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.
Nonsense. And just like Sir Keir, Gordon Brittas is a man with extensive experience of forensic cross-examination in court:
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.
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 think you have to draw a line at the appropriate point in the stack. Twitter banning Trump, or anyone else for whatever reason they like, seems fine to me. If you don't like it, use another website. I think they handled Trump just right: They let him speak as far as possible, to the point of stretching their TOS a little bit, put up warnings when he was telling big, dangerous lies, and finally banned him for incitement to violence.
Apple and Google banning Parler is creepy. They're within their rights to do it, but they have effective control over people's devices that's practically extremely hard to circumvent. There's a risk that we end up with something like the banking system, where people can be effectively be cut off by private businesses, but they're potentially being leaned on by politicians and other powerful people. This gives you the worst of both worlds: You have government action that's too wide to circumvent, but you have no redress, because it's technically being done by a private business that has the right not to serve you.
I'm not sure if there's a *regulatory* fix for this - more political involvement probably makes it worse - but we should definitely be promoting technical workarounds like getting comfortable with f-droid, getting Google services off your phone, not buying Apple stuff, building stuff with censorship-resistant protocols.
This is one of the cases where you have to imagine how you'd feel if the weapon was deployed against someone you like and not just scumbags like the Trumpists, because by the time that happens it will be too late to respond.
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 find it hard to accept a definition for fascism that covers Pol Pot or Mao.
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.
Not just politicians, the voters too are culpable. Yes, there's the "left behind" economic narrative well explored on PT, and yes there are many intellectually and emotionally vulnerable people hoodwinked and groomed by bad actors on the internet, but this is far from a full explanation of why 74m Americans voted for a far right wannabe fascist who tipped the wink to white supremacists and majored on dog whistling against minorities.
Amongst those 74m were large numbers of affluent country club Republicans (I'm looking at you, Jack Nicklaus), devout Christians (please show me "blessed are the racist misogynists" in the New Testament) plus lots of floating apoliticals whose level of political nous was so lacking as to allow them to mark a cross next to the name Donald J Trump. Did they really need to have "poison" written in brackets alongside in order to prevent this? If so, why?
So, you know, these people have (these) questions to answer imo. Not in court, or in front of a Senate committee, nothing like that, but questions to ask of themselves. If they don't do this, and get the right answers, then as far as fascism goes, regardless of what happens with political rhetoric and policy direction, the USA remains open for business.
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.
You´d hope for a bit more than a statement of the blindingly obvious. Sadly for Farage- but hilariously for the rest of us- his meal ticket from the US far-right rubber chicken lecture circuit has just gone up in smoke. As for UK politics? A discount Enoch Powell without the after-life in Northern Ireland. Within a year or two, Nigel Who?
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.
The funny thing with that Nigel Farage tweet is that he has put two spaces before “protestors” which suggests he replaced a different word with a copy and paste.
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 find it hard to accept a definition for fascism that covers Pol Pot or Mao.
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
Will it take off like Sir Keith Stürmer did, or do even better?!
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.
45% of Scots only voted SNP in 2019, 55% did not
+9.5 lib dem, +1.0 green
Though the LDs are a Unionist party despite opposing the Brexit Deal
He was such a wise man it would take a fool not to learn from him. Also very good in bed, I understand.
If the various identities do indeed emanate from one poster - I`m not alleging that they do - then I have no problem with this. It`s quite fun.
I miss Byronic`s and Lady G`s posts. Especially the latter, from whom a gleaned two or three excellent travel tips. One for the coast north east of Athens and another in the Canaries.
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.
It’s worth buying the Times on a Saturday just for Parris and Caitlin Moran. It’s superb value for £2.50 (and, no, I don’t work for them!).
The comment from Parris re: restrictions was a closing point in what was a very optimistic article about the year ahead. He simply pointed out that it will require public pressure to open up (but forecast that said pressure would indeed be forthcoming).
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.
Pull the other one it plays bells
You couldn’t get his age right, malcolm.
It came from the horses mouth, so maybe he is doolally as well.
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 find it hard to accept a definition for fascism that covers Pol Pot or Mao.
How would you classify them?
Far left authoritarian Communist dictators. The same as most of society.
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.
Nothing wrong with showing such stories on their own merits, some good tales to tell, though it does kind of restrict you to telling Very Important Stories with po faced seriousness unless you want to just have some silly fun with it.
The funny thing with that Nigel Farage tweet is that he has put two spaces before “protestors” which suggests he replaced a different word with a copy and paste.
Or he deleted a word or words before protestors. Highlighting a word and deleting it doesn't delete the spaces.
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 think you have to draw a line at the appropriate point in the stack. Twitter banning Trump, or anyone else for whatever reason they like, seems fine to me. If you don't like it, use another website. I think they handled Trump just right: They let him speak as far as possible, to the point of stretching their TOS a little bit, put up warnings when he was telling big, dangerous lies, and finally banned him for incitement to violence.
Apple and Google banning Parler is creepy. They're within their rights to do it, but they have effective control over people's devices that's practically extremely hard to circumvent. There's a risk that we end up with something like the banking system, where people can be effectively be cut off by private businesses, but they're potentially being leaned on by politicians and other powerful people. This gives you the worst of both worlds: You have government action that's too wide to circumvent, but you have no redress, because it's technically being done by a private business that has the right not to serve you.
I'm not sure if there's a *regulatory* fix for this - more political involvement probably makes it worse - but we should definitely be promoting technical workarounds like getting comfortable with f-droid, getting Google services off your phone, not buying Apple stuff, building stuff with censorship-resistant protocols.
This is one of the cases where you have to imagine how you'd feel if the weapon was deployed against someone you like and not just scumbags like the Trumpists, because by the time that happens it will be too late to respond.
+1. It is an ominous and dangerous development. Wokeism, and the censorship or self-censorship that comes with it, is being driven by China and Russia on social media, so as to foment western division, and to make us abandon one of our key advantages: Free Speech
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
Well, you can reference changes in attitudes over that period within living memory. Sadly, it is often with a knowing wink-to-the-camera lack of subtlety. You get very little by way of exploring why the standard back then is now beyond the pale, nor of the gradient of that change.
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.
The funny thing with that Nigel Farage tweet is that he has put two spaces before “protestors” which suggests he replaced a different word with a copy and paste.
Or he deleted a word or words before protestors. Highlighting a word and deleting it doesn't delete the spaces.
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.
Well that has changed your post considerably if it only applies to monopolies and not private companies. Social media is more of an oligopoly landscape than separate monopolies.
I get my news mainly from here, my parents get it from the BBC, friends might get it from Facebook or twitter, others get it from Sky, Daily Mail, Guardian, Fox, Instagram, WhatsApp etc.
No single company has a monopoly on the amplification of speech (free speech exists whether or not you have access to amplification), and we are completely used to BBC or Sky or Fox or the Guardian having limits and views on what is allowable on their platform.
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.
It's not him you would need to worry about - the mods do not like it.
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
It really hasn’t, outside the infantile confines of a few puerile minds on PB.
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 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.
I am not disagreeing. I just think the majority of Americans are not persuaded that their republic was under threat at any point which is why Trump is still at liberty, let alone in office. The republic is not a couple of buildings, it is a system of laws, laws that have in the main stood up pretty well to Trump as the complete failure of his legal attempts and the commendable responses of republican officials in places like Georgia and in the electoral college representatives of various states and in Mike Pence, all of whom Trump tried to bully without success, showed.
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 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.
Had one of the armed militia guys been at that spot and returned fire, there may well have been. But I guess they were leaving the grunt work of smashing windows to the amateurs while they were away trying to come up with a cleverer way to reach the politicians. Once the woman was shot, the amateurs were fleeing the scene and quickly they lost the cover of acting inside a crowd
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 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.
I am not disagreeing. I just think the majority of Americans are not persuaded that their republic was under threat at any point which is why Trump is still at liberty, let alone in office. The republic is not a couple of buildings, it is a system of laws, laws that have in the main stood up pretty well to Trump as the complete failure of his legal attempts and the commendable responses of republican officials in places like Georgia and in the electoral college representatives of various states and in Mike Pence, all of whom Trump tried to bully without success, showed.
Indeed, the rule of law matters. 😉
What, Lord Bingham's The Rule of Law? It was a good, swift read.
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.
It’s worth buying the Times on a Saturday just for Parris and Caitlin Moran. It’s superb value for £2.50 (and, no, I don’t work for them!).
The comment from Parris re: restrictions was a closing point in what was a very optimistic article about the year ahead. He simply pointed out that it will require public pressure to open up (but forecast that said pressure would indeed be forthcoming).
Oh I see. That is optimistic then.
Parris has been my favourite journo for many years. I too buy The Saturday Times sometimes - and when I do it is solely for the Parris article. Sometimes I find that I`ve bought it but only get to read his article with no time to read the rest - which is an unconscionable waste of paper.
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.
45% of Scots only voted SNP in 2019, 55% did not
Since you seem to think that political legitimacy comes from gaining a majority of the electoral vote, I assume that you must support proportional representation? After all, you are quite right, the SNP only gained 46.5% of the vote, a 24.5% gap over the Conservatives.
On the other hand, I am sure you agree that it is also clearly quite wrong that the Conservative party which gained only 42.4% of the vote, a scant 2.4% margin over Labour, should be enable to enact 100% of their policies without even adequate discussion in the UK Parliament.
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.
Took me longer than 2nd para, which is unusual. And I'm happy with that - incipient. Person developing into a specific type. Which wannabe complements nicely, since in this case - Trump and fascist - said person is only too happy with said development.
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
It really hasn’t, outside the infantile confines of a few puerile minds on PB.
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.
TalkRadio should stop giving a platform to muppets spouting AntiVaxx bollocks. Ofcom are toothless.
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
It really hasn’t, outside the infantile confines of a few puerile minds on PB.
I like to think of them as a collective Mr Flibble, if we are going with Chris Barrie refs.
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 think you have to draw a line at the appropriate point in the stack. Twitter banning Trump, or anyone else for whatever reason they like, seems fine to me. If you don't like it, use another website. I think they handled Trump just right: They let him speak as far as possible, to the point of stretching their TOS a little bit, put up warnings when he was telling big, dangerous lies, and finally banned him for incitement to violence.
Apple and Google banning Parler is creepy. They're within their rights to do it, but they have effective control over people's devices that's practically extremely hard to circumvent. There's a risk that we end up with something like the banking system, where people can be effectively be cut off by private businesses, but they're potentially being leaned on by politicians and other powerful people. This gives you the worst of both worlds: You have government action that's too wide to circumvent, but you have no redress, because it's technically being done by a private business that has the right not to serve you.
I'm not sure if there's a *regulatory* fix for this - more political involvement probably makes it worse - but we should definitely be promoting technical workarounds like getting comfortable with f-droid, getting Google services off your phone, not buying Apple stuff, building stuff with censorship-resistant protocols.
This is one of the cases where you have to imagine how you'd feel if the weapon was deployed against someone you like and not just scumbags like the Trumpists, because by the time that happens it will be too late to respond.
+1. It is an ominous and dangerous development. Wokeism, and the censorship or self-censorship that comes with it, is being driven by China and Russia on social media, so as to foment western division, and to make us abandon one of our key advantages: Free Speech
Agree with that one.
There was a well-judged remark (on here?) that this will be the point when Twitter, Google etc stop trying to argue that they are conduits not publishers.
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 find it hard to accept a definition for fascism that covers Pol Pot or Mao.
How would you classify them?
Far left authoritarian Communist dictators. The same as most of society.
So I guess Trump is a fascist as he was the Republican candidate, which is seen as the right-wing party.
In reality, I don’t think there’s much between these people. They care about themselves first and foremost.
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
The Brittas Empire is almost 30 years old from its premiere. I vaguelly recall it, but I don't think it ever left as big an impact on the public consciousness as something like Blackadder or Yes Minister. I struggle to see it making inroads even among people who do remember it.
A very well written and argued article by Alastair, as is usual with his pieces. Unfortunately, it comes from the same mindset that dominates much of the discussion on here which is to ask, when deciding to condemn something or not, "who is doing it?" rather than "is the act wrong?".
First of all, Trump is not a wannabee dictator who dreams of gleaming jackboots marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. His mindset is of a CEO: he's conditioned to giving orders and having them obeyed. It's why business leaders make bad political leaders because they are unaccustomed to the checks and balances of political systems and why he gets mad at SC judges or political appointees not following his whims. But the idea he wants a fascist regime out of the pages of Gilead is fantasy doom-porn thinking on the part of the Democrats who need something to keep their coalition together. It wasn't sinister Government forces that led to a light Police presence at last week's demo, it was the Capitol Police assumed they would not be trouble, which (conversely) is why the National Guard were deployed for BLM rallies, which had a habit of ending in disturbances.
As for impeaching him or not, the reason for saying it would cause division is not the prosecution itself: if he has committed impeachable offences, he should be tried. It is because everyone knows it would be selective and based on targeting the individual involved rather than the act itself is worthy of impeachable. The same people on here who argue most vehemently that Trump is guilty of treason are the same ones who tie themselves in knots arguing why Democrat politicians encouraging BLM protests even given the violence. You want Trump charged with incitement? Sure go ahead. But I think Kamala Harris who said BLM protests should continue to the election, also was recklessly inciting violence, even though she covered her ass with the mealy mouthed "violence is never right". She is a political and ex-AG. She knew how her words about the protests would be interpreted.
And for all those lawyers on here who are so exercised about the constitutional damage Trump has caused, where's your outrage over Nancy Pelosi - who has absolutely no role in this under the US Constitution - calling the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the nuclear chain of command? Everyone knows it was a stunt but it's a dangerous one. But who of the many on here who get so exercised about little action Trump does criticised something that potentially has very far-reaching consequences?
Read "Why Nations Fail". One of the key points in there for a nation's success or not is that everyone feels as though the rules and laws are fair and applied to all. If there is going to be anything that destroys trust democracy, it is going to be this selective picking of what is right or wrong.
It seems pretty clear that Trump has strongly fascist tendencies - one of the good reasons why he lost the popular vote numerically both in 2016 and 2020. What the term 'fascist' conceals is that certain attitudes common in the world embrace pretty much the same attributes and are just as bad. Terms like 'left' and 'right' don't help much here either; nor does the idea of ideology, for that implies something rational, thoughtful and long term.
Better maybe to look for the common attributes of bad politics wherever it comes from, such as
The use of political violence Suppression of dissent Distancing from the civil democratic process Use of scapegoating Indifference to succession planning Friends and allies who fit a particular pattern Use of 'the lie direct'
The list can be extended of course. The attention, rightly, on the USA should not disguise how everyday and frequent these attributes are in the world and how useless are terms like 'left' and 'right' when dealing with authoritarians, totalitarians, narcissists and psychopaths.
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
Some of the polls are showing diminishing interest in anything concerned with Brexit. The SNP has no chance of an independence referendum with Johnson in power or any other Conservative in my view. As for the Lib dems they surely need to fight new battles,to gain some traction. SKS has made a good start in moving on from the past to start to get ready for future concerns. One thing I was surprised about this morning when he said he would end Universal Credit. As I have changed my mind and would rather improve it than start again. Once it is up and running claiments get paid the same day every month, which is better in my opinion than legacy benefits which were paid four weekly , easier to budget.
He was such a wise man it would take a fool not to learn from him. Also very good in bed, I understand.
If the various identities do indeed emanate from one poster - I`m not alleging that they do - then I have no problem with this. It`s quite fun.
I miss Byronic`s and Lady G`s posts. Especially the latter, from whom a gleaned two or three excellent travel tips. One for the coast north east of Athens and another in the Canaries.
I rather miss SeanT and the way he used to excite us all with information about his fabulous earnings, advances, translation rights, film rights - the full monty. I imagine by now he's safely housed on a private island with a select coterie of fellow multimillionaires, far too busy to drop by here. There was a tantalising cameo appearance on election night, 2019, if memory serves, but after that nothing to alleviate the gathering gloom and the slowly ticking clock. So if you happen to be reading this, Sean, good on yer, mate. You're a legend. Maybe you always were.
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
The Brittas Empire is almost 30 years old from its premiere. I vaguelly recall it, but I don't think it ever left as big an impact on the public consciousness as something like Blackadder or Yes Minister. I struggle to see it making inroads even among people who do remember it.
I think people may be taking my Sunday levity a bit too seriously...
To give my real opinion, I think Sir Keir would do a great job running a leisure centre.
Re; the posts below on Trump, Arendt and totalitarianism, I highly recommend this article on Trump from a couple of years ago. Ironically too, it includes very apt insights for Trump from the alt-right's folk-devil Frankfurt School theorists.
"Their crucial innovation was the discovery of the special form that authoritarianism takes in democratic societies. Previously, the agitator had been thought of as a kind of hypnotist, while the crowd that responded to him was credulous and childlike. As the 19th-century French psychologist Gustave Le Bon put it, the crowd ‘wants to be ruled and oppressed and to fear its masters’. Freud had this model of crowd psychology in mind when he wrote that :
Hitler, Mussolini, Ataturk and even De Gaulle fit this model, as they drew on mass media, parades, sporting events and film to project themselves as father figures to enthralled nations.
Adorno realised, however, that the model only applied in part to American demagogues. What distinguishes the demagogue in a democratic society, he argued in ‘Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda’ (1951), is the identification between the leader and his followers. The narcissism in question is not only Trump’s. The demagogue has a special appeal to wounded narcissism, to the feeling that one has failed to meet standards one has set for oneself.
The successful demagogue activates this feeling by possessing the typical qualities of the individuals who follow him, but in what Adorno, quoting Freud, called a ‘clearly marked and pure form’ that gives the impression ‘of greater force and of more freedom of libido’. In Adorno’s words, ‘the superman has to resemble the follower and appear as his “enlargement”.’ The leader ‘completes’ the follower’s self-image. This helps explain the phenomenon of the ‘great little man’, the ‘Aw shucks’, ‘just folks’ demagogue like Huey Long. He ‘seems to be the enlargement of the subject’s own personality, a collective projection of himself, rather than an image of the father’ – a Trump, in other words, rather than a Washington or Roosevelt.
One might object that Trump, a billionaire TV star, does not resemble his followers. But this misses the powerful intimacy that he establishes with them, at rallies, on TV and on Twitter. Part of his malicious genius lies in his ability to forge a bond with people who are otherwise excluded from the world to which he belongs. Even as he cast Hillary Clinton as the tool of international finance, he said:
"I do deals – big deals – all the time. I know and work with all the toughest operators in the world of high-stakes global finance. These are hard-driving, vicious cut-throat financial killers, the kind of people who leave blood all over the boardroom table and fight to the bitter end to gain maximum advantage."
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 find it hard to accept a definition for fascism that covers Pol Pot or Mao.
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.
You´d hope for a bit more than a statement of the blindingly obvious. Sadly for Farage- but hilariously for the rest of us- his meal ticket from the US far-right rubber chicken lecture circuit has just gone up in smoke. As for UK politics? A discount Enoch Powell without the after-life in Northern Ireland. Within a year or two, Nigel Who?
And yet he achieved one of the greatest changes in the political landscape of the UK in the last 70 years. The idea he will be forgotten - for better or worse - is laughable.
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
The Brittas Empire is almost 30 years old from its premiere. I vaguelly recall it, but I don't think it ever left as big an impact on the public consciousness as something like Blackadder or Yes Minister. I struggle to see it making inroads even among people who do remember it.
Indeed. I never watched it, before my time. I watched Blackadder and Yes Minister when they were repeated not when they were first broadcast, Brittas I've no idea if it was repeated but if it was it never got my attention.
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.
Cheers thanks. Yes, you and I are the most confident on here about this, I think, that he's over as something serious in politics. I wish I was as confident he would see the inside of a jail cell but I have a feeling he won't.
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]
Whilst Leon is quite rightly suggesting a proper investigation and full scale judicial proceedings you are sadly advocating the Beziers 'kill 'em all and let God decide' policy.
He was such a wise man it would take a fool not to learn from him. Also very good in bed, I understand.
If the various identities do indeed emanate from one poster - I`m not alleging that they do - then I have no problem with this. It`s quite fun.
I miss Byronic`s and Lady G`s posts. Especially the latter, from whom a gleaned two or three excellent travel tips. One for the coast north east of Athens and another in the Canaries.
I rather miss SeanT and the way he used to excite us all with information about his fabulous earnings, advances, translation rights, film rights - the full monty. I imagine by now he's safely housed on a private island with a select coterie of fellow multimillionaires, far too busy to drop by here. There was a tantalising cameo appearance on election night, 2019, if memory serves, but after that nothing to alleviate the gathering gloom and the slowly ticking clock. So if you happen to be reading this, Sean, good on yer, mate. You're a legend. Maybe you always were.
We’re starting to see the Christmas aftermath. We have a new patient who says she told her family not to visit but they ignored her and came anyway. She caught Covid, and now it is very likely she will die. We’re seeing a lot of that.
I know this is at a very early stage but does anyone see Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota as a plausible GOP Presidential candidate in 2024? She did very well at the RNC meeting in late summer and South Dakota has taken a somewhat different approach to Covid than other states.
I can see Noem reaching the Trump supporters and she is articulate in a way the immediate Trump family members are not.
On a complete tangent, I thought we all knew @Leon and @LadyG weren't @SeanT I thought @Leon was our old mate Martin Day of this parish from the old days but I could be wrong - I'm usually wrong.
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.
45% of Scots only voted SNP in 2019, 55% did not
+9.5 lib dem, +1.0 green
Though the LDs are a Unionist party despite opposing the Brexit Deal
LDs are a Unionist party who see strength in unity - hence their support of the UK in the EU, and Scotland in the UK. It is entirely consistent.
To support Brexit because "sovereignty" and deny Scotland its independence is what is inconsistent.
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
Some of the polls are showing diminishing interest in anything concerned with Brexit. The SNP has no chance of an independence referendum with Johnson in power or any other Conservative in my view. As for the Lib dems they surely need to fight new battles,to gain some traction. SKS has made a good start in moving on from the past to start to get ready for future concerns. One thing I was surprised about this morning when he said he would end Universal Credit. As I have changed my mind and would rather improve it than start again. Once it is up and running claiments get paid the same day every month, which is better in my opinion than legacy benefits which were paid four weekly , easier to budget.
Health Service Journal editor Alastair McLellan: “The region that I'm most worried about is the South West. Covid cases are up 33 per cent on a week ago and that rate of growth is nearly double what it was a week ago. The East of England region is also growing fast."
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
The Brittas Empire is almost 30 years old from its premiere. I vaguelly recall it, but I don't think it ever left as big an impact on the public consciousness as something like Blackadder or Yes Minister. I struggle to see it making inroads even among people who do remember it.
Indeed. I never watched it, before my time. I watched Blackadder and Yes Minister when they were repeated not when they were first broadcast, Brittas I've no idea if it was repeated but if it was it never got my attention.
Absolutely meaningless reference to me. Sorry.
A self-important droning non-entity that never gets your attention. Absolutely meaningless. Is kinda the point.....
(If we are being accused of infantile, I actually prefer calling him Skyr - bland and not to my taste....)
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.
Cheers thanks. Yes, you and I are the most confident on here about this, I think, that he's over as something serious in politics. I wish I was as confident he would see the inside of a jail cell but I have a feeling he won't.
Yeah, I agree that the balance of odds is against his jailing. But I’m confident he’ll wither rapidly as a force, and just become an increasingly pathetic joke: Sarah Palin is probably the nearest (but by no means precise) analogue.
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.
Indeed.
Can I also apologise for Hannah Aren't. I have never been a student of her work, but I have studied Hannah Arendt.
He was such a wise man it would take a fool not to learn from him. Also very good in bed, I understand.
If the various identities do indeed emanate from one poster - I`m not alleging that they do - then I have no problem with this. It`s quite fun.
I miss Byronic`s and Lady G`s posts. Especially the latter, from whom a gleaned two or three excellent travel tips. One for the coast north east of Athens and another in the Canaries.
I rather miss SeanT and the way he used to excite us all with information about his fabulous earnings, advances, translation rights, film rights - the full monty. I imagine by now he's safely housed on a private island with a select coterie of fellow multimillionaires, far too busy to drop by here. There was a tantalising cameo appearance on election night, 2019, if memory serves, but after that nothing to alleviate the gathering gloom and the slowly ticking clock. So if you happen to be reading this, Sean, good on yer, mate. You're a legend. Maybe you always were.
Legends don't buy a Mini to drive around in....!
Depends on whether it was a proper mini or the new modern abortion. Legends drive old minis.
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.
45% of Scots only voted SNP in 2019, 55% did not
Since you seem to think that political legitimacy comes from gaining a majority of the electoral vote, I assume that you must support proportional representation? After all, you are quite right, the SNP only gained 46.5% of the vote, a 24.5% gap over the Conservatives.
On the other hand, I am sure you agree that it is also clearly quite wrong that the Conservative party which gained only 42.4% of the vote, a scant 2.4% margin over Labour, should be enable to enact 100% of their policies without even adequate discussion in the UK Parliament.
I voted for AV in 2011.
Though of course Holyrood already includes seats elected by a PR top up list even if Westminster is solely FPTP
Tony Blair has held secret talks with the health secretary about the government’s Covid-19 strategy, as the former prime minister seeks a “de Gaulle-style comeback” more than a decade after leaving office.
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.
45% of Scots only voted SNP in 2019, 55% did not
+9.5 lib dem, +1.0 green
Though the LDs are a Unionist party despite opposing the Brexit Deal
LDs are a Unionist party who see strength in unity - hence their support of the UK in the EU, and Scotland in the UK. It is entirely consistent.
To support Brexit because "sovereignty" and deny Scotland its independence is what is inconsistent.
I voted Remain and am also a Unionist, I just respect the Leave vote which occurred 46 years after the first EEC vote ie a genuine 'once in a generation' referendum
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
It really hasn’t, outside the infantile confines of a few puerile minds on PB.
You care far too much about this.
Funnily enough, I don’t care, although I can see I have given that impression. My original point was that the jibe just didn’t work, and certainly won’t gain currency (given that most people have never heard of Gordon Brittas!).
But if a few PBers want to carry on with it, bully for them, I’ll stage an honourable retreat.
I know this is at a very early stage but does anyone see Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota as a plausible GOP Presidential candidate in 2024? She did very well at the RNC meeting in late summer and South Dakota has taken a somewhat different approach to Covid than other states.
I can see Noem reaching the Trump supporters and she is articulate in a way the immediate Trump family members are not.
On a complete tangent, I thought we all knew @Leon and @LadyG weren't @SeanT I thought @Leon was our old mate Martin Day of this parish from the old days but I could be wrong - I'm usually wrong.
Yes could be, although he Covid response will take flak.
Tony Blair has held secret talks with the health secretary about the government’s Covid-19 strategy, as the former prime minister seeks a “de Gaulle-style comeback” more than a decade after leaving office.
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.
You´d hope for a bit more than a statement of the blindingly obvious. Sadly for Farage- but hilariously for the rest of us- his meal ticket from the US far-right rubber chicken lecture circuit has just gone up in smoke. As for UK politics? A discount Enoch Powell without the after-life in Northern Ireland. Within a year or two, Nigel Who?
And yet he achieved one of the greatest changes in the political landscape of the UK in the last 70 years. The idea he will be forgotten - for better or worse - is laughable.
He could EASILY become a Piers Morgan of the Right. A Tucker Carlson of the UK. He’s sharp, agile and at ease on TV. And he has a ready audience of millions who agree with, or even find him heroic (for clarity: I don’t)
And he has that incredible CV.
On the other hand I think he’d struggle in ANY constituency to win and become an MP. Too many loathe him.
Media must be his future. I can foresee a time when Lord Farage is 70+ and regularly invited onto QT as a grand old man of right wing British politics. Like Heseltine
He was such a wise man it would take a fool not to learn from him. Also very good in bed, I understand.
If the various identities do indeed emanate from one poster - I`m not alleging that they do - then I have no problem with this. It`s quite fun.
I miss Byronic`s and Lady G`s posts. Especially the latter, from whom a gleaned two or three excellent travel tips. One for the coast north east of Athens and another in the Canaries.
I rather miss SeanT and the way he used to excite us all with information about his fabulous earnings, advances, translation rights, film rights - the full monty. I imagine by now he's safely housed on a private island with a select coterie of fellow multimillionaires, far too busy to drop by here. There was a tantalising cameo appearance on election night, 2019, if memory serves, but after that nothing to alleviate the gathering gloom and the slowly ticking clock. So if you happen to be reading this, Sean, good on yer, mate. You're a legend. Maybe you always were.
Legends don't buy a Mini to drive around in....!
Depends on whether it was a proper mini or the new modern abortion. Legends drive old minis.
He was such a wise man it would take a fool not to learn from him. Also very good in bed, I understand.
If the various identities do indeed emanate from one poster - I`m not alleging that they do - then I have no problem with this. It`s quite fun.
I miss Byronic`s and Lady G`s posts. Especially the latter, from whom a gleaned two or three excellent travel tips. One for the coast north east of Athens and another in the Canaries.
I rather miss SeanT and the way he used to excite us all with information about his fabulous earnings, advances, translation rights, film rights - the full monty. I imagine by now he's safely housed on a private island with a select coterie of fellow multimillionaires, far too busy to drop by here. There was a tantalising cameo appearance on election night, 2019, if memory serves, but after that nothing to alleviate the gathering gloom and the slowly ticking clock. So if you happen to be reading this, Sean, good on yer, mate. You're a legend. Maybe you always were.
Legends don't buy a Mini to drive around in....!
Depends on whether it was a proper mini or the new modern abortion. Legends drive old minis.
We’re starting to see the Christmas aftermath. We have a new patient who says she told her family not to visit but they ignored her and came anyway. She caught Covid, and now it is very likely she will die. We’re seeing a lot of 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
The Brittas Empire is almost 30 years old from its premiere. I vaguelly recall it, but I don't think it ever left as big an impact on the public consciousness as something like Blackadder or Yes Minister. I struggle to see it making inroads even among people who do remember it.
Indeed. I never watched it, before my time. I watched Blackadder and Yes Minister when they were repeated not when they were first broadcast, Brittas I've no idea if it was repeated but if it was it never got my attention.
Absolutely meaningless reference to me. Sorry.
A self-important droning non-entity that never gets your attention. Absolutely meaningless. Is kinda the point.....
(If we are being accused of infantile, I actually prefer calling him Skyr - bland and not to my taste....)
Sounds like a perfect fit for him then. Sorry, not sorry, that I didn't get it.
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.
Cheers thanks. Yes, you and I are the most confident on here about this, I think, that he's over as something serious in politics. I wish I was as confident he would see the inside of a jail cell but I have a feeling he won't.
Yeah, I agree that the balance of odds is against his jailing. But I’m confident he’ll wither rapidly as a force, and just become an increasingly pathetic joke: Sarah Palin is probably the nearest (but by no means precise) analogue.
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.
It’s worth buying the Times on a Saturday just for Parris and Caitlin Moran. It’s superb value for £2.50 (and, no, I don’t work for them!).
The comment from Parris re: restrictions was a closing point in what was a very optimistic article about the year ahead. He simply pointed out that it will require public pressure to open up (but forecast that said pressure would indeed be forthcoming).
I like Parris too. First column I read when I get the Times. He's a fine columnist. He has, however, consistently underestimated the pandemic. Nothing on the Toby Young scale, little is, but still, he has. For example, a while back he predicted no 2nd wave at all.
We’re starting to see the Christmas aftermath. We have a new patient who says she told her family not to visit but they ignored her and came anyway. She caught Covid, and now it is very likely she will die. We’re seeing a lot of that.
We’re starting to see the Christmas aftermath. We have a new patient who says she told her family not to visit but they ignored her and came anyway. She caught Covid, and now it is very likely she will die. We’re seeing a lot of that.
"At 3pm I realise I’ve not eaten anything all day. I normally survive on an apple but today I don’t have even that."
Not sure a very stressed and busy doctor should just survive on an apple. One needs energy in situations like this.
I would thought a sensible thing for NHS (or some kind company) to provide would be the cyclist type energy gels or bars. Quick and easy to get some calories inside of you. I believe during the first lockdown there were a numbers of stories of food companies delivering free stuff to hospitals.
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
The Brittas Empire is almost 30 years old from its premiere. I vaguelly recall it, but I don't think it ever left as big an impact on the public consciousness as something like Blackadder or Yes Minister. I struggle to see it making inroads even among people who do remember it.
My lasting memory of The Brittas Empire is that invariably my wife and I would be eating dinner when Colin would appear with one of his unpleasant ailments.
Tony Blair has held secret talks with the health secretary about the government’s Covid-19 strategy, as the former prime minister seeks a “de Gaulle-style comeback” more than a decade after leaving office.
That might be one of the most jaw dropping things I've ever seen. Alex Jones said Sandy Hook was a hoax for Christ's sake, and he's had enough of these lads? Though it seems more like he just cannot maintain a straight face about it.
Tony Blair has held secret talks with the health secretary about the government’s Covid-19 strategy, as the former prime minister seeks a “de Gaulle-style comeback” more than a decade after leaving office.
I would be quite happy if former PMs gave it another go to contribute to public service through parliament.
Health Service Journal editor Alastair McLellan: “The region that I'm most worried about is the South West. Covid cases are up 33 per cent on a week ago and that rate of growth is nearly double what it was a week ago. The East of England region is also growing fast."
Telegraph
But from a very low base in the SW. Numbers per 100k still around 1/3rd of the UK average.
And the numbers got punted northwards by the arrival of an influx of Fulham Fuckers. Who hopefully have now kept a low profile and burnt out the Covid they brought with them because there is nowhere much to go and nothing much to do down here other than stay in and do jigsaws....
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]
Whilst Leon is quite rightly suggesting a proper investigation and full scale judicial proceedings you are sadly advocating the Beziers 'kill 'em all and let God decide' policy.
Strangely enough, quoted by our @SeanT a few times on PB!
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
It really hasn’t, outside the infantile confines of a few puerile minds on PB.
You care far too much about this.
Funnily enough, I don’t care, although I can see I have given that impression. My original point was that the jibe just didn’t work, and certainly won’t gain currency (given that most people have never heard of Gordon Brittas!).
But if a few PBers want to carry on with it, bully for them, I’ll stage an honourable retreat.
If Starmer is Brittas I guess that makes Boris Reggie Perrin. Likeable seller of completely pointless and worthless grot.
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
It really hasn’t, outside the infantile confines of a few puerile minds on PB.
You care far too much about this.
Funnily enough, I don’t care, although I can see I have given that impression. My original point was that the jibe just didn’t work, and certainly won’t gain currency (given that most people have never heard of Gordon Brittas!).
But if a few PBers want to carry on with it, bully for them, I’ll stage an honourable retreat.
If Starmer is Brittas I guess that makes Boris Reggie Perrin. Likeable seller of completely pointless and worthless grot.
He was such a wise man it would take a fool not to learn from him. Also very good in bed, I understand.
If the various identities do indeed emanate from one poster - I`m not alleging that they do - then I have no problem with this. It`s quite fun.
I miss Byronic`s and Lady G`s posts. Especially the latter, from whom a gleaned two or three excellent travel tips. One for the coast north east of Athens and another in the Canaries.
Yes, there used to be a prevailing view on PB that pseudonyms, noms de plume, or - as they were inelegantly known here “multiple screen names” were some sort of grave crime. It was then, as it is now, an utterly pathetic attack.
I think it was Nick Palmer Ex MP who essentially nailed it when he asked: “Who cares if one anonymous poster returns as another anonymous poster?”
Which was a very good question I think.
In any case, Leon has improved in recent days. He is rather less boring and has thankfully rolled back somewhat on the doom pornography which was in danger of defining him.
A very well written and argued article by Alastair, as is usual with his pieces. Unfortunately, it comes from the same mindset that dominates much of the discussion on here which is to ask, when deciding to condemn something or not, "who is doing it?" rather than "is the act wrong?".
First of all, Trump is not a wannabee dictator who dreams of gleaming jackboots marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. His mindset is of a CEO: he's conditioned to giving orders and having them obeyed. It's why business leaders make bad political leaders because they are unaccustomed to the checks and balances of political systems and why he gets mad at SC judges or political appointees not following his whims. But the idea he wants a fascist regime out of the pages of Gilead is fantasy doom-porn thinking on the part of the Democrats who need something to keep their coalition together. It wasn't sinister Government forces that led to a light Police presence at last week's demo, it was the Capitol Police assumed they would not be trouble, which (conversely) is why the National Guard were deployed for BLM rallies, which had a habit of ending in disturbances.
As for impeaching him or not, the reason for saying it would cause division is not the prosecution itself: if he has committed impeachable offences, he should be tried. It is because everyone knows it would be selective and based on targeting the individual involved rather than the act itself is worthy of impeachable. The same people on here who argue most vehemently that Trump is guilty of treason are the same ones who tie themselves in knots arguing why Democrat politicians encouraging BLM protests even given the violence. You want Trump charged with incitement? Sure go ahead. But I think Kamala Harris who said BLM protests should continue to the election, also was recklessly inciting violence, even though she covered her ass with the mealy mouthed "violence is never right". She is a political and ex-AG. She knew how her words about the protests would be interpreted.
And for all those lawyers on here who are so exercised about the constitutional damage Trump has caused, where's your outrage over Nancy Pelosi - who has absolutely no role in this under the US Constitution - calling the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the nuclear chain of command? Everyone knows it was a stunt but it's a dangerous one. But who of the many on here who get so exercised about little action Trump does criticised something that potentially has very far-reaching consequences?
Read "Why Nations Fail". One of the key points in there for a nation's success or not is that everyone feels as though the rules and laws are fair and applied to all. If there is going to be anything that destroys trust democracy, it is going to be this selective picking of what is right or wrong.
That's a very long way of saying that the law should be applied equally to all.
Sorry, I don't mean to sound snarky. But that's what you are saying in essence. And you're right. The laws on incitement and violence etc should be applied equally to all. As should all other laws eg on the right to vote.
Part of the difficulty the US has is that this has not been happening. Blacks feel that their right to vote is being slowly salami-sliced away by the various voter suppression techniques being used. Or that their right to walk the streets freely without being constantly picked and questioned by the police is less than it should be. Other groups will have their own complaints.
And what makes this particularly toxic is that in some cases one group which feels ignored feels that it needs to do down another group to feel better about itself. This racist legacy was deliberately stoked by Trump.
If Trump broke laws he should be prosecuted. I understand all the arguments for "healing" but that seems like a pretext for avoiding accountability for one's actions. To have genuine healing there needs to be justice first.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlV3KxlvdPE
Apple and Google banning Parler is creepy. They're within their rights to do it, but they have effective control over people's devices that's practically extremely hard to circumvent. There's a risk that we end up with something like the banking system, where people can be effectively be cut off by private businesses, but they're potentially being leaned on by politicians and other powerful people. This gives you the worst of both worlds: You have government action that's too wide to circumvent, but you have no redress, because it's technically being done by a private business that has the right not to serve you.
I'm not sure if there's a *regulatory* fix for this - more political involvement probably makes it worse - but we should definitely be promoting technical workarounds like getting comfortable with f-droid, getting Google services off your phone, not buying Apple stuff, building stuff with censorship-resistant protocols.
This is one of the cases where you have to imagine how you'd feel if the weapon was deployed against someone you like and not just scumbags like the Trumpists, because by the time that happens it will be too late to respond.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLQ33EHkypU
Amongst those 74m were large numbers of affluent country club Republicans (I'm looking at you, Jack Nicklaus), devout Christians (please show me "blessed are the racist misogynists" in the New Testament) plus lots of floating apoliticals whose level of political nous was so lacking as to allow them to mark a cross next to the name Donald J Trump. Did they really need to have "poison" written in brackets alongside in order to prevent this? If so, why?
So, you know, these people have (these) questions to answer imo. Not in court, or in front of a Senate committee, nothing like that, but questions to ask of themselves. If they don't do this, and get the right answers, then as far as fascism goes, regardless of what happens with political rhetoric and policy direction, the USA remains open for business.
Byronic
LadyG
Eadric
Leon
But from memory there was one which popped up for just a few posts between Byronic and Lady G.
I miss Byronic`s and Lady G`s posts. Especially the latter, from whom a gleaned two or three excellent travel tips. One for the coast north east of Athens and another in the Canaries.
The comment from Parris re: restrictions was a closing point in what was a very optimistic article about the year ahead. He simply pointed out that it will require public pressure to open up (but forecast that said pressure would indeed be forthcoming).
Or it's a typo that doesn't mean much.
I get my news mainly from here, my parents get it from the BBC, friends might get it from Facebook or twitter, others get it from Sky, Daily Mail, Guardian, Fox, Instagram, WhatsApp etc.
No single company has a monopoly on the amplification of speech (free speech exists whether or not you have access to amplification), and we are completely used to BBC or Sky or Fox or the Guardian having limits and views on what is allowable on their platform.
Robert was very clear on that point
Parris has been my favourite journo for many years. I too buy The Saturday Times sometimes - and when I do it is solely for the Parris article. Sometimes I find that I`ve bought it but only get to read his article with no time to read the rest - which is an unconscionable waste of paper.
On the other hand, I am sure you agree that it is also clearly quite wrong that the Conservative party which gained only 42.4% of the vote, a scant 2.4% margin over Labour, should be enable to enact 100% of their policies without even adequate discussion in the UK Parliament.
There was a well-judged remark (on here?) that this will be the point when Twitter, Google etc stop trying to argue that they are conduits not publishers.
And when regulation comes down the track.
In reality, I don’t think there’s much between these people. They care about themselves first and foremost.
First of all, Trump is not a wannabee dictator who dreams of gleaming jackboots marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. His mindset is of a CEO: he's conditioned to giving orders and having them obeyed. It's why business leaders make bad political leaders because they are unaccustomed to the checks and balances of political systems and why he gets mad at SC judges or political appointees not following his whims. But the idea he wants a fascist regime out of the pages of Gilead is fantasy doom-porn thinking on the part of the Democrats who need something to keep their coalition together. It wasn't sinister Government forces that led to a light Police presence at last week's demo, it was the Capitol Police assumed they would not be trouble, which (conversely) is why the National Guard were deployed for BLM rallies, which had a habit of ending in disturbances.
As for impeaching him or not, the reason for saying it would cause division is not the prosecution itself: if he has committed impeachable offences, he should be tried. It is because everyone knows it would be selective and based on targeting the individual involved rather than the act itself is worthy of impeachable. The same people on here who argue most vehemently that Trump is guilty of treason are the same ones who tie themselves in knots arguing why Democrat politicians encouraging BLM protests even given the violence. You want Trump charged with incitement? Sure go ahead. But I think Kamala Harris who said BLM protests should continue to the election, also was recklessly inciting violence, even though she covered her ass with the mealy mouthed "violence is never right". She is a political and ex-AG. She knew how her words about the protests would be interpreted.
And for all those lawyers on here who are so exercised about the constitutional damage Trump has caused, where's your outrage over Nancy Pelosi - who has absolutely no role in this under the US Constitution - calling the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the nuclear chain of command? Everyone knows it was a stunt but it's a dangerous one. But who of the many on here who get so exercised about little action Trump does criticised something that potentially has very far-reaching consequences?
Read "Why Nations Fail". One of the key points in there for a nation's success or not is that everyone feels as though the rules and laws are fair and applied to all. If there is going to be anything that destroys trust democracy, it is going to be this selective picking of what is right or wrong.
Better maybe to look for the common attributes of bad politics wherever it comes from, such as
The use of political violence
Suppression of dissent
Distancing from the civil democratic process
Use of scapegoating
Indifference to succession planning
Friends and allies who fit a particular pattern
Use of 'the lie direct'
The list can be extended of course. The attention, rightly, on the USA should not disguise how everyday and frequent these attributes are in the world and how useless are terms like 'left' and 'right' when dealing with authoritarians, totalitarians, narcissists and psychopaths.
The SNP has no chance of an independence referendum with Johnson in power or any other Conservative in my view.
As for the Lib dems they surely need to fight new battles,to gain some traction.
SKS has made a good start in moving on from the past to start to get ready for future concerns.
One thing I was surprised about this morning when he said he would end Universal Credit.
As I have changed my mind and would rather improve it than start again.
Once it is up and running claiments get paid the same day every month, which is better in my opinion than legacy benefits which were paid four weekly , easier to budget.
To give my real opinion, I think Sir Keir would do a great job running a leisure centre.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/september/the-mass-psychology-of-trumpism
"Their crucial innovation was the discovery of the special form that authoritarianism takes in democratic societies. Previously, the agitator had been thought of as a kind of hypnotist, while the crowd that responded to him was credulous and childlike. As the 19th-century French psychologist Gustave Le Bon put it, the crowd ‘wants to be ruled and oppressed and to fear its masters’. Freud had this model of crowd psychology in mind when he wrote that :
Hitler, Mussolini, Ataturk and even De Gaulle fit this model, as they drew on mass media, parades, sporting events and film to project themselves as father figures to enthralled nations.
Adorno realised, however, that the model only applied in part to American demagogues. What distinguishes the demagogue in a democratic society, he argued in ‘Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda’ (1951), is the identification between the leader and his followers. The narcissism in question is not only Trump’s. The demagogue has a special appeal to wounded narcissism, to the feeling that one has failed to meet standards one has set for oneself.
The successful demagogue activates this feeling by possessing the typical qualities of the individuals who follow him, but in what Adorno, quoting Freud, called a ‘clearly marked and pure form’ that gives the impression ‘of greater force and of more freedom of libido’. In Adorno’s words, ‘the superman has to resemble the follower and appear as his “enlargement”.’ The leader ‘completes’ the follower’s self-image. This helps explain the phenomenon of the ‘great little man’, the ‘Aw shucks’, ‘just folks’ demagogue like Huey Long. He ‘seems to be the enlargement of the subject’s own personality, a collective projection of himself, rather than an image of the father’ – a Trump, in other words, rather than a Washington or Roosevelt.
One might object that Trump, a billionaire TV star, does not resemble his followers. But this misses the powerful intimacy that he establishes with them, at rallies, on TV and on Twitter. Part of his malicious genius lies in his ability to forge a bond with people who are otherwise excluded from the world to which he belongs. Even as he cast Hillary Clinton as the tool of international finance, he said:
"I do deals – big deals – all the time. I know and work with all the toughest operators in the world of high-stakes global finance. These are hard-driving, vicious cut-throat financial killers, the kind of people who leave blood all over the boardroom table and fight to the bitter end to gain maximum advantage."
"My wife said to me in bed, 'God, your feet are cold.' I said, 'You can call me Brian in bed, dear.'"
Absolutely meaningless reference to me. Sorry.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9130463/As-mutant-Covid-strain-sweeps-UK-junior-doctors-diary-exposes-NHS-breaking-point.html
I know this is at a very early stage but does anyone see Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota as a plausible GOP Presidential candidate in 2024? She did very well at the RNC meeting in late summer and South Dakota has taken a somewhat different approach to Covid than other states.
I can see Noem reaching the Trump supporters and she is articulate in a way the immediate Trump family members are not.
On a complete tangent, I thought we all knew @Leon and @LadyG weren't @SeanT I thought @Leon was our old mate Martin Day of this parish from the old days but I could be wrong - I'm usually wrong.
To support Brexit because "sovereignty" and deny Scotland its independence is what is inconsistent.
Telegraph
(If we are being accused of infantile, I actually prefer calling him Skyr - bland and not to my taste....)
Anyone remember her?
Can I also apologise for Hannah Aren't. I have never been a student of her work, but I have studied Hannah Arendt.
https://twitter.com/CybereVitas/status/1348054269216387080?s=20
Though of course Holyrood already includes seats elected by a PR top up list even if Westminster is solely FPTP
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-gives-tony-blair-a-shot-at-comeback-g6srxtlbn
Tony Blair has held secret talks with the health secretary about the government’s Covid-19 strategy, as the former prime minister seeks a “de Gaulle-style comeback” more than a decade after leaving office.
But if a few PBers want to carry on with it, bully for them, I’ll stage an honourable retreat.
And he has that incredible CV.
On the other hand I think he’d struggle in ANY constituency to win and become an MP. Too many loathe him.
Media must be his future. I can foresee a time when Lord Farage is 70+ and regularly invited onto QT as a grand old man of right wing British politics. Like Heseltine
But
"At 3pm I realise I’ve not eaten anything all day. I normally survive on an apple but today I don’t have even that."
Not sure a very stressed and busy doctor should just survive on an apple. One needs energy in situations like this.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sarah+palin+on+the+masked+singer&docid=608006608984212427&mid=AE19276E0D48A2D4B0A3AE19276E0D48A2D4B0A3&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
And the numbers got punted northwards by the arrival of an influx of Fulham Fuckers. Who hopefully have now kept a low profile and burnt out the Covid they brought with them because there is nowhere much to go and nothing much to do down here other than stay in and do jigsaws....
https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1348219824506368000?s=20
I think it was Nick Palmer Ex MP who essentially nailed it when he asked: “Who cares if one anonymous poster returns as another anonymous poster?”
Which was a very good question I think.
In any case, Leon has improved in recent days. He is rather less boring and has thankfully rolled back somewhat on the doom pornography which was in danger of defining him.
Sorry, I don't mean to sound snarky. But that's what you are saying in essence. And you're right. The laws on incitement and violence etc should be applied equally to all. As should all other laws eg on the right to vote.
Part of the difficulty the US has is that this has not been happening. Blacks feel that their right to vote is being slowly salami-sliced away by the various voter suppression techniques being used. Or that their right to walk the streets freely without being constantly picked and questioned by the police is less than it should be. Other groups will have their own complaints.
And what makes this particularly toxic is that in some cases one group which feels ignored feels that it needs to do down another group to feel better about itself. This racist legacy was deliberately stoked by Trump.
If Trump broke laws he should be prosecuted. I understand all the arguments for "healing" but that seems like a pretext for avoiding accountability for one's actions. To have genuine healing there needs to be justice first.