It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Exactly , always their chums, just lucky this one did not make the usual total mess of it.
malcy, think the ice under your feet might be a tad thin when talking about politicians appointing their chums...!
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
They cannot help lying , it is in their DNA and to tell the truth would show what poor hands they hold.
Look for references to referendums, the constitution, or independence in Section 30 of the Scotland Act, and you’ll look in vain. All it does is give the UK government the power to amend the list of reserved matters in the Scotland Act.
As you probably know, the Scotland Act is built around a reserved powers model. Westminster listed everything Holyrood has no control over – but Holyrood can legislate about anything which isn’t on the list. It is often simply asserted that “the constitution” is a reserved matter, but this ignores the simple language of the legislation, which reserves only “aspects” of the constitution. Among those “aspects” of the constitutions which are reserved in the union of Scotland and England. The Scotland Act makes clear that “whether a provision of an Act of the Scottish Parliament relates to a reserved matter” is to be determined “by reference to the purpose of the provision” and with regard to “its effect in all the circumstances”. That might sound awfully abstract, so think about it this way. What is the “object and purpose” of a referendum on independence? There are different ways of looking at this question.
If a pro-independence majority is elected in May, we may finally get a definitive answer.
I have received an actual letter before action written by David Allen Green. It wasn’t all that. He was dabbling a bit in employment law and bullshitting his way through the bits he didn’t understand.
I think he's quite a good commentator, and reasonably thorough in exploring things.
He also has form for putting his skills where his mouth is, which I admire.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
I sincerely hope this conversation was not in a broom cupboard.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
No wonder the UK is reasonably calm about the 15m target. There are what ~12m total in those numbers and they are getting ~2m a week from AZN now and another 3.5m delivery from Pfizer asap as long as EU don't play silly buggers.
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
I remember it well! I suspect the escargots for the vomit induction - Becker should have been a contributing factor!
Thought Becker preferred broom cupboards to outdoors.
Are there more French or English in the average French broom cupboard? Asking for a friend.
Just wait till the dust settles. This narcissist who adores dressing up with more costume changes than Danny La Rue will be out on his arse. Just the tiniest bit of reflection by the voters after the immediate dangers have passed and he'll be lucky if he isn't exiled let alone be permitted to remain PM
Are you talking about Johnson?
He'll face the electorate in 2024 and probably win a very tight race and do another 3/4 of a term is my guess at this point.
Are you talking about Johnson?
Yes. The very same. Happily I seem to have found someone who's ability to predict the political future is even worse than mine..
Boris will win reelection. On a majority of about 40 odd.
Keir is not the man to reach the brexit voting small towns. He is builing a rather ineffecient coalition.
I always knew there would be a moment when the Second Amendment might come in handy, and not necessarily for some of those people who support the Second Amendment.
Just wait till the dust settles. This narcissist who adores dressing up with more costume changes than Danny La Rue will be out on his arse. Just the tiniest bit of reflection by the voters after the immediate dangers have passed and he'll be lucky if he isn't exiled let alone be permitted to remain PM
Are you talking about Johnson?
He'll face the electorate in 2024 and probably win a very tight race and do another 3/4 of a term is my guess at this point.
Are you talking about Johnson?
Yes. The very same. Happily I seem to have found someone who's ability to predict the political future is even worse than mine..
Boris will win reelection. On a majority of about 40 odd.
Keir is not the man to reach the brexit voting small towns. He is builing a rather ineffecient coalition.
On this inefficient coalition I would suggest we should start looking at the posibility of tories holding a majority with no lead at all.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Exactly , always their chums, just lucky this one did not make the usual total mess of it.
malcy, think the ice under your feet might be a tad thin when talking about politicians appointing their chums...!
No wonder the UK is reasonably calm about the 15m target. There are what ~12m total in those numbers and they are getting ~2m a week from AZN now and another 3.5m delivery from Pfizer asap as long as EU don't play silly buggers.
There was a comment the other day, I believe, to the effect that there was enough vaccine in the UK in the supply chain to meet the Feb 14th deadline. Quite a lot of that hasn't been bottled, or is in final checks etc.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
A further point is that the foreign student will get funding to go onto Erasmus if their country and university are part of the scheme, which includes all of Europe. They won't be interested in Turing in that case unless either the UK or foreign government finances participation. Turing fails if there isn't broadly the same interest going into the UK as there is out of it.
The foreign government will almost certainly choose Erasmus over Turing if they are interested in this kind of scheme. There is scope for Turing with countries where there is no support for student travel or if the UK has set up some kind of bilateral arrangement with other countries. But it is very limiting compared with Erasmus, which is a well established exchange.
No wonder the UK is reasonably calm about the 15m target. There are what ~12m total in those numbers and they are getting ~2m a week from AZN now and another 3.5m delivery from Pfizer asap as long as EU don't play silly buggers.
There was a comment the other day, I believe, to the effect that there was enough vaccine in the UK in the supply chain to meet the Feb 14th deadline. Quite a lot of that hasn't been bottled, or is in final checks etc.
~20m have been made by AZN. Nobody knows how many of those get through QA and how many have been bottled to date, but it is clearly many millions.
The comments by AZN CEO this week made it sound like AZN are pretty confident they have the process down pat now in the UK, but taken several months to do so (hence why EU plants struggling).
I don't really watch interviews very often, but Sophy Ridge seems pretty decent. The end bit from Hunt on the opportunity with Social Care I fear will go begging. Everyone agrees in principle it needs sorting, but it always seems to slip down the agenda.
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
Hard to believe there are as many retreads as HYFUD walking the streets, shocking.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
It is a cost/benefit analysis.
For the Erasmus scheme, how much would the UK have to have paid to join. What would the cost per UK exchange student have been?
I think Switzerland went through this, and similarly concluded -- like the UK -- that the EU offered a very expensive deal for Switzerland to join Erasmus. I believe Switzerland created its own scheme (Swiss Programme for Erasmus+)
"Since 2014, Switzerland has no longer been a programme country of Erasmus+, but a partner country. To enable Swiss institutions to continue taking part in cooperation and mobility activities with the Erasmus+ programme countries, the Federal Council adopted an interim solution financed with Swiss funds. This Swiss programme for Erasmus+ funds the participation of people and institutions from Switzerland (outgoing). In order to offer reciprocity, financial support is also provided for people and institutions from Europe to spend a period of time in Switzerland (incoming)."
I am all in favour of university exchanges (though it is a middle-class perk, unfortunately). I am happy to wait for details of the Turing scheme because no-one is exchanging anywhere at the moment.
But, if the Swiss can do it, I honestly don't see what the problem is in running our own scheme.
Of course, if the cost per student is lower and less is spent on administration, more students can benefit from the scheme.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
A further point is that the foreign student will get funding to go onto Erasmus if their country and university are part of the scheme, which includes all of Europe. They won't be interested in Turing in that case unless either the UK or foreign government finances participation. Turing fails if there isn't broadly the same interest going into the UK as there is out of it.
The foreign government will almost certainly choose Erasmus over Turing if they are interested in this kind of scheme. There is scope for Turing with countries where there is no support for student travel or if the UK has set up some kind of bilateral arrangement with other countries. But it is very limiting compared with Erasmus, which is a well established exchange.
Do you have a link describing the details of the Turing program? After reading this, I am surprised countries like the US, or Australia, have any exchanges at all.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
A further point is that the foreign student will get funding to go onto Erasmus if their country and university are part of the scheme, which includes all of Europe. They won't be interested in Turing in that case unless either the UK or foreign government finances participation. Turing fails if there isn't broadly the same interest going into the UK as there is out of it.
The foreign government will almost certainly choose Erasmus over Turing if they are interested in this kind of scheme. There is scope for Turing with countries where there is no support for student travel or if the UK has set up some kind of bilateral arrangement with other countries. But it is very limiting compared with Erasmus, which is a well established exchange.
Do you have a link describing the details of the Turing program? After reading this, I am surprised countries like the US, or Australia, have any exchanges at all.
The Turing scheme doesn't exist yet, so there are no details.
No wonder the UK is reasonably calm about the 15m target. There are what ~12m total in those numbers and they are getting ~2m a week from AZN now and another 3.5m delivery from Pfizer asap as long as EU don't play silly buggers.
There was a comment the other day, I believe, to the effect that there was enough vaccine in the UK in the supply chain to meet the Feb 14th deadline. Quite a lot of that hasn't been bottled, or is in final checks etc.
~20m have been made by AZN. Nobody knows how many of those get through QA and how many have been bottled to date, but it is clearly many millions.
The comments by AZN CEO this week made it sound like AZN are pretty confident they have the process down pat now in the UK, but taken several months to do so (hence why EU plants struggling).
IIRC that was 20m (at nominal yield) worth of "batches" - the issue then is the actual yield from those batches.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
A further point is that the foreign student will get funding to go onto Erasmus if their country and university are part of the scheme, which includes all of Europe. They won't be interested in Turing in that case unless either the UK or foreign government finances participation. Turing fails if there isn't broadly the same interest going into the UK as there is out of it.
The foreign government will almost certainly choose Erasmus over Turing if they are interested in this kind of scheme. There is scope for Turing with countries where there is no support for student travel or if the UK has set up some kind of bilateral arrangement with other countries. But it is very limiting compared with Erasmus, which is a well established exchange.
Do you have a link describing the details of the Turing program? After reading this, I am surprised countries like the US, or Australia, have any exchanges at all.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
A further point is that the foreign student will get funding to go onto Erasmus if their country and university are part of the scheme, which includes all of Europe. They won't be interested in Turing in that case unless either the UK or foreign government finances participation. Turing fails if there isn't broadly the same interest going into the UK as there is out of it.
The foreign government will almost certainly choose Erasmus over Turing if they are interested in this kind of scheme. There is scope for Turing with countries where there is no support for student travel or if the UK has set up some kind of bilateral arrangement with other countries. But it is very limiting compared with Erasmus, which is a well established exchange.
Do you have a link describing the details of the Turing program? After reading this, I am surprised countries like the US, or Australia, have any exchanges at all.
The Turing scheme doesn't exist yet, so there are no details.
So where is all this information about it coming from?
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
A further point is that the foreign student will get funding to go onto Erasmus if their country and university are part of the scheme, which includes all of Europe. They won't be interested in Turing in that case unless either the UK or foreign government finances participation. Turing fails if there isn't broadly the same interest going into the UK as there is out of it.
The foreign government will almost certainly choose Erasmus over Turing if they are interested in this kind of scheme. There is scope for Turing with countries where there is no support for student travel or if the UK has set up some kind of bilateral arrangement with other countries. But it is very limiting compared with Erasmus, which is a well established exchange.
Do you have a link describing the details of the Turing program? After reading this, I am surprised countries like the US, or Australia, have any exchanges at all.
The scale is different.
Between what? Your posts seem to suggest that any scheme that is not Erasmus is doomed to failure. Yet there are exchange visitors to countries like Australia and New Zealand all the time.
Just wait till the dust settles. This narcissist who adores dressing up with more costume changes than Danny La Rue will be out on his arse. Just the tiniest bit of reflection by the voters after the immediate dangers have passed and he'll be lucky if he isn't exiled let alone be permitted to remain PM
Are you talking about Johnson?
He'll face the electorate in 2024 and probably win a very tight race and do another 3/4 of a term is my guess at this point.
Are you talking about Johnson?
Yes. The very same. Happily I seem to have found someone who's ability to predict the political future is even worse than mine..
Boris will win reelection. On a majority of about 40 odd.
Keir is not the man to reach the brexit voting small towns. He is builing a rather ineffecient coalition.
There are three of us. Four if you if you include mysticrose....
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster. Morality is somewhat open to interpretation and in any case only 1 factor influencing Westminster and the UK government who legally get the final say.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
My wife is a huge Stephen King fan and we were discussing one of his his lesser works, Under the Dome, where [SPOILER ALERT] an alien race places a huge impermeable dome over an American town to study the inhabitants. People like the conspiracy theorists at the Dodger stadium in LA genuinely believe that is how the govt and business look at them.
In truth the opposite is logically true. It is easy to forget that this pandemic will end come what may. One option involves the death of around 1% of the world population. The other doesn’t. People banging on about how terrible the state forget that the state does have a far easier option.
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
Any court would uphold the supremacy of Westminster, Holyrood being merely a creation of Westminster
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster. Morality is somewhat open to interpretation and in any case only 1 factor influencing Westminster and the UK government who legally get the final say.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
“There is no such thing as morality under our constitution”. You are quite mad.
My wife is a huge Stephen King fan and we were discussing one of his his lesser works, Under the Dome, where [SPOILER ALERT] an alien race places a huge impermeable dome over an American town to study the inhabitants. People like the conspiracy theorists at the Dodger stadium in LA genuinely believe that is how the govt and business look at them.
In truth the opposite is logically true. It is easy to forget that this pandemic will end come what may. One option involves the death of around 1% of the world population. The other doesn’t. People banging on about how terrible the state forget that the state does have a far easier option.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
It is a cost/benefit analysis.
For the Erasmus scheme, how much would the UK have to have paid to join. What would the cost per UK exchange student have been?
I think Switzerland went through this, and similarly concluded -- like the UK -- that the EU offered a very expensive deal for Switzerland to join Erasmus. I believe Switzerland created its own scheme (Swiss Programme for Erasmus+)
"Since 2014, Switzerland has no longer been a programme country of Erasmus+, but a partner country. To enable Swiss institutions to continue taking part in cooperation and mobility activities with the Erasmus+ programme countries, the Federal Council adopted an interim solution financed with Swiss funds. This Swiss programme for Erasmus+ funds the participation of people and institutions from Switzerland (outgoing). In order to offer reciprocity, financial support is also provided for people and institutions from Europe to spend a period of time in Switzerland (incoming)."
I am all in favour of university exchanges (though it is a middle-class perk, unfortunately). I am happy to wait for details of the Turing scheme because no-on is exchanging anywhere at the moment.
But, if the Swiss can do it, I honestly don't see what the problem is in running our own scheme.
Of course, if the cost per student is lower and less is spent on administration, more students can benefit from the scheme.
I highlighted the key point in your comment. It kind of doubles the cost compared with Erasmus*. The Swiss got thrown out of Erasmus, I believe, so it wasn't by choice. Of course that in itself may be an issue in terms of UK participation in the scheme. The point I am making is that Erasmus is by far the better scheme because it's a functioning exchange based on reciprocity. Whether the UK wants to be part of it is another matter.
* Edit I understand from the costing of the Turing scheme, the UK government doesn't intend to fund incoming students. Unless you get a two way flow, Turing will fail.
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster. Morality is somewhat open to interpretation and in any case only 1 factor influencing Westminster and the UK government who legally get the final say.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
It would be illegal for the Spanish government to agree an independence referendum for Catalonia without a Spain-wide referendum approving it first.
Have you been at the shit memes that don’t stick generator again?
I'm confused. Are these not the exact figures that Sturgeon got called a traitor for wanting to publish?
They are a real rum bunch right enough, you never see them publishing the corresponding death rates for some strange reason. Despicable , horrible people, ghouls like Carlotta desperate to try and promote anything possible about Scotland as bad. Some very evil, sick and twisted people on here.
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
Donald Findlay QC? His qualifications are impeccably staunch.
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
No such thing as a Scottish citizen (yet). Just those UK subjects of HMtQ who live in Scotland and are on the register there. Don't think that Mr Gove would qualify, unless he was upset at the prospect of being offered a Scots passport in due course courtesy of his paternity.
But it's an interesting point - though AIUI often it is important that at least part of the argument in such things comes from the government(s) in question themselves.
I think the Tories think they might all settle in London - saving the London property market and significantly improving their electoral prospects.
Still won’t be enough for Shaun Bailey to get anywhere near the mayoralty.
No way. Joke candidate really. 44 on betfair and not tempted. I am tempted to lay Khan at 1.09 though. Is there not a chance a big name will enter and transform the market? Or is it too late now for that?
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster. Morality is somewhat open to interpretation and in any case only 1 factor influencing Westminster and the UK government who legally get the final say.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
It would be illegal for the Spanish government to agree an independence referendum for Catalonia without a Spain-wide referendum approving it first.
Just checking, please: does the Spanish constitution actually specify that as a prerequisite for changing the constitution? Or could the Madrid gmt do it itself?
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
Any court would uphold the supremacy of Westminster, Holyrood being merely a creation of Westminster
With respect you have missed my point. Anyone looking forward to a Boris vs Nicola show-down will be disappointed if the Westminster government leaves any legal action for the Scots to sort out among themselves. You may well be right about the eventual outcome.
I think the Tories think they might all settle in London - saving the London property market and significantly improving their electoral prospects.
Still won’t be enough for Shaun Bailey to get anywhere near the mayoralty.
No way. Joke candidate really. 44 on betfair and not tempted. I am tempted to lay Khan at 1.09 though. Is there not a chance a big name will enter and transform the market? Or is it too late now for that?
Unless Rory changes his mind? Can’t see it myself, though.
Didn't seem likely they were massively different. It can be turned around.
To give this a sense of proportion
The bundle of trajectories is quite close. The "gap" is about 5-7 days, to reach an equivalent % of the population vaccinated. Which in the context of these things is minimal.
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
No such thing as a Scottish citizen (yet). Just those UK subjects of HMtQ who live in Scotland and are on the register there. Don't think that Mr Gove would qualify, unless he was upset at the prospect of being offered a Scots passport in due course courtesy of his paternity.
But it's an interesting point - though AIUI often it is important that at least part of the argument in such things comes from the government(s) in question themselves.
I'm fairly sure you'd admit to being (a) Scottish and (b) a citizen.
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
HYFUD has no clue what is reserved, he is a cretin of the first order. The Scotland Act makes clear that “whether a provision of an Act of the Scottish Parliament relates to a reserved matter” is to be determined “by reference to the purpose of the provision” and with regard to “its effect in all the circumstances”. The UK government would have to decide whether or not to try to spike the bill before the Queen granted it royal assent. Boris Johnson’s new Advocate General would need to refer it directly to the Supreme Court, where the lawyers on all sides could argue the point out, and the legality of the Bill would be decided.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
Remember HYUFD.
It has been decided that your intemperate posts on Scotland will now likely prevent you from seeking the nomination for the Parliamentary constituency of Much Crowing in Essex.
They will come to light and cause disquiet & consternation in any election.
However, a position in the House of Lords is still possible. @williamglenn has a possible title in hand.
And all parties don't look too closely under the bonnet for nominations to peerages. All the rough & raucous riff-raff of the country is in the House of Lords, claiming the daily moolah for the "work".
But, a couple more slavering outbursts about Scotland, and even that may be impossible.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
Oh, we were well aware of the disparity when I was at Uni, and grateful for it.
My wife is a huge Stephen King fan and we were discussing one of his his lesser works, Under the Dome, where [SPOILER ALERT] an alien race places a huge impermeable dome over an American town to study the inhabitants. People like the conspiracy theorists at the Dodger stadium in LA genuinely believe that is how the govt and business look at them.
In truth the opposite is logically true. It is easy to forget that this pandemic will end come what may. One option involves the death of around 1% of the world population. The other doesn’t. People banging on about how terrible the state forget that the state does have a far easier option.
Excellent use of 'gotten' there. I think we should incorporate it into standard English.
Yep. You need to know where it beats "got" but so long as you do it's a real asset. Note the richness of choice that is opened up - Americans who have had the vaccine have not had Covid. Americans who have had the vaccine have not gotten Covid. Americans who have gotten the vaccine have not had Covid. Americans who have gotten the vaccine have not gotten Covid. And so on.
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
No such thing as a Scottish citizen (yet). Just those UK subjects of HMtQ who live in Scotland and are on the register there. Don't think that Mr Gove would qualify, unless he was upset at the prospect of being offered a Scots passport in due course courtesy of his paternity.
But it's an interesting point - though AIUI often it is important that at least part of the argument in such things comes from the government(s) in question themselves.
I'm fairly sure you'd admit to being (a) Scottish and (b) a citizen.
In the broader sense, yes of course, but there is nothing like a Scottish passport to define it. I'm just thinking whom the court might think have standing. Would HYUFD for instance be accepted on the grounds that even having an indyref was damaging to his self-respect as a patriotic UK subject, inconvenience in terms of moving the Trident boats, etc.?
The risk is that if Mr J leaves it to the hoi polloi you might end up with some very odd arguments and a lot of time wasted and miss those which the UKG would want to see aired.
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster. Morality is somewhat open to interpretation and in any case only 1 factor influencing Westminster and the UK government who legally get the final say.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
You’re attacking this the wrong way. By all means try and beat the SNP on the arguments and deny them a majority, but seeing them get a majority and then saying “sorry, no referendum” is just an insult to the voters. You’re acting like Scotland is an intransigent colony. It isn’t. It’s part of the U.K., and every vote there matters as much as mine does. If I wanted my region to leave the U.K., and I commanded a majority locally, I’d expect a referendum. If I didn’t get one, I’d want a UDI.
My wife is a huge Stephen King fan and we were discussing one of his his lesser works, Under the Dome, where [SPOILER ALERT] an alien race places a huge impermeable dome over an American town to study the inhabitants. People like the conspiracy theorists at the Dodger stadium in LA genuinely believe that is how the govt and business look at them.
In truth the opposite is logically true. It is easy to forget that this pandemic will end come what may. One option involves the death of around 1% of the world population. The other doesn’t. People banging on about how terrible the state forget that the state does have a far easier option.
Excellent use of 'gotten' there. I think we should incorporate it into standard English.
Assuming an IFR of 1% then 42 million Americans have been infected with Covid. Add the 29 million who have been vaccinated that means at least a fifth or thereabouts of their population now have some degree of immunity. I’m not surprised their cases are dropping.
My wife is a huge Stephen King fan and we were discussing one of his his lesser works, Under the Dome, where [SPOILER ALERT] an alien race places a huge impermeable dome over an American town to study the inhabitants. People like the conspiracy theorists at the Dodger stadium in LA genuinely believe that is how the govt and business look at them.
The Truman Show was a warning not an instruction manual!
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
Oh, we were well aware of the disparity when I was at Uni, and grateful for it.
Sounds familiar. My 1st year physics degree had 32hrs of lectures practicals and tutorials a week in the 70s at Aberdeen University. That included travel time between loads of sites.
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
No such thing as a Scottish citizen (yet). Just those UK subjects of HMtQ who live in Scotland and are on the register there. Don't think that Mr Gove would qualify, unless he was upset at the prospect of being offered a Scots passport in due course courtesy of his paternity.
But it's an interesting point - though AIUI often it is important that at least part of the argument in such things comes from the government(s) in question themselves.
I'm fairly sure you'd admit to being (a) Scottish and (b) a citizen.
In the broader sense, yes of course, but there is nothing like a Scottish passport to define it. I'm just thinking whom the court might think have standing. Would HYUFD for instance be accepted on the grounds that even having an indyref was damaging to his self-respect as a patriotic UK subject, inconvenience in terms of moving the Trident boats, etc.?
The risk is that if Mr J leaves it to the hoi polloi you might end up with some very odd arguments and a lot of time wasted and miss those which the UKG would want to see aired.
Time will tell. You may be right. But don't expect the UK government to arrive mob-handed, in spite of incitement from Epping and a stirring precedent from Madrid. They're cleverer than that.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster. Morality is somewhat open to interpretation and in any case only 1 factor influencing Westminster and the UK government who legally get the final say.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
It would be illegal for the Spanish government to agree an independence referendum for Catalonia without a Spain-wide referendum approving it first.
Just checking, please: does the Spanish constitution actually specify that as a prerequisite for changing the constitution? Or could the Madrid gmt do it itself?
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
Oh, we were well aware of the disparity when I was at Uni, and grateful for it.
Sounds familiar. My 1st year physics degree had 32hrs of lectures practicals and tutorials a week in the 70s at Aberdeen University. That included travel time between loads of sites.
32hrs...you had it easy son, in my day, we did....
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
No such thing as a Scottish citizen (yet). Just those UK subjects of HMtQ who live in Scotland and are on the register there. Don't think that Mr Gove would qualify, unless he was upset at the prospect of being offered a Scots passport in due course courtesy of his paternity.
But it's an interesting point - though AIUI often it is important that at least part of the argument in such things comes from the government(s) in question themselves.
I'm fairly sure you'd admit to being (a) Scottish and (b) a citizen.
In the broader sense, yes of course, but there is nothing like a Scottish passport to define it. I'm just thinking whom the court might think have standing. Would HYUFD for instance be accepted on the grounds that even having an indyref was damaging to his self-respect as a patriotic UK subject, inconvenience in terms of moving the Trident boats, etc.?
The risk is that if Mr J leaves it to the hoi polloi you might end up with some very odd arguments and a lot of time wasted and miss those which the UKG would want to see aired.
Carnyx they will be scared they lose and will be damned if they win. They cannot hold Scotland as a colony against the wishes of the populace, as it leaves them only HYFUD's methodology.
There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
About the money, I really don't know. I am 100 per cent sure Boris will not take tough, unpopular decisions, though. He'll leave that for his successor.
There is also the public inquiry into Covid -- Boris will want to boot the publication of the report until after the next election. Fortunately, Labour have shown him the blueprint in how to do this. The Iraq War inquiry was announced in 2009 by Gordon Brown and published 7 years later in 2016.
So, let me see .... MexicanPete's nightmare is ... the Shagster puts off announcing any COVID inquiry until 2022, so it won't report till way into the future; he gets his extra seats from the boundaries in 2023; he continues to spaff the electorate with his sticky honey till 2023; he goes to the country and is returned with another majority.
He will have "won London twice, triumphed in the referendum, done Brexit, thrashed COVID & clobbered Labour twice in the Generals".
He can retire a hero. We are finally rid of him.
HYUFD will be in the House of Lords.
And the country will be in ruins.
MexicanPete's nightmare has a decent chance of coming true, and anyone writing off Boris' chances at this stage is being far too hasty. If this last week is proof of anything, it's that Boris is a lucky general...
He's quite rightly bookies favourite. The biggest thing he had to counter was the sheer sense of absurdity that such a ridiculous character could be PM. I felt that very strongly when he got the job - as I know millions more did - but the sense is dissipating.
I have gotten - and am continuing to getten - used to him. I respect him no more than I did. I like him no more than I did. But I'm no longer in a state of contemptuous disbelief about it. I was for a period but not anymore. I'm afraid it's worn off. My overton window on who can be PM has moved to accommodate "Boris". He's wormed his way into my brain and moved it in the direction of black satire.
I say "afraid" because this is an unwelcome development which does not speak well of me or my millions of ilk. Either our standards are slipping or - and this is the theory I self servingly prefer - it's down to Donald Trump. Four years of him as POTUS has made our alternative reality of a complete charlatan who is not entirely malign seem almost wholesome. Everything is relative in this world after all.
Anyway, that's my take on this. Johnson is likely to lead the Cons into GE24 and he's likely to win it. The most 'smug city' bet in my current portfolio is 4 digits on him still to be PM on 1st July 2022. I did and tipped that 2 months ago at 1.9 and I hope some people followed suit (or even did it before me). It's 1.4 now. And still a buy imo, so no close out yet for me.
'Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! I've grown accustomed to [his] face'
Interesting. Yes, the Trumpster fire has helped most world leaders look twice as presidential as they really are, and everyone from Boris to Biden has been the beneficiary to some extent. It also seems that though pure MAGA/QAnon-type populism has run into a wall (at least for now!), there's still plenty of public appetite for a lighter version of that populist spirit on this side of the Atlantic.
As far your GE24 position goes, if I'm not mistaken you've become a bit more bullish on BJ than you were before, officially more so than me at this point - I'd tentatively give Boris about a 40% combined chance to both fight and win the next GE, mainly because there are going to be some predictable bumps in the road between now and then and the Tories will have been in for 14 years, so that 'likely' is quite strong.
I think the Tories think they might all settle in London - saving the London property market and significantly improving their electoral prospects.
Still won’t be enough for Shaun Bailey to get anywhere near the mayoralty.
No way. Joke candidate really. 44 on betfair and not tempted. I am tempted to lay Khan at 1.09 though. Is there not a chance a big name will enter and transform the market? Or is it too late now for that?
I said this yesterday, I think the UK government communication needs to focus much more on this for all the vaccines. Try to get the public less focused on the % efficacy on stopping you getting COVID, rather the very high % across all of them from preventing hospitalisation, because that's the scary outcome, ending up in hospital with COVID for many means serious long term damage.
Instead you can come and get this jab and if you follow the protocol, chances are even if you are unlucky and get it, you are going to have flu type illness for a couple of weeks.
Probably worth mentioning Paddy Ashdown and Chris Patten were both in favour of offering BNO passport holders the right of residency in the UK but neither Conservative nor Labour were interested at the time.
On Social Care, it's a huge issue and needs proper thought but we can't wait forever. Changing the way it is funded will fundamentally change the way local Government is financed and operated.
As an example and close to @JohnO and @NickPalmer, Surrey County Council's budget for 2020-21 included £372 million on Adult Social care and £148 million on Children's Social Care and Commissioning so just over half of the County Council's total spend goes on social care provision.
OTOH, that remains within the control and accountability of the County Council - I'm not sure funding it nationally would improve that accountability as it would be in the largesse of central Government where and how much was spent.
Nonetheless, the £520 million has to come from somewhere though whether it's raised locally via Council Tax or some other form of local taxation (Local Income Tax, Property Tax, Land Value Tax, Window Tax - think that one has been tried) is another part of the question.
The other side is the demand is growing and will continue to grow - if it's £520 million now will it be £600 million by 2025 and £750 million by 2040? I don't know, but every Budget report from every relevant authority always mentions the pressures on social care provision (both Adult and Children).
There's a cogent argument around getting individuals to plan more for their later years but as we know that doesn't happen much and for many people their sole asset is their property - that explains why we struggle to make progress on housing. It's in too many people's interests to maintain the status quo of limited supply of land keeping house prices high.
There will be an electoral attraction to coming up with a solution which purports to meet future social care funding requirements as well as cutting everyone's Council Tax by half or more. As with so much else, I remain unconvinced.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
She has no scientific qualifications whatsoever beyond a bachelor's degree.
Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have undermined the vaccination campaign by making a cretinous statement about not wanting to vaccinate the whole population because the side effects of the vaccines would be so serious.
She has a first-class degree in Biochemistry from Oxford and an MBA from Harvard [from wiki].
In any case, it is reasonable to judge appointments by results.
I am not sure this is the hill to die on, if you are fighting the chumocracy -- try this one instead
I actually think Kate Bingham was the perfect appointment all things considered. She is a biotechnology venture capitalist, she has years and years of experience picking winners in the industry.
I don't think she's had a big hand in the Ox/AZ success story and maybe just gave it a final push over the line. She is, however, responsible for getting the UK in the room for Pfizer, Novavax, Valneva and J&J, three of those have turned out to be big winners and the fourth is looking good as well. The only error was with Moderna but I guess they thought they were covered by the best in class Pfizer one so it's not a huge oversight especially considered the limited European supply for Q1 (under 3m doses aiui, down from 5m because of yield issues in Switzerland) and the 17m doses due from April.
Absolutely great job by the whole team, government, NHS and industry. A really top effort led by the right type of person. Someone in VC who won't get bogged down by political considerations of helping British industry over foreign companies.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
She has no scientific qualifications whatsoever beyond a bachelor's degree.
Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have undermined the vaccination campaign by making a cretinous statement about not wanting to vaccinate the whole population because the side effects of the vaccines would be so serious.
"She has no scientific qualifications whatsoever beyond" the four years she spent at Oxford studying biochemistry.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
Presumably there was some college wine thrown in as well though?
What's semi military, and is it different from para military?
English might not be the Tweeter's first language.
The Russian state seems to have access to recent veterans and/or currently serving military "on leave". Think about some of the combatants in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. So basically deniable "actual military". Paramilitary can include civilians who like to dress up in silly uniforms, or police forces under military style command and control.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
Carry on deriding my posts and you'll get so many 'likes' from felix you'll be able to start a new career as an influencer
I think it was Robert that posted yesterday from Israel so far 29 people have contracted COVID after being vaccinated...not one even had an elevated temperature, let alone anywhere neae an ICU.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
It is a cost/benefit analysis.
For the Erasmus scheme, how much would the UK have to have paid to join. What would the cost per UK exchange student have been?
I think Switzerland went through this, and similarly concluded -- like the UK -- that the EU offered a very expensive deal for Switzerland to join Erasmus. I believe Switzerland created its own scheme (Swiss Programme for Erasmus+)
"Since 2014, Switzerland has no longer been a programme country of Erasmus+, but a partner country. To enable Swiss institutions to continue taking part in cooperation and mobility activities with the Erasmus+ programme countries, the Federal Council adopted an interim solution financed with Swiss funds. This Swiss programme for Erasmus+ funds the participation of people and institutions from Switzerland (outgoing). In order to offer reciprocity, financial support is also provided for people and institutions from Europe to spend a period of time in Switzerland (incoming)."
I am all in favour of university exchanges (though it is a middle-class perk, unfortunately). I am happy to wait for details of the Turing scheme because no-on is exchanging anywhere at the moment.
But, if the Swiss can do it, I honestly don't see what the problem is in running our own scheme.
Of course, if the cost per student is lower and less is spent on administration, more students can benefit from the scheme.
I highlighted the key point in your comment. It kind of doubles the cost compared with Erasmus*. The Swiss got thrown out of Erasmus, I believe, so it wasn't by choice. Of course that in itself may be an issue in terms of UK participation in the scheme. The point I am making is that Erasmus is by far the better scheme because it's a functioning exchange based on reciprocity. Whether the UK wants to be part of it is another matter.
* Edit I understand from the costing of the Turing scheme, the UK government doesn't intend to fund incoming students. Unless you get a two way flow, Turing will fail.
I actually wanted you to answer the first two questions about money, which you predictably enough did not.
The Swiss were thrown out. The problems were resolved. The Swiss applied to rejoin Erasmus. The EU quoted them an a price. The Swiss rejected the offer to rejoin because it was too pricey. (So I believe the UK Government on this one -- that the EU tried to price-gouge them). Then, the Swiss created their own scheme.
I do not believe that the Swiss scheme is double the cost of what the Swiss were offered to join ERASMUS. Prove it.
(A little personal history: I was mildly in favour of the EU. I became involved (in a small way) in the administration, not of Erasmus, but of a somewhat similar scheme, called the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship. It was very profitable for me, but the waste of money in the administration was truly enormous. I became mildly against the EU).
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
It is a pretty good library to be fair. And it does seem to suggest some misunderstanding of what a PhD entails if you’re expecting to be taught.
Comments
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/570779?fbclid=IwAR0gGi7Ra9dDPgBrrM0a9rsBYhI02WO9cjajUx6gUUW2g6DhhvdMVtInK2g
Look for references to referendums, the constitution, or independence in Section 30 of the Scotland Act, and you’ll look in vain. All it does is give the UK government the power to amend the list of reserved matters in the Scotland Act.
As you probably know, the Scotland Act is built around a reserved powers model. Westminster listed everything Holyrood has no control over – but Holyrood can legislate about anything which isn’t on the list. It is often simply asserted that “the constitution” is a reserved matter, but this ignores the simple language of the legislation, which reserves only “aspects” of the constitution. Among those “aspects” of the constitutions which are reserved in the union of Scotland and England.
The Scotland Act makes clear that “whether a provision of an Act of the Scottish Parliament relates to a reserved matter” is to be determined “by reference to the purpose of the provision” and with regard to “its effect in all the circumstances”. That might sound awfully abstract, so think about it this way. What is the “object and purpose” of a referendum on independence? There are different ways of looking at this question.
If a pro-independence majority is elected in May, we may finally get a definitive answer.
I think he's quite a good commentator, and reasonably thorough in exploring things.
He also has form for putting his skills where his mouth is, which I admire.
Just don't call him Captain Mainwaring.
Keir is not the man to reach the brexit voting small towns. He is builing a rather ineffecient coalition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-8CUulWqPA
The foreign government will almost certainly choose Erasmus over Turing if they are interested in this kind of scheme. There is scope for Turing with countries where there is no support for student travel or if the UK has set up some kind of bilateral arrangement with other countries. But it is very limiting compared with Erasmus, which is a well established exchange.
The comments by AZN CEO this week made it sound like AZN are pretty confident they have the process down pat now in the UK, but taken several months to do so (hence why EU plants struggling).
For the Erasmus scheme, how much would the UK have to have paid to join. What would the cost per UK exchange student have been?
I think Switzerland went through this, and similarly concluded -- like the UK -- that the EU offered a very expensive deal for Switzerland to join Erasmus. I believe Switzerland created its own scheme (Swiss Programme for Erasmus+)
"Since 2014, Switzerland has no longer been a programme country of Erasmus+, but a partner country. To enable Swiss institutions to continue taking part in cooperation and mobility activities with the Erasmus+ programme countries, the Federal Council adopted an interim solution financed with Swiss funds. This Swiss programme for Erasmus+ funds the participation of people and institutions from Switzerland (outgoing). In order to offer reciprocity, financial support is also provided for people and institutions from Europe to spend a period of time in Switzerland (incoming)."
I am all in favour of university exchanges (though it is a middle-class perk, unfortunately). I am happy to wait for details of the Turing scheme because no-one is exchanging anywhere at the moment.
But, if the Swiss can do it, I honestly don't see what the problem is in running our own scheme.
Of course, if the cost per student is lower and less is spent on administration, more students can benefit from the scheme.
Edit: ha, I see he already had it...er...deposited!
https://twitter.com/russian_market/status/1355851620379205634?s=21
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
In truth the opposite is logically true. It is easy to forget that this pandemic will end come what may. One option involves the death of around 1% of the world population. The other doesn’t. People banging on about how terrible the state forget that the state does have a far easier option.
https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1355621505183457281
There are 500K I think roughly.
So, yes we probably could do it.
* Edit I understand from the costing of the Turing scheme, the UK government doesn't intend to fund incoming students. Unless you get a two way flow, Turing will fail.
But it's an interesting point - though AIUI often it is important that at least part of the argument in such things comes from the government(s) in question themselves.
The bundle of trajectories is quite close. The "gap" is about 5-7 days, to reach an equivalent % of the population vaccinated. Which in the context of these things is minimal.
The Scotland Act makes clear that “whether a provision of an Act of the Scottish Parliament relates to a reserved matter” is to be determined “by reference to the purpose of the provision” and with regard to “its effect in all the circumstances”.
The UK government would have to decide whether or not to try to spike the bill before the Queen granted it royal assent. Boris Johnson’s new Advocate General would need to refer it directly to the Supreme Court, where the lawyers on all sides could argue the point out, and the legality of the Bill would be decided.
https://youtu.be/fy09Q9hNjLg
It has been decided that your intemperate posts on Scotland will now likely prevent you from seeking the nomination for the Parliamentary constituency of Much Crowing in Essex.
They will come to light and cause disquiet & consternation in any election.
However, a position in the House of Lords is still possible. @williamglenn has a possible title in hand.
And all parties don't look too closely under the bonnet for nominations to peerages. All the rough & raucous riff-raff of the country is in the House of Lords, claiming the daily moolah for the "work".
But, a couple more slavering outbursts about Scotland, and even that may be impossible.
Americans who have had the vaccine have not had Covid.
Americans who have had the vaccine have not gotten Covid.
Americans who have gotten the vaccine have not had Covid.
Americans who have gotten the vaccine have not gotten Covid.
And so on.
The risk is that if Mr J leaves it to the hoi polloi you might end up with some very odd arguments and a lot of time wasted and miss those which the UKG would want to see aired.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
https://www.boe.es/legislacion/documentos/ConstitucionINGLES.pdf
https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1355622254789472262
I've grown accustomed to [his] face'
Interesting. Yes, the Trumpster fire has helped most world leaders look twice as presidential as they really are, and everyone from Boris to Biden has been the beneficiary to some extent. It also seems that though pure MAGA/QAnon-type populism has run into a wall (at least for now!), there's still plenty of public appetite for a lighter version of that populist spirit on this side of the Atlantic.
As far your GE24 position goes, if I'm not mistaken you've become a bit more bullish on BJ than you were before, officially more so than me at this point - I'd tentatively give Boris about a 40% combined chance to both fight and win the next GE, mainly because there are going to be some predictable bumps in the road between now and then and the Tories will have been in for 14 years, so that 'likely' is quite strong.
Instead you can come and get this jab and if you follow the protocol, chances are even if you are unlucky and get it, you are going to have flu type illness for a couple of weeks.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/31/france-germany-threaten-covid-astrazeneca-vaccine-shortageeu-uk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Probably worth mentioning Paddy Ashdown and Chris Patten were both in favour of offering BNO passport holders the right of residency in the UK but neither Conservative nor Labour were interested at the time.
On Social Care, it's a huge issue and needs proper thought but we can't wait forever. Changing the way it is funded will fundamentally change the way local Government is financed and operated.
As an example and close to @JohnO and @NickPalmer, Surrey County Council's budget for 2020-21 included £372 million on Adult Social care and £148 million on Children's Social Care and Commissioning so just over half of the County Council's total spend goes on social care provision.
OTOH, that remains within the control and accountability of the County Council - I'm not sure funding it nationally would improve that accountability as it would be in the largesse of central Government where and how much was spent.
Nonetheless, the £520 million has to come from somewhere though whether it's raised locally via Council Tax or some other form of local taxation (Local Income Tax, Property Tax, Land Value Tax, Window Tax - think that one has been tried) is another part of the question.
The other side is the demand is growing and will continue to grow - if it's £520 million now will it be £600 million by 2025 and £750 million by 2040? I don't know, but every Budget report from every relevant authority always mentions the pressures on social care provision (both Adult and Children).
There's a cogent argument around getting individuals to plan more for their later years but as we know that doesn't happen much and for many people their sole asset is their property - that explains why we struggle to make progress on housing. It's in too many people's interests to maintain the status quo of limited supply of land keeping house prices high.
There will be an electoral attraction to coming up with a solution which purports to meet future social care funding requirements as well as cutting everyone's Council Tax by half or more. As with so much else, I remain unconvinced.
I don't think she's had a big hand in the Ox/AZ success story and maybe just gave it a final push over the line. She is, however, responsible for getting the UK in the room for Pfizer, Novavax, Valneva and J&J, three of those have turned out to be big winners and the fourth is looking good as well. The only error was with Moderna but I guess they thought they were covered by the best in class Pfizer one so it's not a huge oversight especially considered the limited European supply for Q1 (under 3m doses aiui, down from 5m because of yield issues in Switzerland) and the 17m doses due from April.
Absolutely great job by the whole team, government, NHS and industry. A really top effort led by the right type of person. Someone in VC who won't get bogged down by political considerations of helping British industry over foreign companies.
The Swiss were thrown out. The problems were resolved. The Swiss applied to rejoin Erasmus. The EU quoted them an a price. The Swiss rejected the offer to rejoin because it was too pricey. (So I believe the UK Government on this one -- that the EU tried to price-gouge them). Then, the Swiss created their own scheme.
I do not believe that the Swiss scheme is double the cost of what the Swiss were offered to join ERASMUS. Prove it.
(A little personal history: I was mildly in favour of the EU. I became involved (in a small way) in the administration, not of Erasmus, but of a somewhat similar scheme, called the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship. It was very profitable for me, but the waste of money in the administration was truly enormous. I became mildly against the EU).