There's a stack of videos on Twitter of MAGAs being escorted off planes or dragged out of airports. The FBI seems to have tracked them from the protest (using their phones?). They don't seem to be getting much support - indeed on several of the plane videos the other passengers applaud, cheer, or shout abuse. Suggesting that the political backlash could be significant.
The guy screaming in protest that the police are "treating me like a black guy" as they sit on him is priceless.
Heart of stone etc...
Funnier would be if the MAGA Capitol invaders have their gun licences revoked. It is surely more likely they will shoot someone than hijack the airliner taking them home.
The one thing I am a bit confused about is how many have been identified yet. The numbers charged seem extremely small to date. If they have not been charged how will the airlines, for example, know?
You don't have to be charged or anything more than suspected to be put on the no fly list. Often the first people know of it is when refused entry.
Vaguely amusing o/t - a friend of mine in days gone by, super-pushy, don't you know who I am type, was flying LHR-HKG which they did quite regularly and, as per usual, asked if there was an upgrade available. The person behind the check-in counter said hold on and went off to speak to someone. My friend meanwhile looked at the monitor and under their name it had the initials "NSFU" - not suitable for upgrade!
Working with such a person a couple of years ago - I (being polite and so hassle free) would always get an upgrade to a suite if it was available - he never would even if he beat me to check-in.
I once won an upgrade for my wife and me by entering a St Valentines Day poetry competition at check in. Which was nice.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
Whitty was saying this morning that it took 10-21 days for the vaccine protection to kick in.
Interesting how many non politicians some prominent some not who have gone down with the ship. I'm thinking of people like Jack Nicklaus who chose to give a ringing personal endorsement just weeks ago.
Those like Steve Hilton and Russell Brand look just a little less smart than the smart arses they looked two months ago....
It's good to know there's still mileage in the old saying 'if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse don't be surprised if you get covered in shit'
What did Russell Brand say? Find it hard to believe he would hitch his wagon to Trump
So did I. I could only think he'd been out of the public eye for too long. If they were looking for celebs dumping on Trump there are plenty more notable ones than him. To be fair it was less approval than explaining what an oratorical genius he was and how much more interesting he would be than dull old Biden.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Not what it feels like to me at all. Most of us (and I include myself) are really not consistently great at forecasting. The point about Trump is that is was pretty damn clear from the start that he had zero respect for democratic institutions. Thinking that something like last week's events might happen is not the basis for presenting oneself as a super forecaster.
Fun, though my worry is those who are looking for an excuse to avoid doing something about Trump's criminality (ie most of the Republicans in Congress) will cry about this sort of thing as inflaming divisions by people going after him, which they should not do as it will not 'heal' things. The same way we shouldn't chase bank robbers, since they are already such a maligned group in society it is unfair to hunt them down.
However, the thing that I am uneasy about with criticism of him is that he was elected president of the United States by many millions of Americans and the vast majority of these were sensible, thinking folk who made a choice between him and HRC, and his manifesto, such as it was, and the Dems' manifesto.
Sneer at him by all means but not at the democratic process or the democratic choices of millions of people.
I've posted many times about the systemic social and economic problems in America connected to the rise of Trump, and also that there are many perfectly regular people that have voted for him ; but given the events of the last week, you'd be very hard pressed indeed to argue that it's those outside the Trump bubble who are the ones not respecting democratic process.
It is not unknown for people who sit near where I usually do at Essex County Cricket, to, on leaving after the last game in September, to wish each other a Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.
However, given our ages, it's equally likely for us to say how relieved we are to see each other again six months later, at the beginning of the next season!
I never see much of an issue with masks in waitrose... just saying.
100% adherence in M&S.
The problem in most shops seems to be -
- Masks on, but no distancing - Ripping the mask of 1 nanosecond after getting to the door, mixing with the people coming in and about to don their masks....
Mask compliance is well over 99% in supermarkets. Unfortuately as I have said so many times people wearing masks think they are invincible and don't bother with social distancing.
It would be much better if we had the same procedures as last April & May. No mask wearing, less people in the store and everyone avoiding each other. That procedure worked. Im afraid mandatory mask wearing has not worked.
It may be in supermarkets *that you frequent*. It is not in supermarkets that I frequent. It absolutely wasn't anywhere near even 80% in the run up to Christmas in local shopping malls.
Mandatory mask wearing has helped according to doctors. What do they know about it compared to your libertarian bias?
In Southampton its weeks since I last saw someone without a mask in a supermarket.
In July when mandatory mask wearing was introduced we were at 3-400 cases a day, we are now at 50-60,000 cases. I do not have a libertarian bias. I just want things introduced that will work. I understand that correlation does not equate to causation but based on those figures it has to be hard to argue that mandatory mask wearing has helped limit infections. Up to July we had a system in place which had worked and had massively reduced infections, we changed it and now look at us. There are obviolusly many other factors but I think that mask wearing has made the situation worse. The Government are now realising what I have been saying for ages that peoples behaviour in supermarkets is causing infections to rise.
Interesting how many non politicians some prominent some not who have gone down with the ship. I'm thinking of people like Jack Nicklaus who chose to give a ringing personal endorsement just weeks ago.
Those like Steve Hilton and Russell Brand look just a little less smart than the smart arses they looked two months ago....
It's good to know there's still mileage in the old saying 'if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse don't be surprised if you get covered in shit'
What did Russell Brand say? Find it hard to believe he would hitch his wagon to Trump
So did I. I could only think he'd been out of the public eye for too long. If they were looking for celebs dumping on Trump there are plenty more notable ones than him. To be fair it was less approval than explaining what an oratorical genius he was and how much more interesting he would be than dull old Biden.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
I don't mind people spounting off about how they were right about seeing the threat that Trump posed, if they did (and if their reasoning was right) - as long as they have a similar record of flagging up equivalent threats from elsewhere on the political spectrum too.
There are no equivalent threats in any developed country anywhere else on the political spectrum. There's a genre of journalism where you pretend that there's an equivalence somewhere for the sake of balance, but I don't think it convinces anyone.
OK. Maybe "equivalent" is misplaced - but that's more because the far left has failed to gain and consolidate power to the same extent; it's not because their threat is any less potent in principle. And in Corbyn's leadership of Labour most notably, the intolerant left, in both censorious and expropiatory forms, (and indeed, antisemitic-racist ones) made very significant advances. The threats there are real.
Normally accepting a pardon implies guilt, but a pardon can apparently be worded to imply innocence; in which case it doesn't.
Grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Donald Trump for all offenses against the United States which he, Donald Trump, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from X to Y
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Not what it feels like to me at all. Most of us (and I include myself) are really not consistently great at forecasting. The point about Trump is that is was pretty damn clear from the start that he had zero respect for democratic institutions. Thinking that something like last week's events might happen is not the basis for presenting oneself as a super forecaster.
When he won in 2016, I don't recall the chat in the office being about a threat to democracy, more concern that someone so horrible could have won an election. But in the last year his actions have steadily become more extreme to the point that it wasn't all that surprising what happened last week.
Interesting thread from observers on the ground. The utter lack of federal forces or even basic event security cannot be anything other than deliberate. Which points quite firmly at it being an organised coup attempt.
"I am convinced that if Congress doesn’t act to do something about this quickly, these people are going to keep going and the unrest and violence will get more widespread and more uncontrollable. This is a crisis. It’s real. It’s happening. It must be taken seriously"
It's nuts that impeachment wasn't rushed through over the weekend and Trump already removed from office. Impunity is incredibly dangerous.
Inaction is almost always easier than action. Back home in their safe beds, how easy to forget what the man did, if it means a quieter life.
The latter might be erroneous, but I can see most of the Republican Congress, who either still approve of Trump probably just think things got out of hand, or hate him but cannot see the advantage to acting, thinking it.
Interesting how many non politicians some prominent some not who have gone down with the ship. I'm thinking of people like Jack Nicklaus who chose to give a ringing personal endorsement just weeks ago.
Those like Steve Hilton and Russell Brand look just a little less smart than the smart arses they looked two months ago....
It's good to know there's still mileage in the old saying 'if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse don't be surprised if you get covered in shit'
What did Russell Brand say? Find it hard to believe he would hitch his wagon to Trump
So did I. I could only think he'd been out of the public eye for too long. If they were looking for celebs dumping on Trump there are plenty more notable ones than him. To be fair it was less approval than explaining what an oratorical genius he was and how much more interesting he would be than dull old Biden.
There's a stack of videos on Twitter of MAGAs being escorted off planes or dragged out of airports. The FBI seems to have tracked them from the protest (using their phones?). They don't seem to be getting much support - indeed on several of the plane videos the other passengers applaud, cheer, or shout abuse. Suggesting that the political backlash could be significant.
The guy screaming in protest that the police are "treating me like a black guy" as they sit on him is priceless.
Heart of stone etc...
Funnier would be if the MAGA Capitol invaders have their gun licences revoked. It is surely more likely they will shoot someone than hijack the airliner taking them home.
The one thing I am a bit confused about is how many have been identified yet. The numbers charged seem extremely small to date. If they have not been charged how will the airlines, for example, know?
You don't have to be charged or anything more than suspected to be put on the no fly list. Often the first people know of it is when refused entry.
Vaguely amusing o/t - a friend of mine in days gone by, super-pushy, don't you know who I am type, was flying LHR-HKG which they did quite regularly and, as per usual, asked if there was an upgrade available. The person behind the check-in counter said hold on and went off to speak to someone. My friend meanwhile looked at the monitor and under their name it had the initials "NSFU" - not suitable for upgrade!
Working with such a person a couple of years ago - I (being polite and so hassle free) would always get an upgrade to a suite if it was available - he never would even if he beat me to check-in.
I once won an upgrade for my wife and me by entering a St Valentines Day poetry competition at check in. Which was nice.
Can you share the poem?
It's not as good as Dura Ace's, obvs, but...
"No present?" she asked, looking miffed In fact I was sensing a rift So I entered this dirge in The contest from Virgin Hoping to win her a gift.
(it wasn't clear at the time what the prize would be. I should also clarify that the whole thing about my wife being miffed about not getting a St Valentines day present was artistic license. Getting Virgin Atlantic's name into the poem was odious brown nosing but hey it worked).
I never see much of an issue with masks in waitrose... just saying.
100% adherence in M&S.
The problem in most shops seems to be -
- Masks on, but no distancing - Ripping the mask of 1 nanosecond after getting to the door, mixing with the people coming in and about to don their masks....
Mask compliance is well over 99% in supermarkets. Unfortuately as I have said so many times people wearing masks think they are invincible and don't bother with social distancing.
It would be much better if we had the same procedures as last April & May. No mask wearing, less people in the store and everyone avoiding each other. That procedure worked. Im afraid mandatory mask wearing has not worked.
It may be in supermarkets *that you frequent*. It is not in supermarkets that I frequent. It absolutely wasn't anywhere near even 80% in the run up to Christmas in local shopping malls.
Mandatory mask wearing has helped according to doctors. What do they know about it compared to your libertarian bias?
In Southampton its weeks since I last saw someone without a mask in a supermarket.
In July when mandatory mask wearing was introduced we were at 3-400 cases a day, we are now at 50-60,000 cases. I do not have a libertarian bias. I just want things introduced that will work. I understand that correlation does not equate to causation but based on those figures it has to be hard to argue that mandatory mask wearing has helped limit infections. Up to July we had a system in place which had worked and had massively reduced infections, we changed it and now look at us. There are obviolusly many other factors but I think that mask wearing has made the situation worse. The Government are now realising what I have been saying for ages that peoples behaviour in supermarkets is causing infections to rise.
Fine. So in the midst of a pandemic where a virulent new strain is tearing a hole through our efforts to contain is, is now the time to (a) increase the use of masks, or (b) stop using masks?
It takes a *special* mindset to think the answer is (b).
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
What can they really do more? Apart from close workplaces akin to the close of construction in March (Coffee takeaway as well I guess).
They can make the guidance restrictions law, I guess, but that would be mistake since most of it doesn't seem necessary other than to show seriousness, and people won't adhere to that level.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
I don't mind people spounting off about how they were right about seeing the threat that Trump posed, if they did (and if their reasoning was right) - as long as they have a similar record of flagging up equivalent threats from elsewhere on the political spectrum too.
There are no equivalent threats in any developed country anywhere else on the political spectrum. There's a genre of journalism where you pretend that there's an equivalence somewhere for the sake of balance, but I don't think it convinces anyone.
Bizarre whataboutery from Herdson. There are some really mad takes from this Trump biz.
It's not whataboutery and it's not bizarre.
The point is about consistency and judgement. Someone who has railed against Trump for years might well have done so because they understood his nature, his methods and his threat. Fair call. Chapeau.
On the other hand, they might have done it because he is a crass boor and aligned to the populist right - neither of which is necessary nor sufficient of themselves (or even together), to point to his true threat to the system and to freedoms and safety.
Where the critic's reasoning is the latter, it's much more likely that (1) they'll have given similar but misguided threats about many other politicians on the right, and seen such predictions go wrong; and (2) not made any predictions of that nature about others who do pose systemic threats but do so from a different angle of attack. The context and the reasoning of the critic is essential to understand whether they actually had good judgement or were simply a stopped clock at the right time.
I never see much of an issue with masks in waitrose... just saying.
100% adherence in M&S.
The problem in most shops seems to be -
- Masks on, but no distancing - Ripping the mask of 1 nanosecond after getting to the door, mixing with the people coming in and about to don their masks....
Mask compliance is well over 99% in supermarkets. Unfortuately as I have said so many times people wearing masks think they are invincible and don't bother with social distancing.
It would be much better if we had the same procedures as last April & May. No mask wearing, less people in the store and everyone avoiding each other. That procedure worked. Im afraid mandatory mask wearing has not worked.
It may be in supermarkets *that you frequent*. It is not in supermarkets that I frequent. It absolutely wasn't anywhere near even 80% in the run up to Christmas in local shopping malls.
Mandatory mask wearing has helped according to doctors. What do they know about it compared to your libertarian bias?
In Southampton its weeks since I last saw someone without a mask in a supermarket.
In July when mandatory mask wearing was introduced we were at 3-400 cases a day, we are now at 50-60,000 cases. I do not have a libertarian bias. I just want things introduced that will work. I understand that correlation does not equate to causation but based on those figures it has to be hard to argue that mandatory mask wearing has helped limit infections. Up to July we had a system in place which had worked and had massively reduced infections, we changed it and now look at us. There are obviolusly many other factors but I think that mask wearing has made the situation worse. The Government are now realising what I have been saying for ages that peoples behaviour in supermarkets is causing infections to rise.
Friend of mine just got (and recovered from) it.
Me: "How do you think you got it?" Them: "Either on the touch pad of the petrol station pump or at the supermarket."
There's a stack of videos on Twitter of MAGAs being escorted off planes or dragged out of airports. The FBI seems to have tracked them from the protest (using their phones?). They don't seem to be getting much support - indeed on several of the plane videos the other passengers applaud, cheer, or shout abuse. Suggesting that the political backlash could be significant.
The guy screaming in protest that the police are "treating me like a black guy" as they sit on him is priceless.
Heart of stone etc...
Funnier would be if the MAGA Capitol invaders have their gun licences revoked. It is surely more likely they will shoot someone than hijack the airliner taking them home.
The one thing I am a bit confused about is how many have been identified yet. The numbers charged seem extremely small to date. If they have not been charged how will the airlines, for example, know?
You don't have to be charged or anything more than suspected to be put on the no fly list. Often the first people know of it is when refused entry.
Vaguely amusing o/t - a friend of mine in days gone by, super-pushy, don't you know who I am type, was flying LHR-HKG which they did quite regularly and, as per usual, asked if there was an upgrade available. The person behind the check-in counter said hold on and went off to speak to someone. My friend meanwhile looked at the monitor and under their name it had the initials "NSFU" - not suitable for upgrade!
Working with such a person a couple of years ago - I (being polite and so hassle free) would always get an upgrade to a suite if it was available - he never would even if he beat me to check-in.
I once won an upgrade for my wife and me by entering a St Valentines Day poetry competition at check in. Which was nice.
Can you share the poem?
It's not as good as Dura Ace's, obvs, but...
"No present?" she asked, looking miffed In fact I was sensing a rift So I entered this dirge in The contest from Virgin Hoping to win her a gift.
(it wasn't clear at the time what the prize would be. I should also clarify that the whole thing about my wife being miffed about not getting a St Valentines day present was artistic license. Getting Virgin Atlantic's name into the poem was odious brown nosing but hey it worked).
Interesting how many non politicians some prominent some not who have gone down with the ship. I'm thinking of people like Jack Nicklaus who chose to give a ringing personal endorsement just weeks ago.
Those like Steve Hilton and Russell Brand look just a little less smart than the smart arses they looked two months ago....
It's good to know there's still mileage in the old saying 'if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse don't be surprised if you get covered in shit'
What did Russell Brand say? Find it hard to believe he would hitch his wagon to Trump
So did I. I could only think he'd been out of the public eye for too long. If they were looking for celebs dumping on Trump there are plenty more notable ones than him. To be fair it was less approval than explaining what an oratorical genius he was and how much more interesting he would be than dull old Biden.
However, the thing that I am uneasy about with criticism of him is that he was elected president of the United States by many millions of Americans and the vast majority of these were sensible, thinking folk who made a choice between him and HRC, and his manifesto, such as it was, and the Dems' manifesto.
Sneer at him by all means but not at the democratic process or the democratic choices of millions of people.
If there are problems with a democratic process its ok to snear at it a bit.
I'm not really sure what your point here is though. You're 'uneasy about with criticism of him is that he was elected president' by many millions. What does the second part have to do with the first? The winner, as he was last time and Biden is this time, should still be criticised for being a total dick even if they are backed by tens of millions of people.
Boris Johnson (ok technically, his party) was the choice of millions of people too, but if he does something stupid or terrible it is ok to criticise and, yes, even sneer at him, if that is warranted.
I think you are making the point about not writing off or belittling all his supporters and those who voted for him even though he is a huge dick? Which is a fair point others have made as well, but I don't see how that translates into uneasiness at criticism of him because he was elected president and millions back him. Being the 'democratic choice' doesn't inure people from being sneered at if it is warranted.
Certainly all those who voted for him cannot be treated as deplorables, but that is a separate matter.
I never see much of an issue with masks in waitrose... just saying.
100% adherence in M&S.
The problem in most shops seems to be -
- Masks on, but no distancing - Ripping the mask of 1 nanosecond after getting to the door, mixing with the people coming in and about to don their masks....
Mask compliance is well over 99% in supermarkets. Unfortuately as I have said so many times people wearing masks think they are invincible and don't bother with social distancing.
It would be much better if we had the same procedures as last April & May. No mask wearing, less people in the store and everyone avoiding each other. That procedure worked. Im afraid mandatory mask wearing has not worked.
It may be in supermarkets *that you frequent*. It is not in supermarkets that I frequent. It absolutely wasn't anywhere near even 80% in the run up to Christmas in local shopping malls.
Mandatory mask wearing has helped according to doctors. What do they know about it compared to your libertarian bias?
In Southampton its weeks since I last saw someone without a mask in a supermarket.
In July when mandatory mask wearing was introduced we were at 3-400 cases a day, we are now at 50-60,000 cases. I do not have a libertarian bias. I just want things introduced that will work. I understand that correlation does not equate to causation but based on those figures it has to be hard to argue that mandatory mask wearing has helped limit infections. Up to July we had a system in place which had worked and had massively reduced infections, we changed it and now look at us. There are obviolusly many other factors but I think that mask wearing has made the situation worse. The Government are now realising what I have been saying for ages that peoples behaviour in supermarkets is causing infections to rise.
Better still, avoid supermarkets and shopping centres generally. Up to December I had used supermarkets but visited only at hours where they were relatively quiet. The case incidence now is that I have switched to Sainsburys "click and collect" which works fine, it's easy to get a slot and means you don't even need to go indoors (i.e. packing from crates in the car park). I'm no longer using a better value supermarket but the small extra cost is moot in the circumstances.
There's a stack of videos on Twitter of MAGAs being escorted off planes or dragged out of airports. The FBI seems to have tracked them from the protest (using their phones?). They don't seem to be getting much support - indeed on several of the plane videos the other passengers applaud, cheer, or shout abuse. Suggesting that the political backlash could be significant.
The guy screaming in protest that the police are "treating me like a black guy" as they sit on him is priceless.
Heart of stone etc...
Funnier would be if the MAGA Capitol invaders have their gun licences revoked. It is surely more likely they will shoot someone than hijack the airliner taking them home.
The one thing I am a bit confused about is how many have been identified yet. The numbers charged seem extremely small to date. If they have not been charged how will the airlines, for example, know?
You don't have to be charged or anything more than suspected to be put on the no fly list. Often the first people know of it is when refused entry.
Vaguely amusing o/t - a friend of mine in days gone by, super-pushy, don't you know who I am type, was flying LHR-HKG which they did quite regularly and, as per usual, asked if there was an upgrade available. The person behind the check-in counter said hold on and went off to speak to someone. My friend meanwhile looked at the monitor and under their name it had the initials "NSFU" - not suitable for upgrade!
Working with such a person a couple of years ago - I (being polite and so hassle free) would always get an upgrade to a suite if it was available - he never would even if he beat me to check-in.
I once won an upgrade for my wife and me by entering a St Valentines Day poetry competition at check in. Which was nice.
Can you share the poem?
It's not as good as Dura Ace's, obvs, but...
"No present?" she asked, looking miffed In fact I was sensing a rift So I entered this dirge in The contest from Virgin Hoping to win her a gift.
(it wasn't clear at the time what the prize would be. I should also clarify that the whole thing about my wife being miffed about not getting a St Valentines day present was artistic license. Getting Virgin Atlantic's name into the poem was odious brown nosing but hey it worked).
I never see much of an issue with masks in waitrose... just saying.
100% adherence in M&S.
The problem in most shops seems to be -
- Masks on, but no distancing - Ripping the mask of 1 nanosecond after getting to the door, mixing with the people coming in and about to don their masks....
Mask compliance is well over 99% in supermarkets. Unfortuately as I have said so many times people wearing masks think they are invincible and don't bother with social distancing.
It would be much better if we had the same procedures as last April & May. No mask wearing, less people in the store and everyone avoiding each other. That procedure worked. Im afraid mandatory mask wearing has not worked.
It may be in supermarkets *that you frequent*. It is not in supermarkets that I frequent. It absolutely wasn't anywhere near even 80% in the run up to Christmas in local shopping malls.
Mandatory mask wearing has helped according to doctors. What do they know about it compared to your libertarian bias?
In Southampton its weeks since I last saw someone without a mask in a supermarket.
In July when mandatory mask wearing was introduced we were at 3-400 cases a day, we are now at 50-60,000 cases. I do not have a libertarian bias. I just want things introduced that will work. I understand that correlation does not equate to causation but based on those figures it has to be hard to argue that mandatory mask wearing has helped limit infections. Up to July we had a system in place which had worked and had massively reduced infections, we changed it and now look at us. There are obviolusly many other factors but I think that mask wearing has made the situation worse. The Government are now realising what I have been saying for ages that peoples behaviour in supermarkets is causing infections to rise.
You miss out the other things that have been going on though. People have been (permitted to be) doing many more things that increase risk of transmission in the intervening time. What the evidence suggests is that the effect of mask wearing has not bee sufficient to outweigh the increased transmission from increased risky behaviours.
Interesting how many non politicians some prominent some not who have gone down with the ship. I'm thinking of people like Jack Nicklaus who chose to give a ringing personal endorsement just weeks ago.
Those like Steve Hilton and Russell Brand look just a little less smart than the smart arses they looked two months ago....
It's good to know there's still mileage in the old saying 'if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse don't be surprised if you get covered in shit'
What did Russell Brand say? Find it hard to believe he would hitch his wagon to Trump
So did I. I could only think he'd been out of the public eye for too long. If they were looking for celebs dumping on Trump there are plenty more notable ones than him. To be fair it was less approval than explaining what an oratorical genius he was and how much more interesting he would be than dull old Biden.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
Whitty was saying this morning that it took 10-21 days for the vaccine protection to kick in.
Exactly. Let's say mid-February to get the most vulnerable jabbed; that's early March for them to be protected.
Except that isn't enough by itself; the under 70's are perfectly capable of collapsing the NHS by themselves. I've seen the suggestion of about 25 million immune being enough to take a meaningful bite out of R. It will happen, and remarkably soon. But not immediately.
However, the thing that I am uneasy about with criticism of him is that he was elected president of the United States by many millions of Americans and the vast majority of these were sensible, thinking folk who made a choice between him and HRC, and his manifesto, such as it was, and the Dems' manifesto.
Sneer at him by all means but not at the democratic process or the democratic choices of millions of people.
If there are problems with a democratic process its ok to snear at it a bit.
I'm not really sure what your point here is though. You're 'uneasy about with criticism of him is that he was elected president' by many millions. What does the second part have to do with the first? The winner, as he was last time and Biden is this time, should still be criticised for being a total dick even if they are backed by tens of millions of people.
Boris Johnson (ok technically, his party) was the choice of millions of people too, but if he does something stupid or terrible it is ok to criticise and, yes, even sneer at him, if that is warranted.
I think you are making the point about not writing off or belittling all his supporters and those who voted for him even though he is a huge dick? Which is a fair point others have made as well, but I don't see how that translates into uneasiness at criticism of him because he was elected president and millions back him. Being the 'democratic choice' doesn't inure people from being sneered at if it is warranted.
Certainly all those who voted for him cannot be treated as deplorables, but that is a separate matter.
It's when the criticism of him elides into criticism of the US and its citizens in the same terms as criticism of him.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Are you talking about anyone in particular?
Otherwise this is all a bit “Self Righteous Brothers” of Harry Enfield fame.
There's been a couple of thread headers on here and an awful lot of it on Twitter.
It is in fact quite normal to feel - not pleased, but perhaps vindicated - by Trump’s conspicuous resort to “the fash”, as the kids say.
Trump has been gaslighting all of us for years and years. Read that Snyder article in the NYT.
Yes, and like I say it's all very unedifying. Particularly the finger-pointing towards those who got it wrong. Some people seem more interested in being right - and being seen to be right - than anything else. One presumes on the assumption so that their analysis and insight will be taken more seriously in future.
I have a long list of getting things wrong, including:
(1) GE2015 - I thought Cameron would get c.290-300 seats, not a majority (2) EURef- I thought Remain would win 52:48 (not the other way round) (3) 2016 Presidential - I thought Clinton would win (by an Obama 2012 margin) (4) GE2017 - I thought May would win a majority of 40-50 (5) Tory leadership 2019 - I didn't think Boris would get to the final two (6) GE2019 - I thought Boris might not get a majority (7) Labour leadership 2019/20 - initially, I thought Lisa Nandy rather than Starmer
Now, based on that you might (quite reasonably) conclude you should never listen to my betting tips ever again.
The difference is in each of those the margins were not all that large, and, I changed my position when the facts changed. I got some things right (laying Andrea Leadsom, betting on a GE taking place in 2019, betting on Trump as candidate, laying Rubio, betting on Biden as candidate, laying Emily Thornberry as Labour leader, and betting on Biden for the general etc) but in almost everything else I reversed and modified my position. And that happens with people too.
I change my views and positions all the time, which is why I can make decent money (consistently) from betting. I'm interested in why people were right, sure, but I'm also interested in why they were wrong.
Post-mortems are always more interesting when people go through both what they got right and what they got wrong, and I respect them all the more for it.
I lose respect for them when they start finger-pointing at others, unless they were utterly reckless.
I'm with you on counts 1 to 5 on the charge sheet. I have two other offences to take into consideration: I thought both Trump and Brexit would be worse than they have been so far.
Trump has just nine days left to prove me right by starting a nuclear war. On Brexit, the jury is still to some extent out but as I was expecting more than just a drop in the exchange rate and our credit rating, plus some minor inconveniences in the supermarket, maybe I should just hand myself in and be done with it.
and Parler's verified citizen approach means a lot of the posts are directly attributable to identifiable people.
Actually this highlights one of the issues with the current attempts to gag these people by removing or limiting these platforms. It won't work.
All they will do is find a platform outside the USA and beyond the ability of US companies and authorities to control. I suspect this has already happened. This means they will continue their discussions and planning unhindered and without any oversight from the US authorities. This is on top of the fact that it gives them the opportunity - falsely of course - to claim the US is suppressing their free speech.
I don't think there is necessarily any answer to this, at least not one that has good outcomes.
Quite. What we’ll end up with is Parler, or something like it, hosted by Russia or China, and out of reach of US authorities.
Banning speech in the USA never ends well for those doing the banning.
There's a stack of videos on Twitter of MAGAs being escorted off planes or dragged out of airports. The FBI seems to have tracked them from the protest (using their phones?). They don't seem to be getting much support - indeed on several of the plane videos the other passengers applaud, cheer, or shout abuse. Suggesting that the political backlash could be significant.
The guy screaming in protest that the police are "treating me like a black guy" as they sit on him is priceless.
Heart of stone etc...
Funnier would be if the MAGA Capitol invaders have their gun licences revoked. It is surely more likely they will shoot someone than hijack the airliner taking them home.
The one thing I am a bit confused about is how many have been identified yet. The numbers charged seem extremely small to date. If they have not been charged how will the airlines, for example, know?
You don't have to be charged or anything more than suspected to be put on the no fly list. Often the first people know of it is when refused entry.
Vaguely amusing o/t - a friend of mine in days gone by, super-pushy, don't you know who I am type, was flying LHR-HKG which they did quite regularly and, as per usual, asked if there was an upgrade available. The person behind the check-in counter said hold on and went off to speak to someone. My friend meanwhile looked at the monitor and under their name it had the initials "NSFU" - not suitable for upgrade!
Working with such a person a couple of years ago - I (being polite and so hassle free) would always get an upgrade to a suite if it was available - he never would even if he beat me to check-in.
I once won an upgrade for my wife and me by entering a St Valentines Day poetry competition at check in. Which was nice.
Can you share the poem?
It's not as good as Dura Ace's, obvs, but...
"No present?" she asked, looking miffed In fact I was sensing a rift So I entered this dirge in The contest from Virgin Hoping to win her a gift.
(it wasn't clear at the time what the prize would be. I should also clarify that the whole thing about my wife being miffed about not getting a St Valentines day present was artistic license. Getting Virgin Atlantic's name into the poem was odious brown nosing but hey it worked).
You were lucky that no-one else entered
I think Dura Ace should include that line somewhere in his masterpiece.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Not what it feels like to me at all. Most of us (and I include myself) are really not consistently great at forecasting. The point about Trump is that is was pretty damn clear from the start that he had zero respect for democratic institutions. Thinking that something like last week's events might happen is not the basis for presenting oneself as a super forecaster.
Personally, and I might be shot down for saying this, I don't think it was. Sure, it is *now*, in hindsight, and some took him at his word from day one, but I certainly didn't.
In fact both myself and Robert Smithson, prior to his election, thought he was full of hot air and offensive rhetoric but would actually govern as a pretty mainstream Republican once elected, constrained and guided by the GOP.
Wrong.
I also thought that whilst his ego couldn't handle ever admitting he lost the election, and would always yell fraud, he would leave it at hot air and never cross the Rubicon of actually encouraging an attack on the Capitol.
Wrong.
Of course now it's easy to find rhetoric that pointed to it which was true, but I didn't believe he would really be that reckless or stupid at the time.
I never see much of an issue with masks in waitrose... just saying.
100% adherence in M&S.
The problem in most shops seems to be -
- Masks on, but no distancing - Ripping the mask of 1 nanosecond after getting to the door, mixing with the people coming in and about to don their masks....
Mask compliance is well over 99% in supermarkets. Unfortuately as I have said so many times people wearing masks think they are invincible and don't bother with social distancing.
It would be much better if we had the same procedures as last April & May. No mask wearing, less people in the store and everyone avoiding each other. That procedure worked. Im afraid mandatory mask wearing has not worked.
It may be in supermarkets *that you frequent*. It is not in supermarkets that I frequent. It absolutely wasn't anywhere near even 80% in the run up to Christmas in local shopping malls.
Mandatory mask wearing has helped according to doctors. What do they know about it compared to your libertarian bias?
In Southampton its weeks since I last saw someone without a mask in a supermarket.
In July when mandatory mask wearing was introduced we were at 3-400 cases a day, we are now at 50-60,000 cases. I do not have a libertarian bias. I just want things introduced that will work. I understand that correlation does not equate to causation but based on those figures it has to be hard to argue that mandatory mask wearing has helped limit infections. Up to July we had a system in place which had worked and had massively reduced infections, we changed it and now look at us. There are obviolusly many other factors but I think that mask wearing has made the situation worse. The Government are now realising what I have been saying for ages that peoples behaviour in supermarkets is causing infections to rise.
You do talk utter and absolute bollocks. Your capacity to make false links is fantastic. In fact, I reckon you are a Putin bot. Admit it? This is the second time I've had to pull you up for your ridiculous capacity to make 2 + 2 = 27.
It is CLEARLY a factor in reducing covid spread in countries where suppression of the virus is working. As you would expect with a virus that transmits by aerosol as well as droplet.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
I don't mind people spounting off about how they were right about seeing the threat that Trump posed, if they did (and if their reasoning was right) - as long as they have a similar record of flagging up equivalent threats from elsewhere on the political spectrum too.
There are no equivalent threats in any developed country anywhere else on the political spectrum. There's a genre of journalism where you pretend that there's an equivalence somewhere for the sake of balance, but I don't think it convinces anyone.
Bizarre whataboutery from Herdson. There are some really mad takes from this Trump biz.
It's not whataboutery and it's not bizarre.
The point is about consistency and judgement. Someone who has railed against Trump for years might well have done so because they understood his nature, his methods and his threat. Fair call. Chapeau.
On the other hand, they might have done it because he is a crass boor and aligned to the populist right - neither of which is necessary nor sufficient of themselves (or even together), to point to his true threat to the system and to freedoms and safety.
Where the critic's reasoning is the latter, it's much more likely that (1) they'll have given similar but misguided threats about many other politicians on the right, and seen such predictions go wrong; and (2) not made any predictions of that nature about others who do pose systemic threats but do so from a different angle of attack. The context and the reasoning of the critic is essential to understand whether they actually had good judgement or were simply a stopped clock at the right time.
I definitely fall into the latter category. I thought Trump was an obnoxious human being who was just using the justifiable complaints and concerns of millions of people to get himself into power and who had little intention of doing much about it once there.
I actually had some moments of doubt about his willingness to try and make things better once he was in power and he started actually doing stuff. I still thought he was a self serving scumbag but started to wonder if possibly he would actually achieve some of the things he promised.
But at no point right up to the last week or so did I think he would go so far as to attempt to mount a coup. That wasn't even on my radar. Even as it was happening it wasn't really on my radar. I thought it was idiots acting on their own rather than anything organised - a view that was reinforced by how poorly they apparently executed it.
Now I have changed my view. All the evidence points, for me, to the fact that trump was involved in trying to overthrow the Government of the US. I was wrong about him on this. He is far more deranged than I ever thought possible. I will not breathe easy until he is finally out of office one way or another.
Conspiracy hat on - they shut down unnecessarily to amplify the rage at the libtard cucks going after free speech, so when they return triumphant it is even more amazing.
and Parler's verified citizen approach means a lot of the posts are directly attributable to identifiable people.
Actually this highlights one of the issues with the current attempts to gag these people by removing or limiting these platforms. It won't work.
All they will do is find a platform outside the USA and beyond the ability of US companies and authorities to control. I suspect this has already happened. This means they will continue their discussions and planning unhindered and without any oversight from the US authorities. This is on top of the fact that it gives them the opportunity - falsely of course - to claim the US is suppressing their free speech.
I don't think there is necessarily any answer to this, at least not one that has good outcomes.
Quite. What we’ll end up with is Parler, or something like it, hosted by Russia or China, and out of reach of US authorities.
Banning speech in the USA never ends well for those doing the banning.
With internet providers banning the IP addresses resulting in the whack-a-mole pirate bay games.
Fun, though my worry is those who are looking for an excuse to avoid doing something about Trump's criminality (ie most of the Republicans in Congress) will cry about this sort of thing as inflaming divisions by people going after him, which they should not do as it will not 'heal' things. The same way we shouldn't chase bank robbers, since they are already such a maligned group in society it is unfair to hunt them down.
Doesn't matter anymore. The Rubicon has been crossed. All last year the same people who have been tarring BLM and all of its supporters, without exception, as "Marxists", "Anarchists" (same thing happened to the Civil Rights movement in the 60s and 70s BTW) are now crying that tarring all of Trumps supporters with the same brush is somehow wrong and unethical and "inflaming divisions".
No. Capitalism and liberalism allowed Trump to get where he is. He owes everything, everything, to capitalists and liberals on Wall Street and Silicon Valley who allowed him (a) his real estate empire, (b) The Apprentice, (c) Twitter, (d) every other social media platform, all of the things that took him and his message to his base. His anti-free trade stance showed how sceptical he is of capitalism. On 6 January he sought to abolish liberal democracy. So now capitalism and liberalism are scared and will hit back.
The PGA announcement, the Parler thing...just the tip of the iceberg. Marriott announced over the weekend they will no longer donate to any candidate who voted against certification of the results. Forbes announced that they will regard any statement from any company that employs an ex=Trump staffer as being from a questionable source.
Trump got where he is because the liberal establishment, until now, despite protests to the contrary, had done nothing. Now, only now, can Trumpers genuinely claim the liberal establishment is out to get them. Damn right they are. They were, ultimately, pushed too far.
However, the thing that I am uneasy about with criticism of him is that he was elected president of the United States by many millions of Americans and the vast majority of these were sensible, thinking folk who made a choice between him and HRC, and his manifesto, such as it was, and the Dems' manifesto.
Sneer at him by all means but not at the democratic process or the democratic choices of millions of people.
If there are problems with a democratic process its ok to snear at it a bit.
I'm not really sure what your point here is though. You're 'uneasy about with criticism of him is that he was elected president' by many millions. What does the second part have to do with the first? The winner, as he was last time and Biden is this time, should still be criticised for being a total dick even if they are backed by tens of millions of people.
Boris Johnson (ok technically, his party) was the choice of millions of people too, but if he does something stupid or terrible it is ok to criticise and, yes, even sneer at him, if that is warranted.
I think you are making the point about not writing off or belittling all his supporters and those who voted for him even though he is a huge dick? Which is a fair point others have made as well, but I don't see how that translates into uneasiness at criticism of him because he was elected president and millions back him. Being the 'democratic choice' doesn't inure people from being sneered at if it is warranted.
Certainly all those who voted for him cannot be treated as deplorables, but that is a separate matter.
It's when the criticism of him elides into criticism of the US and its citizens in the same terms as criticism of him.
These things can be taken too far. But where is the line between it being legitimate and reasonable to criticise the person who is the democratic choice of many, to it being reasonable to criticise why he was the choice of so many, which involves talk of the county and citizens involved? We tend, mostly, not to like it if people said the UK is full of racists and that's why it voted for Brexit, but would it be ok to criticise the country and those who voted for Brexit at all, not just the leaders of that movement? To some degree, perhaps. I cannot escape criticism for my own actions even if too much opproprium is unreasonable.
and Parler's verified citizen approach means a lot of the posts are directly attributable to identifiable people.
Actually this highlights one of the issues with the current attempts to gag these people by removing or limiting these platforms. It won't work.
All they will do is find a platform outside the USA and beyond the ability of US companies and authorities to control. I suspect this has already happened. This means they will continue their discussions and planning unhindered and without any oversight from the US authorities. This is on top of the fact that it gives them the opportunity - falsely of course - to claim the US is suppressing their free speech.
I don't think there is necessarily any answer to this, at least not one that has good outcomes.
Quite. What we’ll end up with is Parler, or something like it, hosted by Russia or China, and out of reach of US authorities.
Banning speech in the USA never ends well for those doing the banning.
With internet providers banning the IP addresses resulting in the whack-a-mole pirate bay games.
With the proliferation of VPNs I am not sure that will have much, if any, impact.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus. Her tweet to that effect went viral.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
I don't mind people spounting off about how they were right about seeing the threat that Trump posed, if they did (and if their reasoning was right) - as long as they have a similar record of flagging up equivalent threats from elsewhere on the political spectrum too.
There are no equivalent threats in any developed country anywhere else on the political spectrum. There's a genre of journalism where you pretend that there's an equivalence somewhere for the sake of balance, but I don't think it convinces anyone.
Bizarre whataboutery from Herdson. There are some really mad takes from this Trump biz.
It's not whataboutery and it's not bizarre.
The point is about consistency and judgement. Someone who has railed against Trump for years might well have done so because they understood his nature, his methods and his threat. Fair call. Chapeau.
On the other hand, they might have done it because he is a crass boor and aligned to the populist right - neither of which is necessary nor sufficient of themselves (or even together), to point to his true threat to the system and to freedoms and safety.
Where the critic's reasoning is the latter, it's much more likely that (1) they'll have given similar but misguided threats about many other politicians on the right, and seen such predictions go wrong; and (2) not made any predictions of that nature about others who do pose systemic threats but do so from a different angle of attack. The context and the reasoning of the critic is essential to understand whether they actually had good judgement or were simply a stopped clock at the right time.
This is angel-counting guff while the tanks are circling Berlin as far as I’m concerned.
The problem is Trump and the safety of democracy in the USA, not phantoms from “different angles of attack”, whatever they are supposed to be.
If people want to feel smugly vindicated in their antipathy to Trump, more power to their elbow. His anti-democratic instincts may not have been completely obvious but it was clear from the outset that he was happy to whip up hate against minorities, immigrants, the disabled, women etc.
There's a stack of videos on Twitter of MAGAs being escorted off planes or dragged out of airports. The FBI seems to have tracked them from the protest (using their phones?). They don't seem to be getting much support - indeed on several of the plane videos the other passengers applaud, cheer, or shout abuse. Suggesting that the political backlash could be significant.
The guy screaming in protest that the police are "treating me like a black guy" as they sit on him is priceless.
Heart of stone etc...
Funnier would be if the MAGA Capitol invaders have their gun licences revoked. It is surely more likely they will shoot someone than hijack the airliner taking them home.
The one thing I am a bit confused about is how many have been identified yet. The numbers charged seem extremely small to date. If they have not been charged how will the airlines, for example, know?
You don't have to be charged or anything more than suspected to be put on the no fly list. Often the first people know of it is when refused entry.
Vaguely amusing o/t - a friend of mine in days gone by, super-pushy, don't you know who I am type, was flying LHR-HKG which they did quite regularly and, as per usual, asked if there was an upgrade available. The person behind the check-in counter said hold on and went off to speak to someone. My friend meanwhile looked at the monitor and under their name it had the initials "NSFU" - not suitable for upgrade!
Working with such a person a couple of years ago - I (being polite and so hassle free) would always get an upgrade to a suite if it was available - he never would even if he beat me to check-in.
I once won an upgrade for my wife and me by entering a St Valentines Day poetry competition at check in. Which was nice.
Can you share the poem?
It's not as good as Dura Ace's, obvs, but...
"No present?" she asked, looking miffed In fact I was sensing a rift So I entered this dirge in The contest from Virgin Hoping to win her a gift.
(it wasn't clear at the time what the prize would be. I should also clarify that the whole thing about my wife being miffed about not getting a St Valentines day present was artistic license. Getting Virgin Atlantic's name into the poem was odious brown nosing but hey it worked).
You were lucky that no-one else entered
Ha ha, just jealous.
You might say that But maybe it's not true? For I'm the only one who knows I could never compete with you.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Are you talking about anyone in particular?
Otherwise this is all a bit “Self Righteous Brothers” of Harry Enfield fame.
There's been a couple of thread headers on here and an awful lot of it on Twitter.
It is in fact quite normal to feel - not pleased, but perhaps vindicated - by Trump’s conspicuous resort to “the fash”, as the kids say.
Trump has been gaslighting all of us for years and years. Read that Snyder article in the NYT.
Yes, and like I say it's all very unedifying. Particularly the finger-pointing towards those who got it wrong. Some people seem more interested in being right - and being seen to be right - than anything else. One presumes on the assumption so that their analysis and insight will be taken more seriously in future.
I have a long list of getting things wrong, including:
(1) GE2015 - I thought Cameron would get c.290-300 seats, not a majority (2) EURef- I thought Remain would win 52:48 (not the other way round) (3) 2016 Presidential - I thought Clinton would win (by an Obama 2012 margin) (4) GE2017 - I thought May would win a majority of 40-50 (5) Tory leadership 2019 - I didn't think Boris would get to the final two (6) GE2019 - I thought Boris might not get a majority (7) Labour leadership 2019/20 - initially, I thought Lisa Nandy rather than Starmer
Now, based on that you might (quite reasonably) conclude you should never listen to my betting tips ever again.
The difference is in each of those the margins were not all that large, and, I changed my position when the facts changed. I got some things right (laying Andrea Leadsom, betting on a GE taking place in 2019, betting on Trump as candidate, laying Rubio, betting on Biden as candidate, laying Emily Thornberry as Labour leader, and betting on Biden for the general etc) but in almost everything else I reversed and modified my position. And that happens with people too.
I change my views and positions all the time, which is why I can make decent money (consistently) from betting. I'm interested in why people were right, sure, but I'm also interested in why they were wrong.
Post-mortems are always more interesting when people go through both what they got right and what they got wrong, and I respect them all the more for it.
I lose respect for them when they start finger-pointing at others, unless they were utterly reckless.
I'm with you on counts 1 to 5 on the charge sheet. I have two other offences to take into consideration: I thought both Trump and Brexit would be worse than they have been so far.
Trump has just nine days left to prove me right by starting a nuclear war. On Brexit, the jury is still to some extent out but as I was expecting more than just a drop in the exchange rate and our credit rating, plus some minor inconveniences in the supermarket, maybe I should just hand myself in and be done with it.
Brexit is long term pain as the customers of companies that export to the EU discover it's cheaper to purchase from our competitors or pay extra and avoid the paperwork and random delays the paperwork creates.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Fun, though my worry is those who are looking for an excuse to avoid doing something about Trump's criminality (ie most of the Republicans in Congress) will cry about this sort of thing as inflaming divisions by people going after him, which they should not do as it will not 'heal' things. The same way we shouldn't chase bank robbers, since they are already such a maligned group in society it is unfair to hunt them down.
Doesn't matter anymore. The Rubicon has been crossed. All last year the same people who have been tarring BLM and all of its supporters, without exception, as "Marxists", "Anarchists" (same thing happened to the Civil Rights movement in the 60s and 70s BTW) are now crying that tarring all of Trumps supporters with the same brush is somehow wrong and unethical and "inflaming divisions".
No. Capitalism and liberalism allowed Trump to get where he is. He owes everything, everything, to capitalists and liberals on Wall Street and Silicon Valley who allowed him (a) his real estate empire, (b) The Apprentice, (c) Twitter, (d) every other social media platform, all of the things that took him and his message to his base. His anti-free trade stance showed how sceptical he is of capitalism. On 6 January he sought to abolish liberal democracy. So now capitalism and liberalism are scared and will hit back.
The PGA announcement, the Parler thing...just the tip of the iceberg. Marriott announced over the weekend they will no longer donate to any candidate who voted against certification of the results. Forbes announced that they will regard any statement from any company that employs an ex=Trump staffer as being from a questionable source.
Trump got where he is because the liberal establishment, until now, despite protests to the contrary, had done nothing. Now, only now, can Trumpers genuinely claim the liberal establishment is out to get them. Damn right they are. They were, ultimately, pushed too far.
Yes, but my worry is not that he should not face every consequence, personal, political and legal, to which he is due, but that the impeachment won't convict because they'll pretend him facing consequences outside of it is sufficient.
But since the Senate convicting always looked unlikely, so be it. He needs to reap the harvest he has sowed.
A couple of days ago someone assured me that Smithson is the only contributor worth his salt. Yesterday's thread header debacle weighs against that view, and I see we're back to not even proofreading with today's effort. Poor.
Other sites are available.
True, the best of which learn from and are improved by measured and specific criticism from their readership.
I think you make a fair point about the thread headers not always being proof-read in the past....
It is possible to point out mistakes a little more gracefully, though.
(The reaction to @Mary_Batty wasn't the most civil, either.)
I don't think anyone was particularly uncivil.
They were wrong, in the sense that just because something is free doesn't mean you should always stay quiet when you see flaws. Wrong, in the sense that I have only complaints about this site, when I only two days ago I was told I was being a bit over the top in my praise of another header. And really quite silly in the response that was pulled straight from the stock of unthinking counter-criticism: "if you don't like it, leave." But not uncivil.
On that last point, it's always struck me as an odd position to hold, that there are only two states of being: devotion or renunciation. I think most of us most of the time don't see most things in that way. You can appreciate something and criticise it, and you can dislike something and praise it.
There is a space in which we're allowed to be, somewhere between tearing each others' clothes off and tearing each others' heads off.
The government reckons at least 12 million people in England have already had Covid. A huge number. Many of them will have been asymptomatic, so won’t know, but many WILL know, from obvious symptoms, from catching it in an infested household, or, of course, from a test. And we have done tens of millions of tests.
Let’s say just half those 12 million KNOW they’ve had Covid and survived. That’s 6 million people who are now, very likely, immune. And every day thousands more are added to this crowd of immune people, through recovery or vaccination.
If I were definitely immune, unable to catch the virus and much less likely to hand it on (especially as time passes), I’d be very tempted to resume a more normal life as well. Meet other immune friends. Have a life. Have sex. Are these the people now going out and about?
Could be. And I’m not sure it’s even moral to keep these people locked indoors, going mental, if there is no more risk to them, and, increasingly, they are no risk to others.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
I think the fact that it is now winter is the main driver of any difference in outcomes, rather than tinkering at the edges re: garden centres.
My main treat of the week is now a takeaway tuna melt panini at Caffe Nero on a Saturday, and I will be absolutely fuming if the 'hide under the duvet on a public sector furlough' brigade scare the govt into mandating that takeaways be closed. Given I do all the cooking, its more the break than the product! I look forward to it from about Thursday onwards. Quite a difference to trips across Europe buying books, visiting old friends and staying in nice hotels. It is amazing how quickly my life has become so very small.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
and Parler's verified citizen approach means a lot of the posts are directly attributable to identifiable people.
Actually this highlights one of the issues with the current attempts to gag these people by removing or limiting these platforms. It won't work.
All they will do is find a platform outside the USA and beyond the ability of US companies and authorities to control. I suspect this has already happened. This means they will continue their discussions and planning unhindered and without any oversight from the US authorities. This is on top of the fact that it gives them the opportunity - falsely of course - to claim the US is suppressing their free speech.
I don't think there is necessarily any answer to this, at least not one that has good outcomes.
Quite. What we’ll end up with is Parler, or something like it, hosted by Russia or China, and out of reach of US authorities.
Banning speech in the USA never ends well for those doing the banning.
With internet providers banning the IP addresses resulting in the whack-a-mole pirate bay games.
With the proliferation of VPNs I am not sure that will have much, if any, impact.
People who can work out how to use a VPN must be like 1% of Parler's current userbase max.
I don't think action against Parler will go that far though.
(1) Matthew Godwin used to called Trump an American Nationalist, and not a Fascist. Now, he is going hmm... maybe he was and is a fascist, and has been widely pilloried for it. However, I respect him more, not less, because he's revisited the evidence and publicly changed his mind. That takes moral courage and guts, so I will be listening to him even more in future.
(2) Zion Lights was an XR spokeswoman. I thought a right eco-loon. Andrew Neil challenged her on his show about nuclear power. She didn't have a good answer. She looked silly, and I think I joined in the teasing too. Almost a year later she conceded the point and now sees nuclear as part of the energy mix that's crucial to (realistically) getting to net zero, and has taken a lot of abuse from the XR left for it. I respect her more for it, not less.
(3) Daniel Hannan used to be (IMHO) the best advocate of the case for Leave and its best orator and author. I read all his books. I met him several times. I even gave him a lift in my car. He was one of my heroes. However, such was his lack of contrition or reflection on what he'd said in the past after the vote that I have since lost respect for him. I still find him an interesting voice, but I don't trust or respect him in anything like the degree I used to do.
It's about admitting mistakes, identifying what part of it was wrong (and why), but recognising it's still fine to correct or modify an argument without conceding the entire principle.
Too many people confuse the latter with the former and so obstinately stick to their original line regardless.
They fear humiliation. They actually lose respect.
The government reckons at least 12 million people in England have already had Covid. A huge number. Many of them will have been asymptomatic, so won’t know, but many WILL know, from obvious symptoms, from catching it in an infested household, or, of course, from a test. And we have done tens of millions of tests.
Let’s say just half those 12 million KNOW they’ve had Covid and survived. That’s 6 million people who are now, very likely, immune. And every day thousands more are added to this crowd of immune people, through recovery or vaccination.
If I were definitely immune, unable to catch the virus and much less likely to hand it on (especially as time passes), I’d be very tempted to resume a more normal life as well. Meet other immune friends. Have a life. Have sex. Are these the people now going out and about?
Could be. And I’m not sure it’s even moral to keep these people locked indoors, going mental, if there is no more risk to them, and, increasingly, they are no risk to others.
and Parler's verified citizen approach means a lot of the posts are directly attributable to identifiable people.
Actually this highlights one of the issues with the current attempts to gag these people by removing or limiting these platforms. It won't work.
All they will do is find a platform outside the USA and beyond the ability of US companies and authorities to control. I suspect this has already happened. This means they will continue their discussions and planning unhindered and without any oversight from the US authorities. This is on top of the fact that it gives them the opportunity - falsely of course - to claim the US is suppressing their free speech.
I don't think there is necessarily any answer to this, at least not one that has good outcomes.
Quite. What we’ll end up with is Parler, or something like it, hosted by Russia or China, and out of reach of US authorities.
Banning speech in the USA never ends well for those doing the banning.
With internet providers banning the IP addresses resulting in the whack-a-mole pirate bay games.
With the proliferation of VPNs I am not sure that will have much, if any, impact.
People who can work out how to use a VPN must be like 1% of Parler's current userbase max.
I don't think action against Parler will go that far though.
I thought exactly the opposite. Anyone who is dumb enough to have a reason be using Parler is probably well aware of the perceived benefits of VPNs. The clever ones are those who understand their limitations.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Are you talking about anyone in particular?
Otherwise this is all a bit “Self Righteous Brothers” of Harry Enfield fame.
There's been a couple of thread headers on here and an awful lot of it on Twitter.
It is in fact quite normal to feel - not pleased, but perhaps vindicated - by Trump’s conspicuous resort to “the fash”, as the kids say.
Trump has been gaslighting all of us for years and years. Read that Snyder article in the NYT.
Yes, and like I say it's all very unedifying. Particularly the finger-pointing towards those who got it wrong. Some people seem more interested in being right - and being seen to be right - than anything else. One presumes on the assumption so that their analysis and insight will be taken more seriously in future.
I have a long list of getting things wrong, including:
(1) GE2015 - I thought Cameron would get c.290-300 seats, not a majority (2) EURef- I thought Remain would win 52:48 (not the other way round) (3) 2016 Presidential - I thought Clinton would win (by an Obama 2012 margin) (4) GE2017 - I thought May would win a majority of 40-50 (5) Tory leadership 2019 - I didn't think Boris would get to the final two (6) GE2019 - I thought Boris might not get a majority (7) Labour leadership 2019/20 - initially, I thought Lisa Nandy rather than Starmer
Now, based on that you might (quite reasonably) conclude you should never listen to my betting tips ever again.
The difference is in each of those the margins were not all that large, and, I changed my position when the facts changed. I got some things right (laying Andrea Leadsom, betting on a GE taking place in 2019, betting on Trump as candidate, laying Rubio, betting on Biden as candidate, laying Emily Thornberry as Labour leader, and betting on Biden for the general etc) but in almost everything else I reversed and modified my position. And that happens with people too.
I change my views and positions all the time, which is why I can make decent money (consistently) from betting. I'm interested in why people were right, sure, but I'm also interested in why they were wrong.
Post-mortems are always more interesting when people go through both what they got right and what they got wrong, and I respect them all the more for it.
I lose respect for them when they start finger-pointing at others, unless they were utterly reckless.
I'm with you on counts 1 to 5 on the charge sheet. I have two other offences to take into consideration: I thought both Trump and Brexit would be worse than they have been so far.
Trump has just nine days left to prove me right by starting a nuclear war. On Brexit, the jury is still to some extent out but as I was expecting more than just a drop in the exchange rate and our credit rating, plus some minor inconveniences in the supermarket, maybe I should just hand myself in and be done with it.
Brexit is long term pain as the customers of companies that export to the EU discover it's cheaper to purchase from our competitors or pay extra and avoid the paperwork and random delays the paperwork creates.
Yeah, but if you don't actually have to step over the poor and the dying on your way to Waitrose that counts as a pass.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
and Parler's verified citizen approach means a lot of the posts are directly attributable to identifiable people.
Actually this highlights one of the issues with the current attempts to gag these people by removing or limiting these platforms. It won't work.
All they will do is find a platform outside the USA and beyond the ability of US companies and authorities to control. I suspect this has already happened. This means they will continue their discussions and planning unhindered and without any oversight from the US authorities. This is on top of the fact that it gives them the opportunity - falsely of course - to claim the US is suppressing their free speech.
I don't think there is necessarily any answer to this, at least not one that has good outcomes.
Quite. What we’ll end up with is Parler, or something like it, hosted by Russia or China, and out of reach of US authorities.
Banning speech in the USA never ends well for those doing the banning.
With internet providers banning the IP addresses resulting in the whack-a-mole pirate bay games.
Traditionally the UK ISPs have been loathed to ban any domain name/ip that they weren't either order to do by the courts or wasn't on the Cleanfeed/IWF list.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Are you talking about anyone in particular?
Otherwise this is all a bit “Self Righteous Brothers” of Harry Enfield fame.
There's been a couple of thread headers on here and an awful lot of it on Twitter.
It is in fact quite normal to feel - not pleased, but perhaps vindicated - by Trump’s conspicuous resort to “the fash”, as the kids say.
Trump has been gaslighting all of us for years and years. Read that Snyder article in the NYT.
Yes, and like I say it's all very unedifying. Particularly the finger-pointing towards those who got it wrong. Some people seem more interested in being right - and being seen to be right - than anything else. One presumes on the assumption so that their analysis and insight will be taken more seriously in future.
I have a long list of getting things wrong, including:
(1) GE2015 - I thought Cameron would get c.290-300 seats, not a majority (2) EURef- I thought Remain would win 52:48 (not the other way round) (3) 2016 Presidential - I thought Clinton would win (by an Obama 2012 margin) (4) GE2017 - I thought May would win a majority of 40-50 (5) Tory leadership 2019 - I didn't think Boris would get to the final two (6) GE2019 - I thought Boris might not get a majority (7) Labour leadership 2019/20 - initially, I thought Lisa Nandy rather than Starmer
Now, based on that you might (quite reasonably) conclude you should never listen to my betting tips ever again.
The difference is in each of those the margins were not all that large, and, I changed my position when the facts changed. I got some things right (laying Andrea Leadsom, betting on a GE taking place in 2019, betting on Trump as candidate, laying Rubio, betting on Biden as candidate, laying Emily Thornberry as Labour leader, and betting on Biden for the general etc) but in almost everything else I reversed and modified my position. And that happens with people too.
I change my views and positions all the time, which is why I can make decent money (consistently) from betting. I'm interested in why people were right, sure, but I'm also interested in why they were wrong.
Post-mortems are always more interesting when people go through both what they got right and what they got wrong, and I respect them all the more for it.
I lose respect for them when they start finger-pointing at others, unless they were utterly reckless.
I'm with you on counts 1 to 5 on the charge sheet. I have two other offences to take into consideration: I thought both Trump and Brexit would be worse than they have been so far.
Trump has just nine days left to prove me right by starting a nuclear war. On Brexit, the jury is still to some extent out but as I was expecting more than just a drop in the exchange rate and our credit rating, plus some minor inconveniences in the supermarket, maybe I should just hand myself in and be done with it.
Peter, you're one of the good guys.
I always read your posts with great interest and that's because of your honesty and integrity.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus. Her tweet to that effect went viral.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
I see plenty of people routinely wearing masks outdoors. Maybe 10-20%. Possibly more. And I have friends that do it.
I don’t generally (except in queues). Because I’ve read a lot of the science and it really is very hard to catch outdoors, if you take a few precautions.
The first risk is close proximity to an unmasked person talking directly at you. Easily avoided. Walk alongside to talk, facing forward. 2m apart
The other big risk is heavily panting people rushing past, close to you, leaving aerosols you might inhale. Joggers and cyclists are the main culprits. So avoid them, and avoid places where they congregate.
Take those simple precautions and you are safe. Not perfectly safe, but life never is. You could also get run over by going out. But you still go out.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Are you talking about anyone in particular?
Otherwise this is all a bit “Self Righteous Brothers” of Harry Enfield fame.
There's been a couple of thread headers on here and an awful lot of it on Twitter.
It is in fact quite normal to feel - not pleased, but perhaps vindicated - by Trump’s conspicuous resort to “the fash”, as the kids say.
Trump has been gaslighting all of us for years and years. Read that Snyder article in the NYT.
Yes, and like I say it's all very unedifying. Particularly the finger-pointing towards those who got it wrong. Some people seem more interested in being right - and being seen to be right - than anything else. One presumes on the assumption so that their analysis and insight will be taken more seriously in future.
I have a long list of getting things wrong, including:
(1) GE2015 - I thought Cameron would get c.290-300 seats, not a majority (2) EURef- I thought Remain would win 52:48 (not the other way round) (3) 2016 Presidential - I thought Clinton would win (by an Obama 2012 margin) (4) GE2017 - I thought May would win a majority of 40-50 (5) Tory leadership 2019 - I didn't think Boris would get to the final two (6) GE2019 - I thought Boris might not get a majority (7) Labour leadership 2019/20 - initially, I thought Lisa Nandy rather than Starmer
Now, based on that you might (quite reasonably) conclude you should never listen to my betting tips ever again.
The difference is in each of those the margins were not all that large, and, I changed my position when the facts changed. I got some things right (laying Andrea Leadsom, betting on a GE taking place in 2019, betting on Trump as candidate, laying Rubio, betting on Biden as candidate, laying Emily Thornberry as Labour leader, and betting on Biden for the general etc) but in almost everything else I reversed and modified my position. And that happens with people too.
I change my views and positions all the time, which is why I can make decent money (consistently) from betting. I'm interested in why people were right, sure, but I'm also interested in why they were wrong.
Post-mortems are always more interesting when people go through both what they got right and what they got wrong, and I respect them all the more for it.
I lose respect for them when they start finger-pointing at others, unless they were utterly reckless.
I'm with you on counts 1 to 5 on the charge sheet. I have two other offences to take into consideration: I thought both Trump and Brexit would be worse than they have been so far.
Trump has just nine days left to prove me right by starting a nuclear war. On Brexit, the jury is still to some extent out but as I was expecting more than just a drop in the exchange rate and our credit rating, plus some minor inconveniences in the supermarket, maybe I should just hand myself in and be done with it.
Brexit is long term pain as the customers of companies that export to the EU discover it's cheaper to purchase from our competitors or pay extra and avoid the paperwork and random delays the paperwork creates.
Thing about Brexit is that its September 1939 and its the phoney war. We're now into week 2 and across the country the bits that pre-Brexit used to be rammed with trucks are now eerily quiet. We know the shortages and the chaos are coming, they just haven't got here yet. This country can't continue with intra-EU freight at 15% of normal levels for long.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
I think the fact that it is now winter is the main driver of any difference in outcomes, rather than tinkering at the edges re: garden centres.
My main treat of the week is now a takeaway tuna melt panini at Caffe Nero on a Saturday, and I will be absolutely fuming if the 'hide under the duvet on a public sector furlough' brigade scare the govt into mandating that takeaways be closed. Given I do all the cooking, its more the break than the product! I look forward to it from about Thursday onwards. Quite a difference to trips across Europe buying books, visiting old friends and staying in nice hotels. It is amazing how quickly my life has become so very small.
Fun, though my worry is those who are looking for an excuse to avoid doing something about Trump's criminality (ie most of the Republicans in Congress) will cry about this sort of thing as inflaming divisions by people going after him, which they should not do as it will not 'heal' things. The same way we shouldn't chase bank robbers, since they are already such a maligned group in society it is unfair to hunt them down.
Doesn't matter anymore. The Rubicon has been crossed. All last year the same people who have been tarring BLM and all of its supporters, without exception, as "Marxists", "Anarchists" (same thing happened to the Civil Rights movement in the 60s and 70s BTW) are now crying that tarring all of Trumps supporters with the same brush is somehow wrong and unethical and "inflaming divisions".
No. Capitalism and liberalism allowed Trump to get where he is. He owes everything, everything, to capitalists and liberals on Wall Street and Silicon Valley who allowed him (a) his real estate empire, (b) The Apprentice, (c) Twitter, (d) every other social media platform, all of the things that took him and his message to his base. His anti-free trade stance showed how sceptical he is of capitalism. On 6 January he sought to abolish liberal democracy. So now capitalism and liberalism are scared and will hit back.
The PGA announcement, the Parler thing...just the tip of the iceberg. Marriott announced over the weekend they will no longer donate to any candidate who voted against certification of the results. Forbes announced that they will regard any statement from any company that employs an ex=Trump staffer as being from a questionable source.
Trump got where he is because the liberal establishment, until now, despite protests to the contrary, had done nothing. Now, only now, can Trumpers genuinely claim the liberal establishment is out to get them. Damn right they are. They were, ultimately, pushed too far.
Yes, but my worry is not that he should not face every consequence, personal, political and legal, to which he is due, but that the impeachment won't convict because they'll pretend him facing consequences outside of it is sufficient.
But since the Senate convicting always looked unlikely, so be it. He needs to reap the harvest he has sowed.
He won't be convicted. As I say, though, I don't think that matters anymore. He may not be at risk of a trip to a Federal institution but I think New York State may ensure that his next campaign is run from a nice room in Rikers or Sing Sing.
The government reckons at least 12 million people in England have already had Covid. A huge number. Many of them will have been asymptomatic, so won’t know, but many WILL know, from obvious symptoms, from catching it in an infested household, or, of course, from a test. And we have done tens of millions of tests.
Let’s say just half those 12 million KNOW they’ve had Covid and survived. That’s 6 million people who are now, very likely, immune. And every day thousands more are added to this crowd of immune people, through recovery or vaccination.
If I were definitely immune, unable to catch the virus and much less likely to hand it on (especially as time passes), I’d be very tempted to resume a more normal life as well. Meet other immune friends. Have a life. Have sex. Are these the people now going out and about?
Could be. And I’m not sure it’s even moral to keep these people locked indoors, going mental, if there is no more risk to them, and, increasingly, they are no risk to others.
A couple of days ago someone assured me that Smithson is the only contributor worth his salt. Yesterday's thread header debacle weighs against that view, and I see we're back to not even proofreading with today's effort. Poor.
Other sites are available.
True, the best of which learn from and are improved by measured and specific criticism from their readership.
I think you make a fair point about the thread headers not always being proof-read in the past....
It is possible to point out mistakes a little more gracefully, though.
(The reaction to @Mary_Batty wasn't the most civil, either.)
I don't think anyone was particularly uncivil.
They were wrong, in the sense that just because something is free doesn't mean you should always stay quiet when you see flaws. Wrong, in the sense that I have only complaints about this site, when I only two days ago I was told I was being a bit over the top in my praise of another header. And really quite silly in the response that was pulled straight from the stock of unthinking counter-criticism: "if you don't like it, leave." But not uncivil.
On that last point, it's always struck me as an odd position to hold, that there are only two states of being: devotion or renunciation. I think most of us most of the time don't see most things in that way. You can appreciate something and criticise it, and you can dislike something and praise it.
There is a space in which we're allowed to be, somewhere between tearing each others' clothes off and tearing each others' heads off.
Lockdown "breaking" is a riff on a conversation we have been having on here since 23 March 2020.
and Parler's verified citizen approach means a lot of the posts are directly attributable to identifiable people.
Actually this highlights one of the issues with the current attempts to gag these people by removing or limiting these platforms. It won't work.
All they will do is find a platform outside the USA and beyond the ability of US companies and authorities to control. I suspect this has already happened. This means they will continue their discussions and planning unhindered and without any oversight from the US authorities. This is on top of the fact that it gives them the opportunity - falsely of course - to claim the US is suppressing their free speech.
I don't think there is necessarily any answer to this, at least not one that has good outcomes.
Quite. What we’ll end up with is Parler, or something like it, hosted by Russia or China, and out of reach of US authorities.
Banning speech in the USA never ends well for those doing the banning.
With internet providers banning the IP addresses resulting in the whack-a-mole pirate bay games.
With the proliferation of VPNs I am not sure that will have much, if any, impact.
People who can work out how to use a VPN must be like 1% of Parler's current userbase max.
I don't think action against Parler will go that far though.
Looks like it already has. According to the link below Parler is gone.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
Whitty was saying this morning that it took 10-21 days for the vaccine protection to kick in.
Exactly. Let's say mid-February to get the most vulnerable jabbed; that's early March for them to be protected.
Except that isn't enough by itself; the under 70's are perfectly capable of collapsing the NHS by themselves. I've seen the suggestion of about 25 million immune being enough to take a meaningful bite out of R. It will happen, and remarkably soon. But not immediately.
And right now, we need something immediate.
Also don't forget that the protection isn't perfect. 30% of over 70s are also still far more than enough to collapse the NHS.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I thought Haynes Manuals were no longer in print but I'll look one up for some handy hints.
The government reckons at least 12 million people in England have already had Covid. A huge number. Many of them will have been asymptomatic, so won’t know, but many WILL know, from obvious symptoms, from catching it in an infested household, or, of course, from a test. And we have done tens of millions of tests.
Let’s say just half those 12 million KNOW they’ve had Covid and survived. That’s 6 million people who are now, very likely, immune. And every day thousands more are added to this crowd of immune people, through recovery or vaccination.
If I were definitely immune, unable to catch the virus and much less likely to hand it on (especially as time passes), I’d be very tempted to resume a more normal life as well. Meet other immune friends. Have a life. Have sex. Are these the people now going out and about?
Could be. And I’m not sure it’s even moral to keep these people locked indoors, going mental, if there is no more risk to them, and, increasingly, they are no risk to others.
Might be something in that.
I’m right. I’m sure of it.
I am certainly more relaxed. I figure I am immune and my family is immune.
In practice though this simply means that I don’t get twitchy when someone approaches too closely outside.
The government reckons at least 12 million people in England have already had Covid. A huge number. Many of them will have been asymptomatic, so won’t know, but many WILL know, from obvious symptoms, from catching it in an infested household, or, of course, from a test. And we have done tens of millions of tests.
Let’s say just half those 12 million KNOW they’ve had Covid and survived. That’s 6 million people who are now, very likely, immune. And every day thousands more are added to this crowd of immune people, through recovery or vaccination.
If I were definitely immune, unable to catch the virus and much less likely to hand it on (especially as time passes), I’d be very tempted to resume a more normal life as well. Meet other immune friends. Have a life. Have sex. Are these the people now going out and about?
Could be. And I’m not sure it’s even moral to keep these people locked indoors, going mental, if there is no more risk to them, and, increasingly, they are no risk to others.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Are you talking about anyone in particular?
Otherwise this is all a bit “Self Righteous Brothers” of Harry Enfield fame.
There's been a couple of thread headers on here and an awful lot of it on Twitter.
It is in fact quite normal to feel - not pleased, but perhaps vindicated - by Trump’s conspicuous resort to “the fash”, as the kids say.
Trump has been gaslighting all of us for years and years. Read that Snyder article in the NYT.
Yes, and like I say it's all very unedifying. Particularly the finger-pointing towards those who got it wrong. Some people seem more interested in being right - and being seen to be right - than anything else. One presumes on the assumption so that their analysis and insight will be taken more seriously in future.
I have a long list of getting things wrong, including:
(1) GE2015 - I thought Cameron would get c.290-300 seats, not a majority (2) EURef- I thought Remain would win 52:48 (not the other way round) (3) 2016 Presidential - I thought Clinton would win (by an Obama 2012 margin) (4) GE2017 - I thought May would win a majority of 40-50 (5) Tory leadership 2019 - I didn't think Boris would get to the final two (6) GE2019 - I thought Boris might not get a majority (7) Labour leadership 2019/20 - initially, I thought Lisa Nandy rather than Starmer
Now, based on that you might (quite reasonably) conclude you should never listen to my betting tips ever again.
The difference is in each of those the margins were not all that large, and, I changed my position when the facts changed. I got some things right (laying Andrea Leadsom, betting on a GE taking place in 2019, betting on Trump as candidate, laying Rubio, betting on Biden as candidate, laying Emily Thornberry as Labour leader, and betting on Biden for the general etc) but in almost everything else I reversed and modified my position. And that happens with people too.
I change my views and positions all the time, which is why I can make decent money (consistently) from betting. I'm interested in why people were right, sure, but I'm also interested in why they were wrong.
Post-mortems are always more interesting when people go through both what they got right and what they got wrong, and I respect them all the more for it.
I lose respect for them when they start finger-pointing at others, unless they were utterly reckless.
I'm with you on counts 1 to 5 on the charge sheet. I have two other offences to take into consideration: I thought both Trump and Brexit would be worse than they have been so far.
Trump has just nine days left to prove me right by starting a nuclear war. On Brexit, the jury is still to some extent out but as I was expecting more than just a drop in the exchange rate and our credit rating, plus some minor inconveniences in the supermarket, maybe I should just hand myself in and be done with it.
Peter, you're one of the good guys.
I always read your posts with great interest and that's because of your honesty and integrity.
My news year's resolution is to do something about that but evidently not much success so far.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
I think the fact that it is now winter is the main driver of any difference in outcomes, rather than tinkering at the edges re: garden centres.
My main treat of the week is now a takeaway tuna melt panini at Caffe Nero on a Saturday, and I will be absolutely fuming if the 'hide under the duvet on a public sector furlough' brigade scare the govt into mandating that takeaways be closed. Given I do all the cooking, its more the break than the product! I look forward to it from about Thursday onwards. Quite a difference to trips across Europe buying books, visiting old friends and staying in nice hotels. It is amazing how quickly my life has become so very small.
Twitter claims they plan to end support bubbles.
Madness. Quite literally. Have they asked the psychiatric service (already under severe strain) an opinion on plunging millions of single people into complete social isolation (unless they have to physically go to work)?
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Very true in bold. I'm probably the closest we have on here and eye still get plenty wrong. Not for quite some time, it has to be said, but this only means that I'm due a big bad call. Wonder what it will be? I'll try to spot it in advance and if so I promise not to make it. And your point about people being "half pleased" that Trump incited a riot? Can speak only for myself but yes I am. It's not about "being proved right", though, it's because imo the last week has definitely finished him in politics and I welcome this.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
Are you talking about anyone in particular?
Otherwise this is all a bit “Self Righteous Brothers” of Harry Enfield fame.
There's been a couple of thread headers on here and an awful lot of it on Twitter.
It is in fact quite normal to feel - not pleased, but perhaps vindicated - by Trump’s conspicuous resort to “the fash”, as the kids say.
Trump has been gaslighting all of us for years and years. Read that Snyder article in the NYT.
Yes, and like I say it's all very unedifying. Particularly the finger-pointing towards those who got it wrong. Some people seem more interested in being right - and being seen to be right - than anything else. One presumes on the assumption so that their analysis and insight will be taken more seriously in future.
I have a long list of getting things wrong, including:
(1) GE2015 - I thought Cameron would get c.290-300 seats, not a majority (2) EURef- I thought Remain would win 52:48 (not the other way round) (3) 2016 Presidential - I thought Clinton would win (by an Obama 2012 margin) (4) GE2017 - I thought May would win a majority of 40-50 (5) Tory leadership 2019 - I didn't think Boris would get to the final two (6) GE2019 - I thought Boris might not get a majority (7) Labour leadership 2019/20 - initially, I thought Lisa Nandy rather than Starmer
Now, based on that you might (quite reasonably) conclude you should never listen to my betting tips ever again.
The difference is in each of those the margins were not all that large, and, I changed my position when the facts changed. I got some things right (laying Andrea Leadsom, betting on a GE taking place in 2019, betting on Trump as candidate, laying Rubio, betting on Biden as candidate, laying Emily Thornberry as Labour leader, and betting on Biden for the general etc) but in almost everything else I reversed and modified my position. And that happens with people too.
I change my views and positions all the time, which is why I can make decent money (consistently) from betting. I'm interested in why people were right, sure, but I'm also interested in why they were wrong.
Post-mortems are always more interesting when people go through both what they got right and what they got wrong, and I respect them all the more for it.
I lose respect for them when they start finger-pointing at others, unless they were utterly reckless.
I'm with you on counts 1 to 5 on the charge sheet. I have two other offences to take into consideration: I thought both Trump and Brexit would be worse than they have been so far.
Trump has just nine days left to prove me right by starting a nuclear war. On Brexit, the jury is still to some extent out but as I was expecting more than just a drop in the exchange rate and our credit rating, plus some minor inconveniences in the supermarket, maybe I should just hand myself in and be done with it.
Brexit is long term pain as the customers of companies that export to the EU discover it's cheaper to purchase from our competitors or pay extra and avoid the paperwork and random delays the paperwork creates.
Thing about Brexit is that its September 1939 and its the phoney war. We're now into week 2 and across the country the bits that pre-Brexit used to be rammed with trucks are now eerily quiet. We know the shortages and the chaos are coming, they just haven't got here yet. This country can't continue with intra-EU freight at 15% of normal levels for long.
The sad thing is that Covid makes this slow disaster invisible as Covid will be blamed for it rather than Brexit.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
I think the fact that it is now winter is the main driver of any difference in outcomes, rather than tinkering at the edges re: garden centres.
My main treat of the week is now a takeaway tuna melt panini at Caffe Nero on a Saturday, and I will be absolutely fuming if the 'hide under the duvet on a public sector furlough' brigade scare the govt into mandating that takeaways be closed. Given I do all the cooking, its more the break than the product! I look forward to it from about Thursday onwards. Quite a difference to trips across Europe buying books, visiting old friends and staying in nice hotels. It is amazing how quickly my life has become so very small.
Twitter claims they plan to end support bubbles.
That is bonkers. Support bubbles (the proper ones) are vital.
My mother is in one with me and they can fuck right off if they think that will change.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
The PM wants the G1. Britannia Uber Alles. Rule makers that everyone else will obey.
"No he doesn't" whine the parrots. Erm yes. "Rule makers not rule takers" is putting us on a pedestal. EVERY country obeys rules set by others. What kind of wazzock thinks we are somehow different, above these forriners, better than all of them?
Bollocks.
No country obey's rules are forced set by others apart from supplicants. America doesn't obey rules set by France. Canada doesn't obey rules set by Germany. Japan doesn't obey rules set by China.
"Ah but if I want to trade with France I need to meet French rules" you cry - yes of course you do. Because that now is de jure French rules that apply in France. No s**t Sherlock. Doesn't mean the French rules apply to the UK, just that someone who wants to trade needs to meet the relevant rules - if you don't want to meet the relevant rules then don't trade. Your choice.
"Ah but what about NATO" you cry. NATO is a common and fixed set of rules we ourselves set when we choose to be members. The rules can't be changed by a majority vote without us.
The only exception I can think of is the UNSC but we are veto members of that.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
I think the fact that it is now winter is the main driver of any difference in outcomes, rather than tinkering at the edges re: garden centres.
My main treat of the week is now a takeaway tuna melt panini at Caffe Nero on a Saturday, and I will be absolutely fuming if the 'hide under the duvet on a public sector furlough' brigade scare the govt into mandating that takeaways be closed. Given I do all the cooking, its more the break than the product! I look forward to it from about Thursday onwards. Quite a difference to trips across Europe buying books, visiting old friends and staying in nice hotels. It is amazing how quickly my life has become so very small.
Twitter claims they plan to end support bubbles.
That really is a dumb idea. The elderly and vulnerable cannot just be left on their own to fend for themselves for weeks on end. Even those who are in reasonable health need some sort of company and someone checking on them. If you bring in such a rule then anyone with any sense or compassion will ignore it. So what is the point?
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don`t see why a piece of writing has to have only one point.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
When you realise you're wrong about something, it's usually better just to say simply and not use it as a platform to swipe at the people who were right. You'll find it easier to extract concessions out of other people when they are wrong if they remember you being humble when you were wrong.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
It is a fantastic book and I loved it. When I was twelve. It's hardly SK Tremayne now is it?
Citing it as great writing is the same as citing Harry Potter as great writing.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus. Her tweet to that effect went viral.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
I see plenty of people routinely wearing masks outdoors. Maybe 10-20%. Possibly more. And I have friends that do it.
I don’t generally (except in queues). Because I’ve read a lot of the science and it really is very hard to catch outdoors, if you take a few precautions.
The first risk is close proximity to an unmasked person talking directly at you. Easily avoided. Walk alongside to talk, facing forward. 2m apart
The other big risk is heavily panting people rushing past, close to you, leaving aerosols you might inhale. Joggers and cyclists are the main culprits. So avoid them, and avoid places where they congregate.
Take those simple precautions and you are safe. Not perfectly safe, but life never is. You could also get run over by going out. But you still go out.
Just been to post a letter (can't do sympathy cards over the internet) and nearly all of the twenty of so people I saw were masked. As I was.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
I don't mind people spounting off about how they were right about seeing the threat that Trump posed, if they did (and if their reasoning was right) - as long as they have a similar record of flagging up equivalent threats from elsewhere on the political spectrum too.
There are no equivalent threats in any developed country anywhere else on the political spectrum. There's a genre of journalism where you pretend that there's an equivalence somewhere for the sake of balance, but I don't think it convinces anyone.
Bizarre whataboutery from Herdson. There are some really mad takes from this Trump biz.
It's not whataboutery and it's not bizarre.
The point is about consistency and judgement. Someone who has railed against Trump for years might well have done so because they understood his nature, his methods and his threat. Fair call. Chapeau.
On the other hand, they might have done it because he is a crass boor and aligned to the populist right - neither of which is necessary nor sufficient of themselves (or even together), to point to his true threat to the system and to freedoms and safety.
Where the critic's reasoning is the latter, it's much more likely that (1) they'll have given similar but misguided threats about many other politicians on the right, and seen such predictions go wrong; and (2) not made any predictions of that nature about others who do pose systemic threats but do so from a different angle of attack. The context and the reasoning of the critic is essential to understand whether they actually had good judgement or were simply a stopped clock at the right time.
This is angel-counting guff while the tanks are circling Berlin as far as I’m concerned.
The problem is Trump and the safety of democracy in the USA, not phantoms from “different angles of attack”, whatever they are supposed to be.
If people want to feel smugly vindicated in their antipathy to Trump, more power to their elbow. His anti-democratic instincts may not have been completely obvious but it was clear from the outset that he was happy to whip up hate against minorities, immigrants, the disabled, women etc.
He was always more than “just a crass boor”.
The reason Trump has got so far is theatre and performance art.
His threats across the board were obvious from 2015 ; a casual attitude to democratic institutions, a brutal attitude to women, a vengeful and bullying trail of destruction right through his corporate career.
During the 1980s, he was was also held as a poster child of the new Reaganite dream of purified, straight-ahead capitalism, through scores of magazine covers, articles and adoring profiles. The monstrous bullying was obvious even then, but in the atmosphere of 1980s and early 1990s America that was often considered a good thing.
The problem, across all this spectrums of warnings and provocations, was his nudge and wink irony. The continually disorientating, provocative theatre allowed a lot of people, even previously sober British politicians, to both feel the temporary thrill of absolute transgression - but then also look at his winks, and the often gap between word and action, and say : it's just you, smug worthy liberals ! You're getting riled *because you're too precious and too disconnected, not because there's a real threat*. This outrage and fear from liberals increasingly appeared to his supporters of all types as their lack of smarts. Gradually this process took some of his fans from gleeful watchers of the Apprentice, to contempt for everything careful, liberal and unstreetwise and unaware , to smashing down the gates of the Capitol.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
I think the fact that it is now winter is the main driver of any difference in outcomes, rather than tinkering at the edges re: garden centres.
My main treat of the week is now a takeaway tuna melt panini at Caffe Nero on a Saturday, and I will be absolutely fuming if the 'hide under the duvet on a public sector furlough' brigade scare the govt into mandating that takeaways be closed. Given I do all the cooking, its more the break than the product! I look forward to it from about Thursday onwards. Quite a difference to trips across Europe buying books, visiting old friends and staying in nice hotels. It is amazing how quickly my life has become so very small.
Twitter claims they plan to end support bubbles.
That is bonkers. Support bubbles (the proper ones) are vital.
My mother is in one with me and they can fuck right off if they think that will change.
Absolutely.
I don’t think they will or can end support bubbles, because of the terrible effects on mental health. If they do, like you, I will just ignore them
What I fear they might do is end the rule allowing you to meet one other person outside. If they do, that’s my social life gone, so I’ll probably ignore that, too, rather than killing myself out of loneliness
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Comments
Most of us (and I include myself) are really not consistently great at forecasting.
The point about Trump is that is was pretty damn clear from the start that he had zero respect for democratic institutions. Thinking that something like last week's events might happen is not the basis for presenting oneself as a super forecaster.
However, given our ages, it's equally likely for us to say how relieved we are to see each other again six months later, at the beginning of the next season!
Violets are blue
If you J class me
I can do her in the poo
In July when mandatory mask wearing was introduced we were at 3-400 cases a day, we are now at 50-60,000 cases. I do not have a libertarian bias. I just want things introduced that will work. I understand that correlation does not equate to causation but based on those figures it has to be hard to argue that mandatory mask wearing has helped limit infections. Up to July we had a system in place which had worked and had massively reduced infections, we changed it and now look at us. There are obviolusly many other factors but I think that mask wearing has made the situation worse. The Government are now realising what I have been saying for ages that peoples behaviour in supermarkets is causing infections to rise.
Just take out 'has committed'?
Roses are red, violets purple
Please please J Class us
For she married me
The latter might be erroneous, but I can see most of the Republican Congress, who either still approve of Trump probably just think things got out of hand, or hate him but cannot see the advantage to acting, thinking it.
Or perhaps it was the other way round?
Either way, that was a hell of a contraindicator, all right.
"No present?" she asked, looking miffed
In fact I was sensing a rift
So I entered this dirge in
The contest from Virgin
Hoping to win her a gift.
(it wasn't clear at the time what the prize would be. I should also clarify that the whole thing about my wife being miffed about not getting a St Valentines day present was artistic license. Getting Virgin Atlantic's name into the poem was odious brown nosing but hey it worked).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be-foFX192I
It takes a *special* mindset to think the answer is (b).
The point is about consistency and judgement. Someone who has railed against Trump for years might well have done so because they understood his nature, his methods and his threat. Fair call. Chapeau.
On the other hand, they might have done it because he is a crass boor and aligned to the populist right - neither of which is necessary nor sufficient of themselves (or even together), to point to his true threat to the system and to freedoms and safety.
Where the critic's reasoning is the latter, it's much more likely that (1) they'll have given similar but misguided threats about many other politicians on the right, and seen such predictions go wrong; and (2) not made any predictions of that nature about others who do pose systemic threats but do so from a different angle of attack. The context and the reasoning of the critic is essential to understand whether they actually had good judgement or were simply a stopped clock at the right time.
Me: "How do you think you got it?"
Them: "Either on the touch pad of the petrol station pump or at the supermarket."
I'm not really sure what your point here is though. You're 'uneasy about with criticism of him is that he was elected president' by many millions. What does the second part have to do with the first? The winner, as he was last time and Biden is this time, should still be criticised for being a total dick even if they are backed by tens of millions of people.
Boris Johnson (ok technically, his party) was the choice of millions of people too, but if he does something stupid or terrible it is ok to criticise and, yes, even sneer at him, if that is warranted.
I think you are making the point about not writing off or belittling all his supporters and those who voted for him even though he is a huge dick? Which is a fair point others have made as well, but I don't see how that translates into uneasiness at criticism of him because he was elected president and millions back him. Being the 'democratic choice' doesn't inure people from being sneered at if it is warranted.
Certainly all those who voted for him cannot be treated as deplorables, but that is a separate matter.
Except that isn't enough by itself; the under 70's are perfectly capable of collapsing the NHS by themselves. I've seen the suggestion of about 25 million immune being enough to take a meaningful bite out of R. It will happen, and remarkably soon. But not immediately.
And right now, we need something immediate.
Trump has just nine days left to prove me right by starting a nuclear war. On Brexit, the jury is still to some extent out but as I was expecting more than just a drop in the exchange rate and our credit rating, plus some minor inconveniences in the supermarket, maybe I should just hand myself in and be done with it.
Banning speech in the USA never ends well for those doing the banning.
https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1348543373666377731?s=20
https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1348575665549942785?s=20
In fact both myself and Robert Smithson, prior to his election, thought he was full of hot air and offensive rhetoric but would actually govern as a pretty mainstream Republican once elected, constrained and guided by the GOP.
Wrong.
I also thought that whilst his ego couldn't handle ever admitting he lost the election, and would always yell fraud, he would leave it at hot air and never cross the Rubicon of actually encouraging an attack on the Capitol.
Wrong.
Of course now it's easy to find rhetoric that pointed to it which was true, but I didn't believe he would really be that reckless or stupid at the time.
Mask wearing compliance in this country is piss poor. Currently it runs at barely 60%. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom?view=total-deaths&tab=trend
It is CLEARLY a factor in reducing covid spread in countries where suppression of the virus is working. As you would expect with a virus that transmits by aerosol as well as droplet.
I actually had some moments of doubt about his willingness to try and make things better once he was in power and he started actually doing stuff. I still thought he was a self serving scumbag but started to wonder if possibly he would actually achieve some of the things he promised.
But at no point right up to the last week or so did I think he would go so far as to attempt to mount a coup. That wasn't even on my radar. Even as it was happening it wasn't really on my radar. I thought it was idiots acting on their own rather than anything organised - a view that was reinforced by how poorly they apparently executed it.
Now I have changed my view. All the evidence points, for me, to the fact that trump was involved in trying to overthrow the Government of the US. I was wrong about him on this. He is far more deranged than I ever thought possible. I will not breathe easy until he is finally out of office one way or another.
No. Capitalism and liberalism allowed Trump to get where he is. He owes everything, everything, to capitalists and liberals on Wall Street and Silicon Valley who allowed him (a) his real estate empire, (b) The Apprentice, (c) Twitter, (d) every other social media platform, all of the things that took him and his message to his base. His anti-free trade stance showed how sceptical he is of capitalism. On 6 January he sought to abolish liberal democracy. So now capitalism and liberalism are scared and will hit back.
The PGA announcement, the Parler thing...just the tip of the iceberg. Marriott announced over the weekend they will no longer donate to any candidate who voted against certification of the results. Forbes announced that they will regard any statement from any company that employs an ex=Trump staffer as being from a questionable source.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2021/01/07/a-truth-reckoning-why-were-holding-those-who-lied-for-trump-accountable/
Trump got where he is because the liberal establishment, until now, despite protests to the contrary, had done nothing. Now, only now, can Trumpers genuinely claim the liberal establishment is out to get them. Damn right they are. They were, ultimately, pushed too far.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus. Her tweet to that effect went viral.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Violets are bluish
If it wasn't for Christmas
We'd all be Jewish
(Rag Mag c1990)
The problem is Trump and the safety of democracy in the USA, not phantoms from “different angles of attack”, whatever they are supposed to be.
If people want to feel smugly vindicated in their antipathy to Trump, more power to their elbow. His anti-democratic instincts may not have been completely obvious but it was clear from the outset that he was happy to whip up hate against minorities, immigrants, the disabled, women etc.
He was always more than “just a crass boor”.
But maybe it's not true?
For I'm the only one who knows
I could never compete with you.
But since the Senate convicting always looked unlikely, so be it. He needs to reap the harvest he has sowed.
They were wrong, in the sense that just because something is free doesn't mean you should always stay quiet when you see flaws. Wrong, in the sense that I have only complaints about this site, when I only two days ago I was told I was being a bit over the top in my praise of another header. And really quite silly in the response that was pulled straight from the stock of unthinking counter-criticism: "if you don't like it, leave." But not uncivil.
On that last point, it's always struck me as an odd position to hold, that there are only two states of being: devotion or renunciation. I think most of us most of the time don't see most things in that way. You can appreciate something and criticise it, and you can dislike something and praise it.
There is a space in which we're allowed to be, somewhere between tearing each others' clothes off and tearing each others' heads off.
The government reckons at least 12 million people in England have already had Covid. A huge number. Many of them will have been asymptomatic, so won’t know, but many WILL know, from obvious symptoms, from catching it in an infested household, or, of course, from a test. And we have done tens of millions of tests.
Let’s say just half those 12 million KNOW they’ve had Covid and survived. That’s 6 million people who are now, very likely, immune. And every day thousands more are added to this crowd of immune people, through recovery or vaccination.
If I were definitely immune, unable to catch the virus and much less likely to hand it on (especially as time passes), I’d be very tempted to resume a more normal life as well. Meet other immune friends. Have a life. Have sex. Are these the people now going out and about?
Could be. And I’m not sure it’s even moral to keep these people locked indoors, going mental, if there is no more risk to them, and, increasingly, they are no risk to others.
My main treat of the week is now a takeaway tuna melt panini at Caffe Nero on a Saturday, and I will be absolutely fuming if the 'hide under the duvet on a public sector furlough' brigade scare the govt into mandating that takeaways be closed. Given I do all the cooking, its more the break than the product! I look forward to it from about Thursday onwards. Quite a difference to trips across Europe buying books, visiting old friends and staying in nice hotels. It is amazing how quickly my life has become so very small.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don't think action against Parler will go that far though.
(1) Matthew Godwin used to called Trump an American Nationalist, and not a Fascist. Now, he is going hmm... maybe he was and is a fascist, and has been widely pilloried for it. However, I respect him more, not less, because he's revisited the evidence and publicly changed his mind. That takes moral courage and guts, so I will be listening to him even more in future.
(2) Zion Lights was an XR spokeswoman. I thought a right eco-loon. Andrew Neil challenged her on his show about nuclear power. She didn't have a good answer. She looked silly, and I think I joined in the teasing too. Almost a year later she conceded the point and now sees nuclear as part of the energy mix that's crucial to (realistically) getting to net zero, and has taken a lot of abuse from the XR left for it. I respect her more for it, not less.
(3) Daniel Hannan used to be (IMHO) the best advocate of the case for Leave and its best orator and author. I read all his books. I met him several times. I even gave him a lift in my car. He was one of my heroes. However, such was his lack of contrition or reflection on what he'd said in the past after the vote that I have since lost respect for him. I still find him an interesting voice, but I don't trust or respect him in anything like the degree I used to do.
It's about admitting mistakes, identifying what part of it was wrong (and why), but recognising it's still fine to correct or modify an argument without conceding the entire principle.
Too many people confuse the latter with the former and so obstinately stick to their original line regardless.
They fear humiliation. They actually lose respect.
Now bog off.
JFC.
I always read your posts with great interest and that's because of your honesty and integrity.
I see plenty of people routinely wearing masks outdoors. Maybe 10-20%. Possibly more. And I have friends that do it.
I don’t generally (except in queues). Because I’ve read a lot of the science and it really is very hard to catch outdoors, if you take a few precautions.
The first risk is close proximity to an unmasked person talking directly at you. Easily avoided. Walk alongside to talk, facing forward. 2m apart
The other big risk is heavily panting people rushing past, close to you, leaving aerosols you might inhale. Joggers and cyclists are the main culprits. So avoid them, and avoid places where they congregate.
Take those simple precautions and you are safe. Not perfectly safe, but life never is. You could also get run over by going out. But you still go out.
Not to worry. We're led by a man with the virtue of Trajan, the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, and the iron discipline of Aurelian.
....
I figure I am immune and my family is immune.
In practice though this simply means that I don’t get twitchy when someone approaches too closely outside.
Thank you anyway.
My mother is in one with me and they can fuck right off if they think that will change.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
No country obey's rules are forced set by others apart from supplicants. America doesn't obey rules set by France. Canada doesn't obey rules set by Germany. Japan doesn't obey rules set by China.
"Ah but if I want to trade with France I need to meet French rules" you cry - yes of course you do. Because that now is de jure French rules that apply in France. No s**t Sherlock. Doesn't mean the French rules apply to the UK, just that someone who wants to trade needs to meet the relevant rules - if you don't want to meet the relevant rules then don't trade. Your choice.
"Ah but what about NATO" you cry. NATO is a common and fixed set of rules we ourselves set when we choose to be members. The rules can't be changed by a majority vote without us.
The only exception I can think of is the UNSC but we are veto members of that.
https://twitter.com/petermacmahon/status/1348582191777898496?s=20
And Nery`s doesn't claim to be a nurse.
Citing it as great writing is the same as citing Harry Potter as great writing.
As I was.
His threats across the board were obvious from 2015 ; a casual attitude to democratic institutions, a brutal attitude to women, a vengeful and bullying trail of destruction right through his corporate career.
During the 1980s, he was was also held as a poster child of the new Reaganite dream of purified, straight-ahead capitalism, through scores of magazine covers, articles and adoring profiles. The monstrous bullying was obvious even then, but in the atmosphere of 1980s and early 1990s America that was often considered a good thing.
The problem, across all this spectrums of warnings and provocations, was his nudge and wink irony. The continually disorientating, provocative theatre allowed a lot of people, even previously sober British politicians, to both feel the temporary thrill of absolute transgression - but then also look at his winks, and the often gap between word and action, and say : it's just you, smug worthy liberals ! You're getting riled *because you're too precious and too disconnected, not because there's a real threat*. This outrage and fear from liberals increasingly appeared to his supporters of all types as their lack of smarts. Gradually this process took some of his fans from gleeful watchers of the Apprentice, to contempt for everything careful, liberal and unstreetwise and unaware , to smashing down the gates of the Capitol.
I don’t think they will or can end support bubbles, because of the terrible effects on mental health. If they do, like you, I will just ignore them
What I fear they might do is end the rule allowing you to meet one other person outside. If they do, that’s my social life gone, so I’ll probably ignore that, too, rather than killing myself out of loneliness