told in the right wing press. Various trade bodies who represent significant swathes of the economy saying the new rules are so unworkable that the government need to reopen negotiations. This quote from the CEO of Make UK is key:
"“There are customs experts with 30 years’ experience who are baffled by what the new regulations mean, let alone small- and medium-sized businesses who have never had to deal with the kind of paperwork that is now required. The great fear is that for many it will prove too much and they will simply choose not to export to the EU.”"
The government didn't understand how trade works and have ended up with a deal which they don't understand. Having soent years saying fuck business and branding warnings as Project Fear it'll be a painful revelation to find out that manufacturing and logistics experts actually did know what they were talking about after all.
This isn't just "apply the same paperwork as you would for anywhere else what's the problem?" as some parrots on here have re-squawked. This is a deal which does not work at a fundamental practical level for the supply chain of the UK.
Final observation. However bad this gets for the government, Labour will struggle to profit. As the omnishambles deal collapses and the stupidity of both it's structure and the details is laid bare, Labour attacks will be batted aside with a simple line. "You voted for it". Bravo Keith, bravo.
Hardly - the final vote was between leaving without a deal or leaving with a deal.
Both versions introduced whole piles of paperwork the only thing the deal avoided was tariffs on top of the paperwork.
Sadly politicians (and the general public) think it's tariffs that creates issues but as anyone who has exported things will know it's the paperwork that takes time and kills you.
The Tories have a majority of 80. The deal was going to pass regardless of whether the opposition gave their consent or not. So the vote was the deal with our agreement or the deal without the agreement.
An important lesson Labour didn't learn from the Coalition. The coalition did a lot of positive things and a whole pile of negative things. Tory bills backed by LibDem MPs are still hung around the neck of the LibDems years later. "You voted for it". This is the fate that Labour have chosen.
Or as was pointed out by others on here in December - if Labour had voted no the result was attacks that they never wanted us to Leave.
It really was a no win choice for Labour - but I did say continually that they should have just taken the day off and left the Tories to it.
Sadly because of the Covid announcements that wasn't an option.
I suggest that in a few years time 'You never wanted us to Leave' is going to be far less damaging than 'You voted for it".
It would be even better if in a few years no one is ever talking about Brexit again.
Yours, A former Remainer.
Does 'A former Remainer' = 'now a Rejoiner'?
No.
We all need to move on from Brexit. I'm done with it. It's over.
Hardly done for, the chickens are coming home to roost. Impact is only just starting.
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
The monopolies are trying to have it every which way. Not a publisher, so we have no responsibility and happy to make apps that facilitate encrypted anonymous communications used by terrorists and won't work with governments to police it or even help in terrorist cases..you see it all about rights of individuals for privacy, free speech etc...very slippery slope you see if we give governments a backdoor or seen to be siding with those thst rule over us.
But at the same time happy to deplatform others for the same.
It's policing to "make us feel good". Facebook is a breeding ground for jihadist propaganda and is used a recruitment tool for terrorists. That's no different to Parler being used as a recruitment tool for Nazi terrorists. The law is the law, it needs to be applied equally, not on the basis of "we don't like these people so fuck their website".
I found the ban on TalkRadio from YouTube his week deeply disturbing. If they weren't owned by Murdoch they would have been gone forever. And this is an Ofcom regulated mainstream station.
CNN ran a piece a couple of days ago calling for Fox News to be deplatformed.
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
Should Mike not be able to ban people on here?
Mike isn't a monopoly provider of services.
You mean there are alternatives to PB? Surely not.
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
Should Mike not be able to ban people on here?
Mike isn't a monopoly provider of services.
It’s the monopolies bit where the solution lies, I think. For governments to impose rules for who might or might not be deplatformed, while preserving free expression, seems an impossible task, and any solutions likely to be unpalatable, for a variety of reasons.
I think classifying Trump as a scumbag is quite sufficient and it is then possible to move on. As Alastair says angsting over what particular kind of scumbag he is doesn't seem enormously productive (unless you are using it as the basis of your thesis in political science, which no doubt many will do).
My strong impression is that despite the desperation of several more liberal media outlets to find ever more extreme ways of shouting about how shocking last Wednesday's coup was the response in America seems largely meh.
Why? I think that the completely disorganised and incompetent nature of the Capitol invasion didn't look anything like a conventional coup. It was not a complete joke, some people died including a police officer doing his duty but even there people who died of medical emergencies were counted amongst the dead to try and dramatise it. The studios competed into the night, the participants were "terrorists", "rioters" (quick, think of another emotive word) but they looked like bozos wearing ridiculous costumes and acting like arseholes. It was hard to take such idiots seriously.
This by no means indicates that those that triggered this shambles should not bear the consequences. Trump should be impeached and banned from public office. He should go to jail (but probably won't). The Republic is less secure than it was on Tuesday. The envelope of the possible has been extended, the Rubicon has been crossed. It is no longer as inconceivable that a leader will try to use a mob to effect political change as it was on Tuesday. This is a very bad thing, no question. But Trump simply remains a scumbag, he is not genuinely worthy of our attention no matter how much he craves it.
I started to feel quite angry reading your post, so I read it again and felt a bit calmer because you do save yourself in the last paragraph and much of what you say is right. But there's one bit I can't leave unaddressed:
"The studios competed into the night, the participants were "terrorists", "rioters" (quick, think of another emotive word) but they looked like bozos wearing ridiculous costumes and acting like arseholes. It was hard to take such idiots seriously."
Yes, someone wearing a fur hood and horns does look ridiculous, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take those revolting against democracy seriously. A clown with a loaded gun is still a person with a loaded gun. This has actually been a recurring theme of the past few years. Breathless media descriptions of the "alt right" focusing on their sharp suits. People taking Trump as a joke because he's orange and has ridiculous hair. A lesson for a a wannabe dictator is to adopt some style that is slightly comical, because you can get attention from it, which helps you get your message across.
But the message is the important thing. And, more tellingly, the armour-clad fascists behind the clown, they're the ones who will do the damage.
It's not good enough to focus only on the grinning idiot carrying a lectern when the place was crawling with people who literally wanted to kill senators and the vice-president. We cannot allow fascism to walk behind a fluffy mascot.
Except there didn't prove to be any armour-clad fascists behind the clowns. All that there was behind the clowns was more clowns right up to the clown in chief.
Dozens, probably hundreds of those clowns are going to go to jail and rightly so. I am not excusing what they did.
Sorry, but that's not true. There were people in there armed and wearing bulletproof vests. There were people in there with murder in their hearts. I cannot be sure that there was an overlap between the two, but I strongly suspect there was.
Bombs, guns, deaths, guillotine, zip tie handcuffs, chants to kill the VP not enough evidence for some apparently! Just some clowns on a day out.....
Some clowns on a day out who were used by the President and others as part of a coup attempt. Still, it's too late to impeach Trump so let's throw the book at his dupes who took selfies and let the President and Senators and Representatives off the hook.
I think it is 2m this week. I'd been told at the beginning of the week that the NHS was due supply of over 2m and that there was confidence that all of the doses could be used with the existing network which is build for between two and three million per week.
Assuming it's not a maths error from Hancock (which wouldn't surprise me) and we've hit 2m this week it should be a stepping stone to 4m per week by the end of January so that by the time we get to week 12 and second jabs there's almost 40m people who've had the first one and the remaining 15m first can be done alongside as second jabs ramp up and additional capacity can be added for a few weeks to get everyone a first jab by the end of May and fully immunised with two jabs by the end of August.
That timeframe seems to be what Hancock was referring when he said by autumn all adults would get it.
I reckon it was all down to Gordon Brittas and his hashtag he has been tweeting all week...that got it done.
This Gordon Brittas thing really isn’t working.
Too late. The Brittas connection has taken on a life of its own now.
You might as well try to get people to spell Kier's name correctly - it's just not happening
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
Should Mike not be able to ban people on here?
Mike isn't a monopoly provider of services.
Quite. Mike isn’t behaving like a classic monopolist. He isn’t try to blitzscale so he dominates the entire field of online political debate in the UK, which is what Twitter is doing in many countries.
Nor is buying up smaller rivals so as to cripple them, or absorb them, or mismanage them into obscurity, like `Facebook.
The USA cracked down in oil monopolies a 100 years ago, it must do the same with big tech
I think it is 2m this week. I'd been told at the beginning of the week that the NHS was due supply of over 2m and that there was confidence that all of the doses could be used with the existing network which is build for between two and three million per week.
Assuming it's not a maths error from Hancock (which wouldn't surprise me) and we've hit 2m this week it should be a stepping stone to 4m per week by the end of January so that by the time we get to week 12 and second jabs there's almost 40m people who've had the first one and the remaining 15m first can be done alongside as second jabs ramp up and additional capacity can be added for a few weeks to get everyone a first jab by the end of May and fully immunised with two jabs by the end of August.
That timeframe seems to be what Hancock was referring when he said by autumn all adults would get it.
I reckon it was all down to Gordon Brittas and his hashtag he has been tweeting all week...that got it done.
This Gordon Brittas thing really isn’t working.
Have you listened to the two side by side?
He doesn't look that dissimilar either. Same hair cut, quite similar appearance.
I don't think Trump is a fascist. I don't think he has any attachment to any political philosophy. I don't think he has any sense of patriotism, let alone nationalism. He is entirely and totally in it for himself. There is nothing else. Because of that he will associate with anyone and anything that he believes will further his own interests. He took the election defeat as a personal humiliation (as it was) and because of that has sought to do whatever possible to overturn it, up to and including insurrection. Last Wednesday was a coup, but it was not one designed to promote an ideology or secure the interests of a class. It was all about Trump not being able to handle being a loser. That's why he authorised it. Though it was probably not why others took part.
I am a big fan of Hannah Aren't and her work on totalitarianism. Trump certainly fits her profile as a potential totalitarian.
Mr. Rose, I think that's bollocks, as an excuse. I agree it's entirely possible some people thought that way, but if they did they're bloody idiots.
"Well, that guy got away with it so I will too" is a moronic approach when dealing with an infectious disease.
That's not to say the PM handled it anything like well. As with so many things, he did not. But his incompetence is no excuse for individuals to abandon the concept of responsibility (for self-preservation, no less!) in favour of an infantile strop.
Not so, Mr D. The point about lockdowns is that they impose upon us what are essentially irrational restrictions, in the name of the common good. The detail of the rules and guidance are not sensible lines to defend in the context of fighting the virus - the length of your exercise, how many times a day you go out, whether you buy this or that, precisely how many people you meet - they are but simply arbitrary compromises between locking everyone indoors permanently, and having no restrictions at all.
Willingness to go along with such depends heavily on the feeling that we are all in the same boat. The emotions stirred up by Cummings’s behaviour - not just the breach but the patent pack of lies he told to explain it and the lack of any punishment or sanction - were surely akin to those stirred up under wartime rationing on finding that some local bigwig is getting extra eggs on the black market, and nothing is being done about it.
Most of us prefer to make our own judgements (as some PB’ers did from the outset) and that is where most people are now.
Quite, Mr 82. Plenty of people in high, and not so high, places have been 'caught' breaking lockdown, have 'fessed up and the matter has been, if not forgotten, reduced to background noise. However, someone n a high place not only 'offended' but lied about it, and then, when the lies were exposed, was defended by his boss, one of the highest in the land, with what might well be described as 'an inverted pyramid of piffle'. As someone once said. The fact that, nearly nine months we still worry about it, and worse, make jokes about it means that it was pushed high into public awareness. Which it wouldn't have been if all concerned had not been at pains to make silly and unbelievable excuses.
Rather like Trump effectively saying the other day 'That's enough, be good now and go home!' when lives were clearly at risk.
And Good Morning everyone.
Good morning OKC, hope all went well with your hospital visit yesterday. The amount of people ignoring lockdown and saying hospitals are empty is absolutely crazy. The UK really has gone to the dogs.
Hiya, Malc. Yes the visit went fine, medically/procedurally, although I was mildly irritated that the visit, for a procedure which takes about 45-50 minutes, took us 5 minutes over the units one hour free parking limit and meant a charge of £3. Trust your good lady continues to improve.
OKC, yes she is a lot better nowadays, scandal charging for parking in hospitals. Banned in Scotland apart from the ones Labour signed away on PFI for 30 years.
A story which rather tellingly isn't being told in the right wing press. Various trade bodies who represent significant swathes of the economy saying the new rules are so unworkable that the government need to reopen negotiations. This quote from the CEO of Make UK is key:
"“There are customs experts with 30 years’ experience who are baffled by what the new regulations mean, let alone small- and medium-sized businesses who have never had to deal with the kind of paperwork that is now required. The great fear is that for many it will prove too much and they will simply choose not to export to the EU.”"
The government didn't understand how trade works and have ended up with a deal which they don't understand. Having soent years saying fuck business and branding warnings as Project Fear it'll be a painful revelation to find out that manufacturing and logistics experts actually did know what they were talking about after all.
This isn't just "apply the same paperwork as you would for anywhere else what's the problem?" as some parrots on here have re-squawked. This is a deal which does not work at a fundamental practical level for the supply chain of the UK.
Final observation. However bad this gets for the government, Labour will struggle to profit. As the omnishambles deal collapses and the stupidity of both it's structure and the details is laid bare, Labour attacks will be batted aside with a simple line. "You voted for it". Bravo Keith, bravo.
Hardly - the final vote was between leaving without a deal or leaving with a deal.
Both versions introduced whole piles of paperwork the only thing the deal avoided was tariffs on top of the paperwork.
Sadly politicians (and the general public) think it's tariffs that creates issues but as anyone who has exported things will know it's the paperwork that takes time and kills you.
The Tories have a majority of 80. The deal was going to pass regardless of whether the opposition gave their consent or not. So the vote was the deal with our agreement or the deal without the agreement.
An important lesson Labour didn't learn from the Coalition. The coalition did a lot of positive things and a whole pile of negative things. Tory bills backed by LibDem MPs are still hung around the neck of the LibDems years later. "You voted for it". This is the fate that Labour have chosen.
Or as was pointed out by others on here in December - if Labour had voted no the result was attacks that they never wanted us to Leave.
It really was a no win choice for Labour - but I did say continually that they should have just taken the day off and left the Tories to it.
Sadly because of the Covid announcements that wasn't an option.
I suggest that in a few years time 'You never wanted us to Leave' is going to be far less damaging than 'You voted for it".
It would be even better if in a few years no one is ever talking about Brexit again.
Yours, A former Remainer.
Does 'A former Remainer' = 'now a Rejoiner'?
No.
We all need to move on from Brexit. I'm done with it. It's over.
Listening to Starmer on Marr he rejects reintroducing free movement of Labour which of course would see the UK rejoining the single market and customs union, but he said he would want to improve on this 'thin' deal.
Marr pointed out that he had told the Daily Mirror he would bring back free movement of Labour and that his many supporters will be angered by his answer. He reiterated he would not bring free movement of Labour and it must follow that those who support closer ties or rejoining can only have one home and it is not Labour
Step forward the Lib Dems or SNP in Scotland
You need to move on , there is a deal. We know you are anti Labour in every regard , I think we all get it by now. Step forward with what ?
Actually you are quite wrong
I am reporting an exchange between Marr and Starmer and his refusal to reintroduce freedom of movement and to have closer ties with Europe
This is not anti Labour, this is where Starmer is and we all know there is a large cohort of Labour supporters who want closer ties or to rejoin the EU and Labour are not going to go there
Hence Lib Dems and SNP and Plaid are the home of those who desire EU membership
And Starmer is not at all a no go as Corbyn was and as of now I am open to persuasion by either of the main parties for my vote in 2024 subject to me keeping taking my pills and hopefully being vaccinated at sometime in the next few weeks
Starmer is sensibly making Labour a party Redwall voters can consider voting for again, leaving the diehard Remainers as you say to the LDs, Greens, SNP and Plaid
From Alastair's initial paragraph I thought he was going to inveigh against dog walkers. They appear to be increasing exponentially. All too often I seem to be the only dog-free person in the park and therefore an object of deep suspicion. "Where's your little bag of poo?" their accusing eyes seem to say, "Where's your mangey tennis ball, and that stupid stick thing to launch it with? Where's your 20m leash for snaring passers-by? It's alright, he won't hurt you, he just wants to be friendly."
I think we're right to view you with deep suspicion if that's your attitude.
Oh I dunno. I'm a dog owner and I totally get it. There was a tongue-in-cheek article last year about viewing walkers who don't have a dog at their heel as, basically, rapists in the wings.
Someone 'Off-topic'd' this so I'm going to bump it up just to annoy whoever it was. As Alastair began his piece on the subject of dog walking it's hardly off-topic.
It has been mentioned that if you're out running without a dog, that's fine. But tongue-in-cheek or not, prior to the pandemic if you were single and out walking without a dog some people did eye you with suspicion. Holding a dog lead, or a poo bag, or better still an actual dog close by and suddenly you're a person fit for an eyeball to eyeball conversation.
You are also a person who's dog may be about to bite someone.
"He's just being friendly" is the standard pre-bite line.
2 - Probably agree with @IanB2 - the last lot of dog legislation was a dog's breakfast. There was lots of shouting from the RSPCA about "puppy farms", but various parts also killed the economics of small-scale dog breeding. I know of plenty of people doing 1-3 litters a year from home who have just stopped.
And the pups are now being bred on puppy-farms overseas...
I have had several extremely nasty encounters with dogs. One slavering Rottweiler in Pelenque in Mexico tried to bite my face off, he hurled himself at me then his chain tightened just in time - he was an inch from my eyes. Similar experience in Greece. And a couple of nearly-as-bad encounters on walks in the British countryside, with yes, laughing owners saying ‘oh he’s really friendly really’ when their Great Dane is drooling, snarling, boggle eyed and clearly trying to knock me down to maul me
Feck that
Ever since, on long walks, I carry an Ontario Rat foldable knife. A mean beast of a blade that could gut a Doberman in a few seconds. I don’t care if it is illegal. If people are allowed to walk around with dangerous weapons like aggressive, big, badly trained dogs, I will respond with protection.
The knives are also great for cutting common flowers or leaves, slicing toms in picnics, hewing out fossils, and edgeplay if you’re, uh, dogging
Not my area of expertise, but I assume there is a vast pent up demand for dogging that will be unleashed when we finally come out of lockdown.
It's going to make it damn near impossible to go out and, er, listen for nightjars, officer.
I'm very uneasy about free speech being policed by Amazon or other web hosting companies. If they host websites that are breaking the law by inciting violence then it's up to the police to bring a cease and desist order to have the website shut down.
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
Should Mike not be able to ban people on here?
Mike isn't a monopoly provider of services.
It’s the monopolies bit where the solution lies, I think. For governments to impose rules for who might or might not be deplatformed, while preserving free expression, seems an impossible task, and any solutions likely to be unpalatable, for a variety of reasons.
Absolutely. We should never have let it get this bad
I don't think Trump is a fascist. I don't think he has any attachment to any political philosophy. I don't think he has any sense of patriotism, let alone nationalism. He is entirely and totally in it for himself. There is nothing else. Because of that he will associate with anyone and anything that he believes will further his own interests. He took the election defeat as a personal humiliation (as it was) and because of that has sought to do whatever possible to overturn it, up to and including insurrection. Last Wednesday was a coup, but it was not one designed to promote an ideology or secure the interests of a class. It was all about Trump not being able to handle being a loser. That's why he authorised it. Though it was probably not why others took part.
Does one need an ideology to be classed as a fascist? I don’t think so.
So, we now discover that the Welsh Government has already got 270,000 COVID doses
And used only 50,000 of them. They have so far used only 18 per cent of what has been delivered.
Sir "Round the Clock Vaccinations" has forgotten to mention to his Welsh colleagues that there is a great urgency to get jabs in arms.
If Wales has proportionality the same percentage of the vaccine as its percentage of the population then that would imply that there are nearly six million shots in the system.
Have there been any numbers released for the other home nations?
It would also mean that there are almost 40% of the jabs needed to hit the 15m head target already produced and ready to go.
So we’re back to distribution. Which I guess will be the media’s theme for the week.
Hancock just said 200k / day are now being vaccinated and a 1/3 of over 80s have been given at least first jab.
We should expect a large leap in the totals come tomorrow when the daily reporting starts.
Yet Lord Patten at 72 was on LBC bragging about how he had just made it to get his jab. Usual Tories, one rule for them and one for the rest.
Stop embarrassing yourself, he's on the vulnerable list due to him having had major heart surgery in the past.
Anyone know whether Farage has unequivocally condemned the Capitol outrage yet? It seems to be becoming more apparent by the day that describing Trump as a fascist is not hyperbole. His friend, supporter and fellow admirer of Putin deserved the epithet just as much.
Apparently we did about 2 million vaccinations last week. And we’re all to be offered the jab by autumn.
Are you sure, that doesn't sound right....up to 2 million now given a vaccine in total seems more like it.
Even if it's 2 million in total, that would put the daily rate at about 100,000, which is a good improvement over the last week. Just at that rate alone there would be about 5.5 million people jabbed by Feb 15th.
Can you believe the liars figures though, they have form on imaginary numbers.
A story which rather tellingly isn't being told in the right wing press. Various trade bodies who represent significant swathes of the economy saying the new rules are so unworkable that the government need to reopen negotiations. This quote from the CEO of Make UK is key:
"“There are customs experts with 30 years’ experience who are baffled by what the new regulations mean, let alone small- and medium-sized businesses who have never had to deal with the kind of paperwork that is now required. The great fear is that for many it will prove too much and they will simply choose not to export to the EU.”"
The government didn't understand how trade works and have ended up with a deal which they don't understand. Having soent years saying fuck business and branding warnings as Project Fear it'll be a painful revelation to find out that manufacturing and logistics experts actually did know what they were talking about after all.
This isn't just "apply the same paperwork as you would for anywhere else what's the problem?" as some parrots on here have re-squawked. This is a deal which does not work at a fundamental practical level for the supply chain of the UK.
Final observation. However bad this gets for the government, Labour will struggle to profit. As the omnishambles deal collapses and the stupidity of both it's structure and the details is laid bare, Labour attacks will be batted aside with a simple line. "You voted for it". Bravo Keith, bravo.
Hardly - the final vote was between leaving without a deal or leaving with a deal.
Both versions introduced whole piles of paperwork the only thing the deal avoided was tariffs on top of the paperwork.
Sadly politicians (and the general public) think it's tariffs that creates issues but as anyone who has exported things will know it's the paperwork that takes time and kills you.
The Tories have a majority of 80. The deal was going to pass regardless of whether the opposition gave their consent or not. So the vote was the deal with our agreement or the deal without the agreement.
An important lesson Labour didn't learn from the Coalition. The coalition did a lot of positive things and a whole pile of negative things. Tory bills backed by LibDem MPs are still hung around the neck of the LibDems years later. "You voted for it". This is the fate that Labour have chosen.
Or as was pointed out by others on here in December - if Labour had voted no the result was attacks that they never wanted us to Leave.
It really was a no win choice for Labour - but I did say continually that they should have just taken the day off and left the Tories to it.
Sadly because of the Covid announcements that wasn't an option.
I suggest that in a few years time 'You never wanted us to Leave' is going to be far less damaging than 'You voted for it".
It would be even better if in a few years no one is ever talking about Brexit again.
Yours, A former Remainer.
Does 'A former Remainer' = 'now a Rejoiner'?
No.
We all need to move on from Brexit. I'm done with it. It's over.
Listening to Starmer on Marr he rejects reintroducing free movement of Labour which of course would see the UK rejoining the single market and customs union, but he said he would want to improve on this 'thin' deal.
Marr pointed out that he had told the Daily Mirror he would bring back free movement of Labour and that his many supporters will be angered by his answer. He reiterated he would not bring free movement of Labour and it must follow that those who support closer ties or rejoining can only have one home and it is not Labour
Step forward the Lib Dems or SNP in Scotland
You need to move on , there is a deal. We know you are anti Labour in every regard , I think we all get it by now. Step forward with what ?
Actually you are quite wrong
I am reporting an exchange between Marr and Starmer and his refusal to reintroduce freedom of movement and to have closer ties with Europe
This is not anti Labour, this is where Starmer is and we all know there is a large cohort of Labour supporters who want closer ties or to rejoin the EU and Labour are not going to go there
Hence Lib Dems and SNP and Plaid are the home of those who desire EU membership
And Starmer is not at all a no go as Corbyn was and as of now I am open to persuasion by either of the main parties for my vote in 2024 subject to me keeping taking my pills and hopefully being vaccinated at sometime in the next few weeks
Starmer is sensibly making Labour a party Redwall voters can consider voting for again, leaving the diehard Remainers as you say to the LDs, Greens, SNP and Plaid
You seem to be suggesting that Scotland is now diehard remain. Fair play for accepting that.
I think it is 2m this week. I'd been told at the beginning of the week that the NHS was due supply of over 2m and that there was confidence that all of the doses could be used with the existing network which is build for between two and three million per week.
Assuming it's not a maths error from Hancock (which wouldn't surprise me) and we've hit 2m this week it should be a stepping stone to 4m per week by the end of January so that by the time we get to week 12 and second jabs there's almost 40m people who've had the first one and the remaining 15m first can be done alongside as second jabs ramp up and additional capacity can be added for a few weeks to get everyone a first jab by the end of May and fully immunised with two jabs by the end of August.
That timeframe seems to be what Hancock was referring when he said by autumn all adults would get it.
I reckon it was all down to Gordon Brittas and his hashtag he has been tweeting all week...that got it done.
This Gordon Brittas thing really isn’t working.
Too late. The Brittas connection has taken on a life of its own now.
You might as well try to get people to spell Kier's name correctly - it's just not happening
Never seen it apart from once or twice on here, from people already firmly on the other side of that fence. Classic bubble-speak.
So, come on, own up, which pb-ers are responsible for this?
"This has to be the worst book I have read in years. So poorly written that I thought it must have been written as an exercise on a creative writing course. You can just imagine the author ticking off the set pieces, unreliable narrator? Check. Change of narrator? Check. Relationship problem? Check. Do I want to write a thriller, a ghost story a romance or a travelog? I know! I'll do them all! With regard to the references to Skye, I can only assume they took a handful of names, threw them into the air then stuck them onto the first place they thought of. This book is the literary equivalent to day time TV. Just awful."
Or this
"In fact, no star ... what was so tiresome was the inclusion of three, sometimes four adjectives before every noun and as many adverbs with every verb. Also the characters were shallow and unconvincing. A waste of time."
I enjoyed The Ice Twins. My only quibble is the cliche of a location on a remote island so no mobile phone connection. Have you noticed how many situations in films/TV shows/books set in the 80s or earlier could be easily resolved now by a mobile phone call?
It has led to genuine changes in the structure of many tv shows and movies, as they either have to have a period setting, expensive to pull off convincingly, or actually explain why it won't work, which quickly looks silly or cliched. Or you have change the scenarios enough that a call won't solve it, which is harder.
Ice Twins was ok, not my type of thing though really.
Another problem for thriller/spy/mystery writers - which encompasses probably most fiction writers (as so many novels have an unfolding mystery at the heart) is the bloody internet. Sherlock Holmes would spend his entire time just Googling. Not much fun to read.
Elizabeth Bennet would go on Facebook on Instagram, immediately discover Darcy is actually a lovely, kindly guy with a magnificent house, and so Pride & Prejudice ends in chapter 2.
Mobile Phones and t’net are now a REAL problem in fiction, movies, drama
Easy. Set stuff in the fifties....
Which means TONS of research. And also means you can’t discuss modern issues.
But it is, indeed, one explanation why so many writers and screenwriters have moved into historical fiction and period drama
I thought it was done to avoid present-day culture wars.
Set it in the past and you can claim your work as being feminist/progressive because it shows the struggle of women to be published authors, or keep access to their children after divorce, etc, cultural battles safely won in the past.
No need to address the fraught cultural battles of the present.
This is an interesting article on why 'Trumpet' or MAGAFlix or Trump News Network probably can't happen.
I'd watch a show where Don Jr and Kimberly G take massive doses of psilocybin and clean guns.
I don't think Trump network was ever a realistic prospect. What was (and perhaps still is), is a daily show on an existing network, where plenty of advertisers will be happy to market to the Trump base. After his behaviour, it now definitely won't be Fox, if he was smarter over his reaction to election defeat, he could be looking forward to multi-million dollar slot every day on Fox News and a level of protection thst affords.
A story which rather tellingly isn't being told in the right wing press. Various trade bodies who represent significant swathes of the economy saying the new rules are so unworkable that the government need to reopen negotiations. This quote from the CEO of Make UK is key:
"“There are customs experts with 30 years’ experience who are baffled by what the new regulations mean, let alone small- and medium-sized businesses who have never had to deal with the kind of paperwork that is now required. The great fear is that for many it will prove too much and they will simply choose not to export to the EU.”"
The government didn't understand how trade works and have ended up with a deal which they don't understand. Having soent years saying fuck business and branding warnings as Project Fear it'll be a painful revelation to find out that manufacturing and logistics experts actually did know what they were talking about after all.
This isn't just "apply the same paperwork as you would for anywhere else what's the problem?" as some parrots on here have re-squawked. This is a deal which does not work at a fundamental practical level for the supply chain of the UK.
Final observation. However bad this gets for the government, Labour will struggle to profit. As the omnishambles deal collapses and the stupidity of both it's structure and the details is laid bare, Labour attacks will be batted aside with a simple line. "You voted for it". Bravo Keith, bravo.
Hardly - the final vote was between leaving without a deal or leaving with a deal.
Both versions introduced whole piles of paperwork the only thing the deal avoided was tariffs on top of the paperwork.
Sadly politicians (and the general public) think it's tariffs that creates issues but as anyone who has exported things will know it's the paperwork that takes time and kills you.
The Tories have a majority of 80. The deal was going to pass regardless of whether the opposition gave their consent or not. So the vote was the deal with our agreement or the deal without the agreement.
An important lesson Labour didn't learn from the Coalition. The coalition did a lot of positive things and a whole pile of negative things. Tory bills backed by LibDem MPs are still hung around the neck of the LibDems years later. "You voted for it". This is the fate that Labour have chosen.
Or as was pointed out by others on here in December - if Labour had voted no the result was attacks that they never wanted us to Leave.
It really was a no win choice for Labour - but I did say continually that they should have just taken the day off and left the Tories to it.
Sadly because of the Covid announcements that wasn't an option.
I suggest that in a few years time 'You never wanted us to Leave' is going to be far less damaging than 'You voted for it".
It would be even better if in a few years no one is ever talking about Brexit again.
Yours, A former Remainer.
Does 'A former Remainer' = 'now a Rejoiner'?
No.
We all need to move on from Brexit. I'm done with it. It's over.
Listening to Starmer on Marr he rejects reintroducing free movement of Labour which of course would see the UK rejoining the single market and customs union, but he said he would want to improve on this 'thin' deal.
Marr pointed out that he had told the Daily Mirror he would bring back free movement of Labour and that his many supporters will be angered by his answer. He reiterated he would not bring free movement of Labour and it must follow that those who support closer ties or rejoining can only have one home and it is not Labour
Step forward the Lib Dems or SNP in Scotland
You need to move on , there is a deal. We know you are anti Labour in every regard , I think we all get it by now. Step forward with what ?
Actually you are quite wrong
I am reporting an exchange between Marr and Starmer and his refusal to reintroduce freedom of movement and to have closer ties with Europe
This is not anti Labour, this is where Starmer is and we all know there is a large cohort of Labour supporters who want closer ties or to rejoin the EU and Labour are not going to go there
Hence Lib Dems and SNP and Plaid are the home of those who desire EU membership
And Starmer is not at all a no go as Corbyn was and as of now I am open to persuasion by either of the main parties for my vote in 2024 subject to me keeping taking my pills and hopefully being vaccinated at sometime in the next few weeks
Starmer is sensibly making Labour a party Redwall voters can consider voting for again, leaving the diehard Remainers as you say to the LDs, Greens, SNP and Plaid
You seem to be suggesting that Scotland is now diehard remain. Fair play for accepting that.
It isn't, Yougov showed even most Scots wanted the Deal to pass.
I don't know what a "conventional" coup looks like, as they're all different and many attempts are full of stupidity, miscalculation and weird accidents. But the allegation is:
1) Trump whipped up people with (false) claims that the election was stolen 2) He purged the Pentagon after the election and put minions in key positions 3) He prepared his people to think something would happen on Jan 6th that would result in him staying 4) He told his people to march on Congress 5) He celebrated the intrusion into Congress when it was happening 6) The people he'd placed in step (2) denied authorization for a response
The key part of this is (2) and (6). If they're correct, as they seem to be, I think it's very clearly a straightforward coup attempt, even if parts of the plan seem to have come out of the underpants-collecting gnomes powerpoint.
Yeah. It doesn't matter that the coup failed. It WAS a coup. And despite the underpants gnomes in Trump's head drawing up the plan and the end of Finding Nemo "What now" response from most of the insurrectionists once they got inside, it almost succeeded.
Had they managed to grab any members of Congress then the coup may have succeeded. Those flexicuffs weren't there by accident. We would have had hostages paraded on social media by these lunatics, perhaps even a show "trial". Trump could have declared martial law and ordered in the troops.
It would have ended bloody. Likely with members of Congress as well as insurgents dead. Any hope of ratifying the election gone. And this is why the GOP members who were part of the plot have to be disbarred from office. Their position is untenable according to the constitution. Yes it won't help "bring the country together". But failed revolutionaries usually end up dead, so anything north of that is them getting off lightly.
I think this is why this needs to be pursued with every tool in the legal arsenal by Congress and the lawmakers. It does appear to be becoming apparent this was far more than just a situation that got out of hand and was carefully (although thankfully poorly) planned in advance. As such Trump does need to be impeached and there then needs to be a formal investigation started at a Federal level to uncover the exact details of the plot.
I suspect that, unusually perhaps in these sorts of circumstances, most of those who actually did the invading were unaware that they were part of an actual planned coup attempt. But there will be people below Trump who were put into those positions and who were aware of what was going to be attempted and they should be on trial alongside him.
Right now it looks like the authorities are still treating this as a demo that got out of hand - arresting the indians but not the chiefs and charging them with normal criminal acts. They need to reorient their whole view of this and concentrate on the plot.
Agreed. The coup was plotted at the top, not by the clowns in fancy dress, and attempts to reorient blame on to the invaders who took selfies not hostages simply distract from the real conspirators around and inside the Oval Office.
I still can’t decide. Coup, or just coup-like theatre that got out of hand. There is evidence both ways.
In either case, this needs more investigation than Watergate or Vietnam.
The right-wing bury-bad-news handbook 1. It was BLM, Antifa, Muslims, and leftists [0-2 hours] 2. It's too early to tell what really happened [2-24 hours] 3. It wasn't BLM, Antifa, Muslims, or leftists but they caused others to do it [1-3 days] 4. We should take the time to find out what really happened [3-21 days] (YOU ARE HERE) 5. What, you're still on about that? That was ages ago! [3 weeks-eternity]
You’re new here. This is what happens. We either bang on and on about a subject, like pineapples on pizza or the decline of cricket or Trump, or we rant and rave for a few hours, abut the most important subject in the world, then miraculously forget it 3 days later,
I don't think Trump is a fascist. I don't think he has any attachment to any political philosophy. I don't think he has any sense of patriotism, let alone nationalism. He is entirely and totally in it for himself. There is nothing else. Because of that he will associate with anyone and anything that he believes will further his own interests. He took the election defeat as a personal humiliation (as it was) and because of that has sought to do whatever possible to overturn it, up to and including insurrection. Last Wednesday was a coup, but it was not one designed to promote an ideology or secure the interests of a class. It was all about Trump not being able to handle being a loser. That's why he authorised it. Though it was probably not why others took part.
Does one need an ideology to be classed as a fascist? I don’t think so.
Fascism is an ideology, isn't it?
That's debateable. Some would say it's as much a methodology as an ideology.
Do we really care about the Spratly Islands? Do we really need to make a fuss over Uighur rights in China when we don’t do the same over US Police shooting black citizens?
I don't think Trump is a fascist. I don't think he has any attachment to any political philosophy. I don't think he has any sense of patriotism, let alone nationalism. He is entirely and totally in it for himself. There is nothing else. Because of that he will associate with anyone and anything that he believes will further his own interests. He took the election defeat as a personal humiliation (as it was) and because of that has sought to do whatever possible to overturn it, up to and including insurrection. Last Wednesday was a coup, but it was not one designed to promote an ideology or secure the interests of a class. It was all about Trump not being able to handle being a loser. That's why he authorised it. Though it was probably not why others took part.
Does one need an ideology to be classed as a fascist? I don’t think so.
Fascism is an ideology, isn't it?
Wikipedia says it’s a far right ideology - but I tend to think it’s more about dictatorships and oppression.
I think it is 2m this week. I'd been told at the beginning of the week that the NHS was due supply of over 2m and that there was confidence that all of the doses could be used with the existing network which is build for between two and three million per week.
Assuming it's not a maths error from Hancock (which wouldn't surprise me) and we've hit 2m this week it should be a stepping stone to 4m per week by the end of January so that by the time we get to week 12 and second jabs there's almost 40m people who've had the first one and the remaining 15m first can be done alongside as second jabs ramp up and additional capacity can be added for a few weeks to get everyone a first jab by the end of May and fully immunised with two jabs by the end of August.
That timeframe seems to be what Hancock was referring when he said by autumn all adults would get it.
I reckon it was all down to Gordon Brittas and his hashtag he has been tweeting all week...that got it done.
This Gordon Brittas thing really isn’t working.
Have you listened to the two side by side?
He doesn't look that dissimilar either. Same hair cut, quite similar appearance.
Juvenile, puerile stuff.
You must really hate spitting image then....it what we do to politicians in this country. We take the piss out of them.
I don't know what a "conventional" coup looks like, as they're all different and many attempts are full of stupidity, miscalculation and weird accidents. But the allegation is:
1) Trump whipped up people with (false) claims that the election was stolen 2) He purged the Pentagon after the election and put minions in key positions 3) He prepared his people to think something would happen on Jan 6th that would result in him staying 4) He told his people to march on Congress 5) He celebrated the intrusion into Congress when it was happening 6) The people he'd placed in step (2) denied authorization for a response
The key part of this is (2) and (6). If they're correct, as they seem to be, I think it's very clearly a straightforward coup attempt, even if parts of the plan seem to have come out of the underpants-collecting gnomes powerpoint.
Yeah. It doesn't matter that the coup failed. It WAS a coup. And despite the underpants gnomes in Trump's head drawing up the plan and the end of Finding Nemo "What now" response from most of the insurrectionists once they got inside, it almost succeeded.
Had they managed to grab any members of Congress then the coup may have succeeded. Those flexicuffs weren't there by accident. We would have had hostages paraded on social media by these lunatics, perhaps even a show "trial". Trump could have declared martial law and ordered in the troops.
It would have ended bloody. Likely with members of Congress as well as insurgents dead. Any hope of ratifying the election gone. And this is why the GOP members who were part of the plot have to be disbarred from office. Their position is untenable according to the constitution. Yes it won't help "bring the country together". But failed revolutionaries usually end up dead, so anything north of that is them getting off lightly.
I think this is why this needs to be pursued with every tool in the legal arsenal by Congress and the lawmakers. It does appear to be becoming apparent this was far more than just a situation that got out of hand and was carefully (although thankfully poorly) planned in advance. As such Trump does need to be impeached and there then needs to be a formal investigation started at a Federal level to uncover the exact details of the plot.
I suspect that, unusually perhaps in these sorts of circumstances, most of those who actually did the invading were unaware that they were part of an actual planned coup attempt. But there will be people below Trump who were put into those positions and who were aware of what was going to be attempted and they should be on trial alongside him.
Right now it looks like the authorities are still treating this as a demo that got out of hand - arresting the indians but not the chiefs and charging them with normal criminal acts. They need to reorient their whole view of this and concentrate on the plot.
Agreed. The coup was plotted at the top, not by the clowns in fancy dress, and attempts to reorient blame on to the invaders who took selfies not hostages simply distract from the real conspirators around and inside the Oval Office.
I still can’t decide. Coup, or just coup-like theatre that got out of hand. There is evidence both ways.
In either case, this needs more investigation than Watergate or Vietnam.
The right-wing bury-bad-news handbook 1. It was BLM, Antifa, Muslims, and leftists [0-2 hours] 2. It's too early to tell what really happened [2-24 hours] 3. It wasn't BLM, Antifa, Muslims, or leftists but they caused others to do it [1-3 days] 4. We should take the time to find out what really happened [3-21 days] (YOU ARE HERE) 5. What, you're still on about that? That was ages ago! [3 weeks-eternity]
You’re new here. This is what happens. We either bang on and on about a subject, like pineapples on pizza or the decline of cricket or Trump, or we rant and rave for a few hours, abut the most important subject in the world, then miraculously forget it 3 days later,
Sturgeon claims Scotland is to be allocated over 900000 shots for January. Normalised by population, that would be just under 11 million for the whole UK.
That sounds about right. We shouldn't have too much trouble using all of them either and hopefully in Feb we'll get 15-17m doses worth of supply.
... in this instance I think Trump is a busted flush.
That might be the case, but it still leaves the Coup Caucus in the GOP, who might ensure that the next attempt to overthrow an election result they don't like is more successful. For that reason I agree with Robert Reich that the reckoning for coup instigators, and those who would provide comfort to them, has to be extensive and robust.
Incidentally, have the Republicans allowed the State Senator in Pennsylvania to be seated, that they had earlier gone against the state courts to keep from taking his seat?
They're going to wait to hear from a federal court. So much for States rights...
Thanks for the update. That, and the number of GOP House votes against the election result, show that the GOP are very close to refusing to accept the election of a Democrat President if the GOP have a majority in the House and Senate.
I am neither mysticrose nor SeanT. I advise against further speculation
Well that post Leon is a hostage to fortune. I'm not one on here that has been speculating but I'm tempted to now just to find out what you are going to do, if I do.
I don't think Trump is a fascist. I don't think he has any attachment to any political philosophy. I don't think he has any sense of patriotism, let alone nationalism. He is entirely and totally in it for himself. There is nothing else. Because of that he will associate with anyone and anything that he believes will further his own interests. He took the election defeat as a personal humiliation (as it was) and because of that has sought to do whatever possible to overturn it, up to and including insurrection. Last Wednesday was a coup, but it was not one designed to promote an ideology or secure the interests of a class. It was all about Trump not being able to handle being a loser. That's why he authorised it. Though it was probably not why others took part.
I am a big fan of Hannah Aren't and her work on totalitarianism. Trump certainly fits her profile as a potential totalitarian.
Arendt gets a mention in the Snyder piece I linked to.
'One historical big lie discussed by Arendt is Joseph Stalin’s explanation of starvation in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33. The state had collectivized agriculture, then applied a series of punitive measures to Ukraine that ensured millions would die. Yet the official line was that the starving were provocateurs, agents of Western powers who hated socialism so much they were killing themselves. A still grander fiction, in Arendt’s account, is Hitlerian anti-Semitism: the claims that Jews ran the world, Jews were responsible for ideas that poisoned German minds, Jews stabbed Germany in the back during the First World War. Intriguingly, Arendt thought big lies work only in lonely minds; their coherence substitutes for experience and companionship.'
Snyder's 'gamers' and 'breakers' analysis of the current GOP pretyy much nails it I think.
A story which rather tellingly isn't being told in the right wing press. Various trade bodies who represent significant swathes of the economy saying the new rules are so unworkable that the government need to reopen negotiations. This quote from the CEO of Make UK is key:
"“There are customs experts with 30 years’ experience who are baffled by what the new regulations mean, let alone small- and medium-sized businesses who have never had to deal with the kind of paperwork that is now required. The great fear is that for many it will prove too much and they will simply choose not to export to the EU.”"
The government didn't understand how trade works and have ended up with a deal which they don't understand. Having soent years saying fuck business and branding warnings as Project Fear it'll be a painful revelation to find out that manufacturing and logistics experts actually did know what they were talking about after all.
This isn't just "apply the same paperwork as you would for anywhere else what's the problem?" as some parrots on here have re-squawked. This is a deal which does not work at a fundamental practical level for the supply chain of the UK.
Final observation. However bad this gets for the government, Labour will struggle to profit. As the omnishambles deal collapses and the stupidity of both it's structure and the details is laid bare, Labour attacks will be batted aside with a simple line. "You voted for it". Bravo Keith, bravo.
Hardly - the final vote was between leaving without a deal or leaving with a deal.
Both versions introduced whole piles of paperwork the only thing the deal avoided was tariffs on top of the paperwork.
Sadly politicians (and the general public) think it's tariffs that creates issues but as anyone who has exported things will know it's the paperwork that takes time and kills you.
The Tories have a majority of 80. The deal was going to pass regardless of whether the opposition gave their consent or not. So the vote was the deal with our agreement or the deal without the agreement.
An important lesson Labour didn't learn from the Coalition. The coalition did a lot of positive things and a whole pile of negative things. Tory bills backed by LibDem MPs are still hung around the neck of the LibDems years later. "You voted for it". This is the fate that Labour have chosen.
Or as was pointed out by others on here in December - if Labour had voted no the result was attacks that they never wanted us to Leave.
It really was a no win choice for Labour - but I did say continually that they should have just taken the day off and left the Tories to it.
Sadly because of the Covid announcements that wasn't an option.
I suggest that in a few years time 'You never wanted us to Leave' is going to be far less damaging than 'You voted for it".
It would be even better if in a few years no one is ever talking about Brexit again.
Yours, A former Remainer.
Does 'A former Remainer' = 'now a Rejoiner'?
No.
We all need to move on from Brexit. I'm done with it. It's over.
Listening to Starmer on Marr he rejects reintroducing free movement of Labour which of course would see the UK rejoining the single market and customs union, but he said he would want to improve on this 'thin' deal.
Marr pointed out that he had told the Daily Mirror he would bring back free movement of Labour and that his many supporters will be angered by his answer. He reiterated he would not bring free movement of Labour and it must follow that those who support closer ties or rejoining can only have one home and it is not Labour
Step forward the Lib Dems or SNP in Scotland
You need to move on , there is a deal. We know you are anti Labour in every regard , I think we all get it by now. Step forward with what ?
Actually you are quite wrong
I am reporting an exchange between Marr and Starmer and his refusal to reintroduce freedom of movement and to have closer ties with Europe
This is not anti Labour, this is where Starmer is and we all know there is a large cohort of Labour supporters who want closer ties or to rejoin the EU and Labour are not going to go there
Hence Lib Dems and SNP and Plaid are the home of those who desire EU membership
And Starmer is not at all a no go as Corbyn was and as of now I am open to persuasion by either of the main parties for my vote in 2024 subject to me keeping taking my pills and hopefully being vaccinated at sometime in the next few weeks
Starmer is sensibly making Labour a party Redwall voters can consider voting for again, leaving the diehard Remainers as you say to the LDs, Greens, SNP and Plaid
You seem to be suggesting that Scotland is now diehard remain. Fair play for accepting that.
It isn't, Yougov showed even most Scots wanted the Deal to pass.
Comments
Yes it will inflame some people further, but 'hold people accountable for their actions' should not be controversial, even if it will upset a lot of people. You cannot really move on until you address something. I hope enough realise that over there.
* The tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States
Who says you can't have both?
Thankfully he has not managed to drop the "w" qualifier and although one should not be complacent about it it's clear he never will. He's finished in politics now. This is the upside of the simultaneously frightening and shambolic events of last week. It was a complete mess of an affair. A very tittish coup. The real deal strongmen such as Putin and Xi would have been pissing themselves watching it on TV. "Oh Don, Don, Don. You crazy boy. Why didn't you get in touch?"
I have zero sympathy for the Parler idiots, but I won’t pretend this isn’t a serious issue for political discourse in free societies.
However an impeachment so late in his term seems to me a bit futile.
I know it might bar him from future federal office.
My preferred option would have been his cabinet taking the office from him.
That does not look like any chance of happening.
Just hoping he does nothing terrible in his last few days.
Ice Twins was ok, not my type of thing though really.
e.g. When I was a professional gambler I had to use things like Neteller to move my money around the various sites.
There were people in there with murder in their hearts. I cannot be sure that there was an overlap between the two, but I strongly suspect there was.
In either case, this needs more investigation than Watergate or Vietnam.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/10/trump-coup-capitol-attack-pence-giuliani-fox-news-twitter-facebook-impeachment
Incidentally, have the Republicans allowed the State Senator in Pennsylvania to be seated, that they had earlier gone against the state courts to keep from taking his seat?
I don't know if Parler is breaking the law, I know that Trump did by inciting a mob to overthrow the government so Twitter and the rest are more than justified to throw him of their platforms for doing so.
Auiu, under the current laws a social media network isn't a publisher and aren't responsible for what people post on their website. It shouldn't be the decision of private companies to say who is and isn't allowed a platform.
https://nyegop.org/2021/01/08/a-letter-from-the-chairman/?v=7516fd43adaa
But at the same time happy to deplatform others for the same.
Elizabeth Bennet would go on Facebook on Instagram, immediately discover Darcy is actually a lovely, kindly guy with a magnificent house, and so Pride & Prejudice ends in chapter 2.
Mobile Phones and t’net are now a REAL problem in fiction, movies, drama
- it's leader: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/we-can-no-longer-turn-a-blind-eye-to-belligerent-beijing-37xrlmm07
and
- https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/xi-and-putin-are-exploiting-the-wests-political-decadence-vzc6ncwj3
As usual PB gets there first. The former article is remarkably similar to this - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2021/01/08/the-china-peril/
** polishes nails **
"As mentioned on here at the time, it was the Dominic Cummings moment which shattered the bond between people and politicians. Up until then the country was pulling together, united."
This is utter bullshit. We had had a torrent of examples of people ignoring the rules, complaints that the young in particular were not following them and raves, parties and street demos in the news continuously. People were not 'pulling together' and there was certainly no bond between the people and politicians to be shattered.
I said at the time Cummings should have resigned and still believe that. But the idea this was some sort of earth shattering revelation about the political classes which destroyed people's faith in the rules is, as I said, just bullshit.
Cummings was, at best, just another feeble excuse from those who were always going to say bollocks to the rules anyway.
As for Trump, I always described him as an incipient fascist, which I think answers Alastair’s descriptive and normative strictures.
1. It was BLM, Antifa, Muslims, and leftists [0-2 hours]
2. It's too early to tell what really happened [2-24 hours]
3. It wasn't BLM, Antifa, Muslims, or leftists but they caused others to do it [1-3 days]
4. We should take the time to find out what really happened [3-21 days] (YOU ARE HERE)
5. What, you're still on about that? That was ages ago! [3 weeks-eternity]
Gordon Brittas: "Round the Clock Vaccines, Let's Get Britain Jabbed."
Mark Drakeford: "I am a little lonely. My name is Mark, and I am in charge of jabbing a small country. Give me a shout-out on twitter and we can be best friends! "
Gordon Brittas goes to the profile page and quietly selects 'Block' from the menu.
He probably also thinks that Covid wrecked his chances but even that is delusional, it wasn't covid, it was his appalling response to covid that did for him.
But it is, indeed, one explanation why so many writers and screenwriters have moved into historical fiction and period drama
I am reporting an exchange between Marr and Starmer and his refusal to reintroduce freedom of movement and to have closer ties with Europe
This is not anti Labour, this is where Starmer is and we all know there is a large cohort of Labour supporters who want closer ties or to rejoin the EU and Labour are not going to go there
Hence Lib Dems and SNP and Plaid are the home of those who desire EU membership
And Starmer is not at all a no go as Corbyn was and as of now I am open to persuasion by either of the main parties for my vote in 2024 subject to me keeping taking my pills and hopefully being vaccinated at sometime in the next few weeks
Indeed even in 2020 Trump won states like Ohio and Florida and Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa, West Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas which voted for Clinton in 1996 while Biden won Virginia, Colorado and Georgia which voted for Dole.
I am very concerned that even with the vulnerable vaccinated the appetite for restrictions will endure. This is partly due to Sunak`s financial support.
The sainted Jacinda is soft on China.
CNN ran a piece a couple of days ago calling for Fox News to be deplatformed.
https://twitter.com/thoughtland/status/1348214086782345216?s=20
For governments to impose rules for who might or might not be deplatformed, while preserving free expression, seems an impossible task, and any solutions likely to be unpalatable, for a variety of reasons.
You might as well try to get people to spell Kier's name correctly - it's just not happening
Nor is buying up smaller rivals so as to cripple them, or absorb them, or mismanage them into obscurity, like `Facebook.
The USA cracked down in oil monopolies a 100 years ago, it must do the same with big tech
This is an interesting article on why 'Trumpet' or MAGAFlix or Trump News Network probably can't happen.
I'd watch a show where Don Jr and Kimberly G take massive doses of psilocybin and clean guns.
I suggest that you demand a refund for all fees you have paid for the content,
and then fuck off somewhere else.
--AS
It's going to make it damn near impossible to go out and, er, listen for nightjars, officer.
Set it in the past and you can claim your work as being feminist/progressive because it shows the struggle of women to be published authors, or keep access to their children after divorce, etc, cultural battles safely won in the past.
No need to address the fraught cultural battles of the present.
45% of Scots only voted SNP in 2019, 55% did not
NZ *is* softer on China.
This sort of thing gets published in mainstream media.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/300196607/is-it-time-to-sell-our-seat-on-five-eyes
Author questions worth of Five Eyes and asks:
Do we really care about the Spratly Islands? Do we really need to make a fuss over Uighur rights in China when we don’t do the same over US Police shooting black citizens?
Of all the knives, in all the knife shops, in the whole world, you both choose the Ontario Rat as your take-anywhere knife.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/2791042/#Comment_2791042
The Narwhal's Tusk would be more stylish, but more dangerous for your equipment should you trip up.
'One historical big lie discussed by Arendt is Joseph Stalin’s explanation of starvation in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33. The state had collectivized agriculture, then applied a series of punitive measures to Ukraine that ensured millions would die. Yet the official line was that the starving were provocateurs, agents of Western powers who hated socialism so much they were killing themselves. A still grander fiction, in Arendt’s account, is Hitlerian anti-Semitism: the claims that Jews ran the world, Jews were responsible for ideas that poisoned German minds, Jews stabbed Germany in the back during the First World War. Intriguingly, Arendt thought big lies work only in lonely minds; their coherence substitutes for experience and companionship.'
Snyder's 'gamers' and 'breakers' analysis of the current GOP pretyy much nails it I think.