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Is Biden going honour his commitment to make Washington DC a state in its own right? – politicalbett
Is Biden going honour his commitment to make Washington DC a state in its own right? – politicalbetting.com
One of the policy commitments that all the Democratic primary challengers were pressed on last year was whether they supported the campaign to make Washington DC a state in its own right. Biden agreed.
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Up before 5:18 am today.
How can he do this when a theme for many of his activists has been unequal representation between States?
Would eg Puerto Rico (pop 5x) not come first?
Here be dragons?
New word report on Radio 5.
"Opportunitism".
It seems to be Adrian Giles' fault.
Israel over 40% now, and UAE over 25%, should start to see some useful data on effectiveness in the next few weeks.
I have no problem with coining new words providing they're not execrable. That's a good example of the latter.
I have a number of other pet hates. 'Connectivity' is the kind of geek-speak I loathe and 'optics' is another as in, 'the optics of this don't look good.' Yuck.
Oh and another which really grates is the waffly and self-important phrase, 'That said,' beloved of some thread writers on here.
The art of good prose is not to cause the reader to stop and think about the writer.
This one is a bastardisation of "opportunism".
The last one I recall of that quality was "intereactive website".
Where they take aim at a word, and land somewhere slightly different.
Hopefully the UK will get the balance right: restrictions plus vaccinations now, mean greater freedom for everyone in just a month or two.
I do wish all my fellow remainers, who are so wont to leap on every little Brexit problem, would have the good grace to acknowledge this. And the massive contrast with the shambles in the EU.
'Pre-planning' is intensely irritating. Although not quite as stupidly irksome as 'pre-prepared'.
What other kind of sodding prepared is there? The prefix is already in the damned word!
It's like when you're running a half marathon, and pass the 15k mark and realize that - yes you're knackered - but there's only 6k to go. It's that point when you know you're getting through this.
In the case of coronavirus, it's the point where you realise that restrictions are on a downward slope.
It's the light at the end of the tunnel.
And we're not there yet. But we now have hope that we'll see that light in a month or two. Cases are falling. More that a tenth of the population have had at least one dose. We're not there yet. But that moment of relief, while it's not in sight... Well, at least it's conceivable now.
As the vaccine rollout progresses, there’s going to be a number of quite sensitive points that will need addressing, for example whether to allow the vaccinated to travel or socialise when half the country is still waiting for their jabs, and many in politics and media are still failing to comprehend that most of the restrictions are going to have to remain in place until well into summer.
Here in UAE, they’ve cancelled all live entertainment and reduced capacity limits in bars, restaurants and gyms just this week, due to a recent spike in cases to a U.K. equivalent of around 20k cases per day. Still what we’d call Tier 1 in the U.K. though, pretty much everything is open except nightclubs and sports crowds.
We have a very unusual demographic here though, skewed very young. The number of deaths is still in single figures per day, even with cases in the thousands.
However with a lead of 103 they may already have enough.
Also to @NickPalmer on the previous thread, for his efforts in persuading the community he serves that viruses and vaccines aren’t political, and that you don’t have to love the current PM to get jabbed!
Do you mean, do vaccines work? Or, does this vaccine work? Or, the 12-week Pfizer interval? Or, if vaccination will stop transmission? Or that mutations might body-swerve the vaccine?
The first two are incontrovertibly answered by data.
The 12-week interval question is interesting. Some really good pieces on the Guardian online today. The balance seems to be swinging towards favourable. The efficacy of the vaccine doesn't appear to drop too steeply in the 12 week interval.
The transmission one seems to me moot. The vaccines prevent you contracting the virus in c. 95% of cases. And even if you do get it, it seems to be a lot less serious.
As for mutations, at the moment latest data appears reasonably encouraging. We may well end up with something like the seasonal flu jab.
https://www.tes.com/news/school-re-openings-will-not-be-after-half-term
The TES have an insider at the DfE and so far every single one of their reports has been bang on the money.
Although the source’s grammar is not all it might be. Schools *will* be going back after half term - because the alternative is to go back *before* half term. What they mean is, not *immediately* after half term.
Encouraging though that they are at last considering rotas, blended learning and priority groups. What a shame they didn’t consider that in October.
The main issues now are defending our progress by minimising importation of the disease; for each of us to try to do our best not to catch the damned thing whilst waiting to be inoculated; and how quickly the program can get around the whole population.
Nonetheless, I think we're going to get there. It'll be a long, depressing slog, especially through the remainder of the cold, wet, dark and miserable Winter. But all the same, we're going to get there.
If you vaccinate teachers in order to protect them and get children back in school that's good for the teachers. It doesn't stop the children meeting and spreading it back to their homes.
It’s not a term completely without meaning. In cooking there is the preparation you do just before chucking everything in the pan; there is also that which you did a day or more before.
It’s the distinction between preparation work done as part of the activity, and that which is.... pre-prepared.
That said,* there is a second part to this. If teachers (who have infection rates roughly three times those of the population at large) are vaccinated, that makes reopening on a rota system a great deal easier. One of the things that was bringing us to our knees was the amount of absence through isolation or illness. I was fortunate I only had two days of it - some colleagues were off for a fortnight on three occasions.
That was also buggering school budgets like a reluctant Turkish conscript due to the amount of cover required. Don’t be surprised to see Academy chains going bust in the next twelve months. Again, vaccination would mitigate this.
*I am naughty, but hopefully not waffly.
If it’s necessary to exclude the Capitol to keep the move constitutional, couldn’t they just restrict the District of Columbia to the Capitol and hand the rest back to Maryland?
That would solve all the problems at a stroke.
Admittedly it wouldn’t give the Dems two more senators, but they can then concentrate on statehood for Puerto Rico, which probably would.
https://twitter.com/StuartKLau/status/1353472060048207872
Penultimate, antepenultimate, and preantepenultimate days are different days. Preparations are all things you do beforehand.
I do worry somewhat about the long term effects in other ways. For example, if we keep schools shut until May, we’ll probably have to cancel next year’s exams as well. This might, in the longer term, see us get rid of the current Cummings inspired mess and get proper, fair and rigorous assessment systems in place that don’t just rely on an exam set to criteria decided by a civil servant who appears (judging by their written work) to have a drinking problem.
But it would completely bugger current Year 10 and Year 12, as we will simply not have enough data on them to make a sensible judgement about their abilities. We might as well give everyone 9 and A* and be done with it.
Expect to see universities setting and using their own entrance exams a lot in the next 18 months, and to base them on cognitive levels rather than knowledge.
You haven’t really addressed my second point, which is that there’s a genuine difference in meaning between prepared, and pre-prepared.
Israel looks like they’ll be done by about March, UAE by June and U.K. by September, while much of Europe looks like they’ll be severely restricted for most of the year, with the tourist areas unlikely to be open in the summer as they were last year.
I imagine that in Southern Europe especially, there’s going to be widespread anger at the speed of the rollout. Doubly so if a vaccinated UK closes its border with France, as France did to UK a only a few weeks ago!
Much of what he says about British underperformance since 1945 is true: the loss of empire; the Suez debacle; the economic quagmire of the 1970s; the humiliation of the Exchange Rate Mechanism; the long civil war over Europe in the Conservative Party; the Iraq war; David Cameron’s casual approach to profoundly important matters of statesmanship; Theresa May’s inability to make a decision; and Boris Johnson’s struggle to tell the truth.
But alas:
However, this book, not for want of length, is almost devoid of insight, originality or acuity. It has all been said before, and said better, and much of it was no more true or interesting when said the first time. The claim on the book’s dust wrapper that it is “magisterial and profoundly perceptive” invites scrutiny under the Trade Descriptions Act: it is a chronic whinge and a book such as one gives for Christmas to someone one deeply dislikes.
No honour amongst journalists:
many of Stephens’s attitudes are second-hand –- milked from the writings of the conceited and overrated Hugo Young
And since this thread is about new, exotic words, here is an old, foreign-sounding one:
Enoch Powell, as the godfather of British souverainisme (to use a word for which Stephens looks, but cannot find)
More at the Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/book-should-remoans-final-whimper-good-riddance1/
I know he’s built a reputation on only ever opening his mouth to insert his foot, and profiting from the publicity - but now isn’t the time.
The government had intended to lift the lockdown at the end of January but Education Minister Yoav Galant, speaking on Ynet TV, said it was too early to know if schools would reopen next month.
Israel expanded its rapid vaccination drive on Sunday to include late teens in what the government described as an effort to enable their attendance at school exams.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-israel-teens-idUSKBN29T0A4
There's no difference between prepared and pre-prepared just because one is earlier. The past is one general thing, and prepared is also a general term. There's no pre-past, or pre-pre-past (and the term prehistoric is substantially different because it refers specifically to stuff before history started being recorded/known about through human artefacts and writing).
Suspect in my lockdown I am far behind on hearing about such.
I looked through the comments above and one phrase leapt out me, Mr DL's remarks about Simo Heffers book:
"Boris Johnson’s struggle to tell the truth."
Our PM doesn't struggle to tell the truth; he ignores the truth and says whatever people want to hear. There's no question of struggle; that would imply he had any conception of truth in the first place.
Face masks according to all the evidence various posters have provided, do cut transmission. But they seem to cut transmission in the event of fleeting contacts in public spaces. Not if you’re sat in the same unventilated room for literally hours at a time. For that, you would need a mask from a hazmat suit.
At the same time, they make teaching utterly fucking impossible. For a start, it becomes a nightmare, particularly if you’re deaf, to hear what they’re saying. But it also makes it impossible to hear or see who’s talking and disrupting the lesson, or in one particularly nasty case, who was racially abusing another student.
Anyone who thinks they are a good idea in schools is an idiot who has never taught in one. So the entire DfE will probably be fully behind them.
*in the sense of, an Essex player.
https://twitter.com/adamcooperF1/status/1353600708214452225
I've heard of player managers in football, not sure I've heard of owner-drivers in motorsport. But then, I only really follow F1 so it might happen in other categories all the time.
And Papers have to make up and suggest things like this as the Government isn't doing stuff and the papers have space to fill and need stories to see papers at all.
Then I had a look at the cricket, and does look good.
In Essex we've always expected Lawrence to play for England; the problem is that in England we've a number of good No 4 & 5's. Would you drop Lawrence for Stokes..... of course. But you want Lawrence in the side....... so who do you remove?
The Israeli figure of 60% protection for single vaccine in the over 60's is hopeful, but based on very few cases, so must have wide Confidence Intervals.
https://twitter.com/foxinsoxuk/status/1353454495527788548?s=09
And Pope in at 3 for Bairstow if he’s recovered from that shoulder problem.
If not, give Stokes another try at 3. He’s averaging 50-odd over the last two years, after all.
But we are agreed on the Biden administration’s prompt response on Taiwan. It would have far less effect had it been much delayed.
Though that was business acumen rather than wealth.
Bloody do-gooders.
Mr. eek, aye. There does have to be some sort of limit, though. It'd be ridiculous having perpetual plebiscites with the result never counting if it's No and irrevocably enforced if it's Yes.
And the Conservatives should throw out the imbecile in Number Ten.
Union was largely driven by external threat, either because England felt threatened by the back door, hence conquest, or by the threat from France, Germany or Soviet Union giving a more positive reason to stand together.
There is simply little reason for it anymore other than accidents of history.
Probably not.
Whether the figure will continue to improve, after three weeks, in the UK is the interesting question.
And equally, the comparative figure in Israel for those post booster shot.
Plus of course Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland all have large deficits, only London and the SE raises more in revenue than it spends so if Scotland went independent that would mean deep spending cuts and tax rises would be required from Edinburgh to avoid Scotland going bankrupt. Dublin has also ruled out a border poll for at least 5 years as it does not want to have to fund NI anytime soon
https://twitter.com/TrevonDLogan/status/1353531373487841286?s=19
But he is right, we don need to rethink the whole system of government from the guts up. Local government is a mess, national government is a bigger mess, and the devolutionary settlement is a complete failure. Removing the House of Lords, on its own, is an urgent matter and yet it's not the most serious problem.
And that's true whether or not Scotland becomes independent.
But what I missed in my earlier post is the two lots of three weeks that are necessary - three weeks for the immunity to become effective and another three weeks for it to feed through to hospitalisations. So I guess a rough indication of a decent reduction after just three weeks is indeed good news.
search back for its use on here and see how many situations where 'the optics of this don't look good' had any affect on absolutely anything.
My alternative history guess would be that Scotland still would have elected SNP MPs in droves in 2015, and so the only difference would have been a Scottish Independence referendum a few years later.
The main difference would be in the Senate if it got 2 out of 102 Senators in an expanded Senate
As Root, fresh from 186 yesterday and clearly struggling with stiffness, brings himself on.
Edit - and fuck me, gets a wicket!
If an independent Scotland were to join the EU, is there any possible way that we don’t have physical border infrastructure on the M6 and A1, and a rebuilding of Hadrian’s wall in barbed wire?
Oops, I forgot about the Middle East peace envoy.