It’s worth looking at the other side, too. But even I as a politics obsessive have hardly heard of most of these.
Rayner: Invisible Dodds: Would be good Treasury Chief Sec. Nandy: Excellent, but wasted in this post. Thomas-Symonds: Invisible. Reeves: Good. Lammy: OK. Gets press, at least. Healey: Invisible Miliband: In theory, v good in this role. Thornberry: Invisible. Reynolds: Literally, who? Ashworth: I don’t trust him for some reason. Green: Actively harmful. The rest: Who, who, who?
Honourable mentions: Allin-Khan: Excellent Murray, Griffiths: Sound, but invisible. Haigh, (Cat) Smith: Actively harmful to Labour’s electoral chances.
There should be front bench roles for Stephen Kinnock, Stella Creasey, Dan Jarvis, Rupa Huq, Sarah Champion, and Angela Eagle.
Benn and Cooper are both very effective in their current roles.
Bring back Balls, FGS.
And really quite white compared to their government equivalents.
If I'm honest, a more useful move would be to abolish the Department of Education entirely and merge it with the MHCLG. It's fallen so far that the odds are nobody will be willing to work with it from now on. And even before this catastrophe hit it it was completely useless.
And that would mean he could fire Jenrick as well as Williamson.
Health to Education looks like a demotion to me. Seems unfair on Hancock, who I think is a bit of a dick but seems to have a...sense of responsibility...which is absent from many colleagues.
He seems to have committed the sin of parking his politics and just working to enable the health system and support his team. He’s grown on me (though in the past he’d not have been front rank minister material).
Nobody speculating on Hunt or Javid returns? Would strengthen the team.
Hunt is good. Javid is just an empty suit. Nothing there.
In years gone by I would agree with you, but this is a world where the alternative might be Jenrick or Sharma.
Hancock would definitely be preferable to most of the current options.
But the problem, as I said above, is the department itself. It just doesn't work and needs to go. Even if it isn't sued out of existence for offences under the Health and Safety and Work Act and for its constant manipulation of data.
From that point of view, whoever you put in will ultimately fail.
I think one of the issues is that (perhaps ironically for a Tory Government) the free schools agenda nationalised and centralised a lot of decision making just at the point that Gove hollowed out the Department and make it unattractive to work for. You can streamline or you can centralise; but you can’t easily do both.
The idea that a relative handful of schools not being 100% controlled by a Whitehall department made said department collapse in skill/moral is interesting.
If true, it would say a lot about the culture in the department in question.
It is worth remembering that the "Free Schools" are more controlled by the government, than many state schools in Europe, for example.
That’s my point - the opposite of what you read from it. “Free” Schools aren’t free, they are effectively centrally controlled. It was a stretch for the Dpt and it centralised work previously done in LAs.
No - they are less controlled by the government than other comprehensives, but still more than in a number of EU countries.
The obsession with control is a part of the unhealthy government managerial process in this country. Along with 100% utilisation and zero alternative provision of government services.
Somebody suggested here the other day that teachers could never be treated like professionals so long as the teaching unions behave as they do... I would suggest that the “unhealthy managerial process” within the DfE as you describe it, is a far greater impediment to teacher professionalism... being told how to do your job to the nth degree, day after day, is no way to develop an effective group of professionals... unfortunately, in many schools the Headteacher is so cowed by what OFSTED might say that they too fall into the trap of having a top-down, command and control style of management - demanding of teachers that they follow heavily prescribed ways of working that they think OFSTED will want to see...
I once worked for QCA. The amount of unhealthy management practices was shocking. They were all ex-teachers and treated their colleagues like the children they used to teach. My assumption is that education is generally riddled with this.
The behaviour of the teachers is a natural reaction to the way they are treated. The reaction of their managers is a reaction to the teachers reaction to the reaction.....
In every industry that has poor industrial relations, moral, productivity etc, that I have very heard of, the reason is a failed social structure - not just management vs employees, but management vs the process vs the employees vs the customers...... Everyone is angry and everyone is fighting everyone else.
The classic in this genre is the collapse of the UK car making industry - yet when other companies setup green fields sites in the UK, they found little difficulty in producing better cars, with vastly happier employees.
Come up with a non.... "toxic" way of structuring the system, and I think you would be surprised by the difference.
Aaaand we're back to abolishing the DfE.
A personal anecdote - I was discussing the OFSTED inspection for the Free School where one of my daughters went, with one of the administrators. I used the expressions "gun-decking" - as in how did OFSTED prevent this with school inspections, in general?
She hadn't come across it before - but was interested in the idea that falsifying results to meet a pre-determined result had been a known management problem in the.... 18th cent.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
It’s worth looking at the other side, too. But even I as a politics obsessive have hardly heard of most of these.
Rayner: Invisible Dodds: Would be good Treasury Chief Sec. Nandy: Excellent, but wasted in this post. Thomas-Symonds: Invisible. Reeves: Good. Lammy: OK. Gets press, at least. Healey: Invisible Miliband: In theory, v good in this role. Thornberry: Invisible. Reynolds: Literally, who? Ashworth: I don’t trust him for some reason. Green: Actively harmful. The rest: Who, who, who?
Honourable mentions: Allin-Khan: Excellent Murray, Griffiths: Sound, but invisible. Haigh, (Cat) Smith: Actively harmful to Labour’s electoral chances.
There should be front bench roles for Stephen Kinnock, Stella Creasey, Dan Jarvis, Rupa Huq, Sarah Champion, and Angela Eagle.
Benn and Cooper are both very effective in their current roles.
Bring back Balls, FGS.
And really quite white compared to their government equivalents.
Oh, hardly. The issue is they are not cutting the mustard, not because they aren’t “diverse” enough.
Both front benches are statistically more diverse, ethnically speaking, than the broader British population.
If I'm honest, a more useful move would be to abolish the Department of Education entirely and merge it with the MHCLG. It's fallen so far that the odds are nobody will be willing to work with it from now on. And even before this catastrophe hit it it was completely useless.
And that would mean he could fire Jenrick as well as Williamson.
Health to Education looks like a demotion to me. Seems unfair on Hancock, who I think is a bit of a dick but seems to have a...sense of responsibility...which is absent from many colleagues.
He seems to have committed the sin of parking his politics and just working to enable the health system and support his team. He’s grown on me (though in the past he’d not have been front rank minister material).
Nobody speculating on Hunt or Javid returns? Would strengthen the team.
Hunt is good. Javid is just an empty suit. Nothing there.
In years gone by I would agree with you, but this is a world where the alternative might be Jenrick or Sharma.
Hancock would definitely be preferable to most of the current options.
But the problem, as I said above, is the department itself. It just doesn't work and needs to go. Even if it isn't sued out of existence for offences under the Health and Safety and Work Act and for its constant manipulation of data.
From that point of view, whoever you put in will ultimately fail.
I think one of the issues is that (perhaps ironically for a Tory Government) the free schools agenda nationalised and centralised a lot of decision making just at the point that Gove hollowed out the Department and make it unattractive to work for. You can streamline or you can centralise; but you can’t easily do both.
The idea that a relative handful of schools not being 100% controlled by a Whitehall department made said department collapse in skill/moral is interesting.
If true, it would say a lot about the culture in the department in question.
It is worth remembering that the "Free Schools" are more controlled by the government, than many state schools in Europe, for example.
That’s my point - the opposite of what you read from it. “Free” Schools aren’t free, they are effectively centrally controlled. It was a stretch for the Dpt and it centralised work previously done in LAs.
No - they are less controlled by the government than other comprehensives, but still more than in a number of EU countries.
The obsession with control is a part of the unhealthy government managerial process in this country. Along with 100% utilisation and zero alternative provision of government services.
Somebody suggested here the other day that teachers could never be treated like professionals so long as the teaching unions behave as they do... I would suggest that the “unhealthy managerial process” within the DfE as you describe it, is a far greater impediment to teacher professionalism... being told how to do your job to the nth degree, day after day, is no way to develop an effective group of professionals... unfortunately, in many schools the Headteacher is so cowed by what OFSTED might say that they too fall into the trap of having a top-down, command and control style of management - demanding of teachers that they follow heavily prescribed ways of working that they think OFSTED will want to see...
I once worked for QCA. The amount of unhealthy management practices was shocking. They were all ex-teachers and treated their colleagues like the children they used to teach. My assumption is that education is generally riddled with this.
The behaviour of the teachers is a natural reaction to the way they are treated. The reaction of their managers is a reaction to the teachers reaction to the reaction.....
In every industry that has poor industrial relations, moral, productivity etc, that I have very heard of, the reason is a failed social structure - not just management vs employees, but management vs the process vs the employees vs the customers...... Everyone is angry and everyone is fighting everyone else.
The classic in this genre is the collapse of the UK car making industry - yet when other companies setup green fields sites in the UK, they found little difficulty in producing better cars, with vastly happier employees.
Come up with a non.... "toxic" way of structuring the system, and I think you would be surprised by the difference.
Aaaand we're back to abolishing the DfE.
Abolish? I though we were using trebuchets?
Whatever happened to the enormo-haddock?
On a hush-hush mission to protect our vaccine supplies from the jealous gaze of Johnny Foreigner....
It’s worth looking at the other side, too. But even I as a politics obsessive have hardly heard of most of these.
Rayner: Invisible Dodds: Would be good Treasury Chief Sec. Nandy: Excellent, but wasted in this post. Thomas-Symonds: Invisible. Reeves: Good. Lammy: OK. Gets press, at least. Healey: Invisible Miliband: In theory, v good in this role. Thornberry: Invisible. Reynolds: Literally, who? Ashworth: I don’t trust him for some reason. Green: Actively harmful. The rest: Who, who, who?
Honourable mentions: Allin-Khan: Excellent Murray, Griffiths: Sound, but invisible. Haigh, (Cat) Smith: Actively harmful to Labour’s electoral chances.
There should be front bench roles for Stephen Kinnock, Stella Creasey, Dan Jarvis, Rupa Huq, Sarah Champion, and Angela Eagle.
Benn and Cooper are both very effective in their current roles.
Bring back Balls, FGS.
And really quite white compared to their government equivalents.
Also, good on Zaha for calling out taking the knee before football matches for what it actually is - an empty gesture.
His specific message was actually great, footballers taking the knee allows those in charge to pretend that everything is ok now even though nothing has actually changed, players are still being racially abused and there is still a huge lack of diversity in backroom staff for football clubs never mind management.
These woke gestures that make people feel good about themselves are counterproductive in actually effecting real change for people. The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
On the impact of the vaccine programme on voting intentions... seems certain that currently the speed of vaccinations (relative to other countries) is underpinning Government support... but will that continue if the end to lockdown, as announced on Monday, is thoroughly underwhelming... the one measure briefed to the press today, meeting one other family outside by Easter has left this household very disappointed to say the least... speed of returning to normal (relative to other countries) may overtake % of population jabbed as the driver of public mood...
Absolutely. And you can see the beginnings of this in the news, in the social media and on conservative sites today. The mood is turning swiftly.
Wait until Sunak gives us the bill on March 03. It will turn again.
Johnson has a problem, in my view.
"meeting one other family outside by Easter"
I'm not a behaviour scientist on SAGE but imho once the over 50s and vulnerables are done by end of March/early April, then there are millions of families who will ignore this restriction and meet up (at least in gardens) and to hell with if it's three or four households technically.
People have had enough of this.
Happening today in my village, on the village green, on the park benches outside the old agricultural college, it’s like the sun has come out and a switch has been flicked. I’ve no doubt the cops are concentrating on the towns and on the beaches (Whitstable, Hythe, Joss Bay) while the villages in the interior are enforcement free. It’s lockdown by consent and, to my eye today, it’s slipping already. And it’s going to be broadly this sunny all week.
Thanks. It is lock down by consent and SAGE and the roadmappers need to accept that.
There is no way millions will carry on in this benighted half world once the vulnerable have been vaccinated and the season changes the viral dynamics anyway.
For what it's worth, me and husband have just come back from lunch out. Went to the local beauty spot just out of town, up a great big windswept hill, sat down on one of the benches and worked our way through a bag of rolls and other goodies.
This, of course, is presently illegal. But I think that one of the unintended consequences of some of the sillier lockdown regulations will be to get previously straight-laced members of the public used to the idea that the law is often stupid, is to be regarded flexibly, and may be happily ignored so long as the benefits of doing so outweigh the risks of getting caught.
But not busy as the golf course is closed? Just dog walkers.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
What about actually doing something? What about....
Moral tariffs. Assess each and every country. So many points for democracy, so many for human rights, so many for policies on pizza toppings etc. Each country gets a grade. Tarrifs calculated from there.
Work on a scale where, say, Sweden gets zero moral tariff.
Also, good on Zaha for calling out taking the knee before football matches for what it actually is - an empty gesture.
His specific message was actually great, footballers taking the knee allows those in charge to pretend that everything is ok now even though nothing has actually changed, players are still being racially abused and there is still a huge lack of diversity in backroom staff for football clubs never mind management.
These woke gestures that make people feel good about themselves are counterproductive in actually effecting real change for people. The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
It was interesting that he said that players felt compelled to do it and were forced to wear BLM t-shirts i.e. not what is claimed that the players only do all this because they are unified in their desire to do so.
I said this before but I think tue NFL "inspire change" is a far more positive and inclusive initiative.
Supply definitely being held back now IMO. There's no other explanation for the rate. I think we're probably going to be doing just a few hundred thousand Pfizer first doses per week from next week.
I'm not sure it changes the short term picture of all groups 1-9 being done at some point in March. We're still on course for that.
Would be good if @Anabobazina could get the Vaxometer running again with the new target and second doses as well.
If I'm honest, a more useful move would be to abolish the Department of Education entirely and merge it with the MHCLG. It's fallen so far that the odds are nobody will be willing to work with it from now on. And even before this catastrophe hit it it was completely useless.
And that would mean he could fire Jenrick as well as Williamson.
Health to Education looks like a demotion to me. Seems unfair on Hancock, who I think is a bit of a dick but seems to have a...sense of responsibility...which is absent from many colleagues.
He seems to have committed the sin of parking his politics and just working to enable the health system and support his team. He’s grown on me (though in the past he’d not have been front rank minister material).
Nobody speculating on Hunt or Javid returns? Would strengthen the team.
Hunt is good. Javid is just an empty suit. Nothing there.
In years gone by I would agree with you, but this is a world where the alternative might be Jenrick or Sharma.
Hancock would definitely be preferable to most of the current options.
But the problem, as I said above, is the department itself. It just doesn't work and needs to go. Even if it isn't sued out of existence for offences under the Health and Safety and Work Act and for its constant manipulation of data.
From that point of view, whoever you put in will ultimately fail.
I think one of the issues is that (perhaps ironically for a Tory Government) the free schools agenda nationalised and centralised a lot of decision making just at the point that Gove hollowed out the Department and make it unattractive to work for. You can streamline or you can centralise; but you can’t easily do both.
The idea that a relative handful of schools not being 100% controlled by a Whitehall department made said department collapse in skill/moral is interesting.
If true, it would say a lot about the culture in the department in question.
It is worth remembering that the "Free Schools" are more controlled by the government, than many state schools in Europe, for example.
That’s my point - the opposite of what you read from it. “Free” Schools aren’t free, they are effectively centrally controlled. It was a stretch for the Dpt and it centralised work previously done in LAs.
No - they are less controlled by the government than other comprehensives, but still more than in a number of EU countries.
The obsession with control is a part of the unhealthy government managerial process in this country. Along with 100% utilisation and zero alternative provision of government services.
Somebody suggested here the other day that teachers could never be treated like professionals so long as the teaching unions behave as they do... I would suggest that the “unhealthy managerial process” within the DfE as you describe it, is a far greater impediment to teacher professionalism... being told how to do your job to the nth degree, day after day, is no way to develop an effective group of professionals... unfortunately, in many schools the Headteacher is so cowed by what OFSTED might say that they too fall into the trap of having a top-down, command and control style of management - demanding of teachers that they follow heavily prescribed ways of working that they think OFSTED will want to see...
I once worked for QCA. The amount of unhealthy management practices was shocking. They were all ex-teachers and treated their colleagues like the children they used to teach. My assumption is that education is generally riddled with this.
The behaviour of the teachers is a natural reaction to the way they are treated. The reaction of their managers is a reaction to the teachers reaction to the reaction.....
In every industry that has poor industrial relations, moral, productivity etc, that I have very heard of, the reason is a failed social structure - not just management vs employees, but management vs the process vs the employees vs the customers...... Everyone is angry and everyone is fighting everyone else.
The classic in this genre is the collapse of the UK car making industry - yet when other companies setup green fields sites in the UK, they found little difficulty in producing better cars, with vastly happier employees.
Come up with a non.... "toxic" way of structuring the system, and I think you would be surprised by the difference.
Aaaand we're back to abolishing the DfE.
Abolish? I though we were using trebuchets?
Whatever happened to the enormo-haddock?
I though they were either operating the trebuchets or waiting at the delivery point?
If I'm honest, a more useful move would be to abolish the Department of Education entirely and merge it with the MHCLG. It's fallen so far that the odds are nobody will be willing to work with it from now on. And even before this catastrophe hit it it was completely useless.
And that would mean he could fire Jenrick as well as Williamson.
Health to Education looks like a demotion to me. Seems unfair on Hancock, who I think is a bit of a dick but seems to have a...sense of responsibility...which is absent from many colleagues.
He seems to have committed the sin of parking his politics and just working to enable the health system and support his team. He’s grown on me (though in the past he’d not have been front rank minister material).
Nobody speculating on Hunt or Javid returns? Would strengthen the team.
Hunt is good. Javid is just an empty suit. Nothing there.
In years gone by I would agree with you, but this is a world where the alternative might be Jenrick or Sharma.
Hancock would definitely be preferable to most of the current options.
But the problem, as I said above, is the department itself. It just doesn't work and needs to go. Even if it isn't sued out of existence for offences under the Health and Safety and Work Act and for its constant manipulation of data.
From that point of view, whoever you put in will ultimately fail.
I think one of the issues is that (perhaps ironically for a Tory Government) the free schools agenda nationalised and centralised a lot of decision making just at the point that Gove hollowed out the Department and make it unattractive to work for. You can streamline or you can centralise; but you can’t easily do both.
The idea that a relative handful of schools not being 100% controlled by a Whitehall department made said department collapse in skill/moral is interesting.
If true, it would say a lot about the culture in the department in question.
It is worth remembering that the "Free Schools" are more controlled by the government, than many state schools in Europe, for example.
That’s my point - the opposite of what you read from it. “Free” Schools aren’t free, they are effectively centrally controlled. It was a stretch for the Dpt and it centralised work previously done in LAs.
No - they are less controlled by the government than other comprehensives, but still more than in a number of EU countries.
The obsession with control is a part of the unhealthy government managerial process in this country. Along with 100% utilisation and zero alternative provision of government services.
Somebody suggested here the other day that teachers could never be treated like professionals so long as the teaching unions behave as they do... I would suggest that the “unhealthy managerial process” within the DfE as you describe it, is a far greater impediment to teacher professionalism... being told how to do your job to the nth degree, day after day, is no way to develop an effective group of professionals... unfortunately, in many schools the Headteacher is so cowed by what OFSTED might say that they too fall into the trap of having a top-down, command and control style of management - demanding of teachers that they follow heavily prescribed ways of working that they think OFSTED will want to see...
I once worked for QCA. The amount of unhealthy management practices was shocking. They were all ex-teachers and treated their colleagues like the children they used to teach. My assumption is that education is generally riddled with this.
The behaviour of the teachers is a natural reaction to the way they are treated. The reaction of their managers is a reaction to the teachers reaction to the reaction.....
In every industry that has poor industrial relations, moral, productivity etc, that I have very heard of, the reason is a failed social structure - not just management vs employees, but management vs the process vs the employees vs the customers...... Everyone is angry and everyone is fighting everyone else.
The classic in this genre is the collapse of the UK car making industry - yet when other companies setup green fields sites in the UK, they found little difficulty in producing better cars, with vastly happier employees.
Come up with a non.... "toxic" way of structuring the system, and I think you would be surprised by the difference.
Aaaand we're back to abolishing the DfE.
A personal anecdote - I was discussing the OFSTED inspection for the Free School where one of my daughters went, with one of the administrators. I used the expressions "gun-decking" - as in how did OFSTED prevent this with school inspections, in general?
She hadn't come across it before - but was interested in the idea that falsifying results to meet a pre-determined result had been a known management problem in the.... 18th cent.
I had never heard the term, but I did find this:
There is an amusing, often-told anecdote about a senior American officer proudly regaling his British counterpart regarding the many fine traditions of the United States military. Not surprisingly, the Englishman was less than impressed. “You Yanks have no traditions,” he brusquely interrupted, sniffing dismissively. “You have habits. And bad ones at that.”
The medium post has ≈ 30 testimonies from working academics and researchers about problems they are having with academic freedom and free speech in our universities.
But the problem doesn't exist. They're making it all up and universities don't have any issues with free speech. Anyone saying otherwise is a liar or a transphobe.
Oh come off it Max. What has this got to do with people being invited to talk at Student Unions? This is a completely separate issue and I don't believe it has any relevance to the big Gavin's proposed new law?
I'm not saying this isn't an issue because it clearly is, but your response is ridiculous.
That's just a starting point in the war for free speech. The whole system needs upending including bringing protection from disciplinary action for faculty of students who have "controversial" opinions according to the church of woke.
Again. A ridiculously inflammatory comment.
I don't disagree that people should be protected from being discriminated against in response to having voiced their own views.
But "church of woke" ffs. You're better than this.
You're admitting there's a problem but then against any measures to actually try and fix them. I don't get it.
I'm happy to discuss each actual issue on its merits without resorting to divide and conquer "us vs them-ism".
Issue 1: academics are afraid to voice their opinions on certain topics due to fear of discrimination.
It's bad. Definitely. And I definitely agree that in certain circles there's a complete lack of effort in even trying to understand someone else's view point. It's either "you're with us or you're against us".
But what realistically can you do about that? Of course you can make laws that protect staff from clear discrimination based on their views but how can you legislate to stop "the majority" disliking you for voicing such views?
For example, @Casino_Royale clearly hates me for my views on the EU so if I worked for him he would be unlikely to give me a promotion based on simply disliking me. That is always the case in employment so how do you stop that?
No I don't. My best friend is a Remainer. In fact, most of them are - to varying degrees. Nor would I ever let my views of someone's personal politics colour my views on whether I thought they were fit for a promotion.
I simply don't think like that. In my professional life (which you don't know about, of course) my record in this speaks for itself: it would be based solely on your abilities.
I think you can be a bit of dick at times, and act like a stroppy teenager, but I think that's largely because you are young and passionate about certain things. I think you're essentially a good egg and you definitely have your own mind but, yeah, a bit dickish at times.
I *might* not promote you yet if you dickish in a professional context and that'd be because people skills and the ability to handle constructive disagreement become more and more important as you climb the ladder. But I'd at least sit you down and acknowledge your potential, and give you feedback as to where I thought you needed to work on, before you were promoted.
It wouldn't be because of your personal views.
I appreciate your response and I apologise for the unfair characterisation. I have no doubt that you'd act professionally at all times. I did not intend to malign you, I was just trying to point out, with a potential example, that people generally prefer to work with people they like. I don't think that's that controversial? As I said in another comment the question of "would this person fit into the team?" is usually front and centre in the minds of interviewers even if not directly acknowledged.
Bringing us back round to the issue at hand, my argument was that we should be discussing the actual issues in play and what the government, if anything, can do.
There are already laws against bullying and discrimination in the workplace which apply equally to the left and the right. Ultimately you cant force university employees to like their colleagues who have views they dislike, so is the complaint that universities are doing nothing to dispel the "group think"? I wouldn't be against requiring higher educational establishments to run training programmes encouraging mutual respect and civilised debate. However I would prefer if it was framed in a manner that encourages mutual respect rather than in the "war on woke" way.
I know that isn't politics, and "war on woke" is better politics, but it isn't necessarily the best thing for the country and is bound to continue to breed resentment on both sides.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
What about actually doing something? What about....
Moral tariffs. Assess each and every country. So many points for democracy, so many for human rights, so many for policies on pizza toppings etc. Each country gets a grade. Tarrifs calculated from there.
Work on a scale where, say, Sweden gets zero moral tariff.
Forgive my ignorance, but I haven't the faintest idea of what you are on about.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
Those that make a habit of saying that Starmer is not doing well might recall David Cameron as LOTO. Cameron was regularly dismissed, partic by those of Labour sympathies, as lightweight and a chameleon with no substance. This view was shared by the Tory right that thought David Davis should have won (ffs!). Cameron did, of course, go on to win two GEs. Starmer has plenty of time. Cameron did have one major advantage; he was up against Brown. Labour must hope that Bozo the Clown is still PM at the next GE, with all the inevitable car crashes that he will create between now and then.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
Yes, the moral panic that ensued when a single statue in Bristol was vandalized last year should put things into perspective. These threads, for example, were fascinating - there were those proclaiming, seemingly in all seriousness, that it it marked the death of the Enlightenment.
So the UK doing more than 50% of the combined EU total. I guess supply is still the rate limiting factor for us, and so probably is for them. But the US is expecting a doubling of deliveries from Pfizer in the coming weeks, so I guess that should signal a considerable loosening of supply constraints from them (unless Pfizer have only solved production issues in their US plants).
Be interesting to see how those relative vaccination rates move once supply is no longer an issue.
Denmark is the interesting one. Small, but not micro, doing a significantly better job than others in the EU, and sticking to their target of everyone fully done by the end of June;
The medium post has ≈ 30 testimonies from working academics and researchers about problems they are having with academic freedom and free speech in our universities.
But the problem doesn't exist. They're making it all up and universities don't have any issues with free speech. Anyone saying otherwise is a liar or a transphobe.
Oh come off it Max. What has this got to do with people being invited to talk at Student Unions? This is a completely separate issue and I don't believe it has any relevance to the big Gavin's proposed new law?
I'm not saying this isn't an issue because it clearly is, but your response is ridiculous.
That's just a starting point in the war for free speech. The whole system needs upending including bringing protection from disciplinary action for faculty of students who have "controversial" opinions according to the church of woke.
Again. A ridiculously inflammatory comment.
I don't disagree that people should be protected from being discriminated against in response to having voiced their own views.
But "church of woke" ffs. You're better than this.
You're admitting there's a problem but then against any measures to actually try and fix them. I don't get it.
I'm happy to discuss each actual issue on its merits without resorting to divide and conquer "us vs them-ism".
Issue 1: academics are afraid to voice their opinions on certain topics due to fear of discrimination.
It's bad. Definitely. And I definitely agree that in certain circles there's a complete lack of effort in even trying to understand someone else's view point. It's either "you're with us or you're against us".
But what realistically can you do about that? Of course you can make laws that protect staff from clear discrimination based on their views but how can you legislate to stop "the majority" disliking you for voicing such views?
For example, @Casino_Royale clearly hates me for my views on the EU so if I worked for him he would be unlikely to give me a promotion based on simply disliking me. That is always the case in employment so how do you stop that?
No I don't. My best friend is a Remainer. In fact, most of them are - to varying degrees. Nor would I ever let my views of someone's personal politics colour my views on whether I thought they were fit for a promotion.
I simply don't think like that. In my professional life (which you don't know about, of course) my record in this speaks for itself: it would be based solely on your abilities.
I think you can be a bit of dick at times, and act like a stroppy teenager, but I think that's largely because you are young and passionate about certain things. I think you're essentially a good egg and you definitely have your own mind but, yeah, a bit dickish at times.
I *might* not promote you yet if you dickish in a professional context and that'd be because people skills and the ability to handle constructive disagreement become more and more important as you climb the ladder. But I'd at least sit you down and acknowledge your potential, and give you feedback as to where I thought you needed to work on, before you were promoted.
It wouldn't be because of your personal views.
In reality, we know that the secret pb.com handshake would get you the job...
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
Yes, the moral panic that ensued when a single statue in Bristol was vandalized last year should put things into perspective. These threads, for example, were fascinating - there were those proclaiming, seemingly in all seriousness, that it it marked the death of the Enlightenment.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 323,802 3,895 14,214,176 East Of England 34,567 573 1,698,521 London 46,921 703 1,640,550 Midlands 63,406 1,003 2,728,604 North East And Yorkshire 51,933 576 2,231,603 North West 42,566 261 1,872,065 South East 47,563 462 2,323,412 South West 35,274 315 1,648,929
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
It’s worth looking at the other side, too. But even I as a politics obsessive have hardly heard of most of these.
Rayner: Invisible Dodds: Would be good Treasury Chief Sec. Nandy: Excellent, but wasted in this post. Thomas-Symonds: Invisible. Reeves: Good. Lammy: OK. Gets press, at least. Healey: Invisible Miliband: In theory, v good in this role. Thornberry: Invisible. Reynolds: Literally, who? Ashworth: I don’t trust him for some reason. Green: Actively harmful. The rest: Who, who, who?
Honourable mentions: Allin-Khan: Excellent Murray, Griffiths: Sound, but invisible. Haigh, (Cat) Smith: Actively harmful to Labour’s electoral chances.
There should be front bench roles for Stephen Kinnock, Stella Creasey, Dan Jarvis, Rupa Huq, Sarah Champion, and Angela Eagle.
Benn and Cooper are both very effective in their current roles.
Bring back Balls, FGS.
And really quite white compared to their government equivalents.
Oh, hardly. The issue is they are not cutting the mustard, not because they aren’t “diverse” enough.
Both front benches are statistically more diverse, ethnically speaking, than the broader British population.
Missing my point. Labour and others talk a lot about inclusiveness - Tories go for the best .. and do it.
So the UK doing more than 50% of the combined EU total. I guess supply is still the rate limiting factor for us, and so probably is for them. But the US is expecting a doubling of deliveries from Pfizer in the coming weeks, so I guess that should signal a considerable loosening of supply constraints from them (unless Pfizer have only solved production issues in their US plants).
Be interesting to see how those relative vaccination rates move once supply is no longer an issue.
Denmark is the interesting one. Small, but not micro, doing a significantly better job than others in the EU, and sticking to their target of everyone fully done by the end of June;
A thought- if J+J comes good on schedule, a single jab vaccine allows for a lot of quick progress.
Denmark have lengthened the gap between doses and are running the same JiT supply policy as we are for second doses. It's allowed them to not hold back half of their supply just as we haven't.
It’s worth looking at the other side, too. But even I as a politics obsessive have hardly heard of most of these.
Rayner: Invisible Dodds: Would be good Treasury Chief Sec. Nandy: Excellent, but wasted in this post. Thomas-Symonds: Invisible. Reeves: Good. Lammy: OK. Gets press, at least. Healey: Invisible Miliband: In theory, v good in this role. Thornberry: Invisible. Reynolds: Literally, who? Ashworth: I don’t trust him for some reason. Green: Actively harmful. The rest: Who, who, who?
Honourable mentions: Allin-Khan: Excellent Murray, Griffiths: Sound, but invisible. Haigh, (Cat) Smith: Actively harmful to Labour’s electoral chances.
There should be front bench roles for Stephen Kinnock, Stella Creasey, Dan Jarvis, Rupa Huq, Sarah Champion, and Angela Eagle.
Benn and Cooper are both very effective in their current roles.
Bring back Balls, FGS.
And really quite white compared to their government equivalents.
Oh, hardly. The issue is they are not cutting the mustard, not because they aren’t “diverse” enough.
Both front benches are statistically more diverse, ethnically speaking, than the broader British population.
Missing my point. Labour and others talk a lot about inclusiveness - Tories go for the best .. and do it.
Patel, to take an example, is definitely not “the best”.
So the UK doing more than 50% of the combined EU total. I guess supply is still the rate limiting factor for us, and so probably is for them. But the US is expecting a doubling of deliveries from Pfizer in the coming weeks, so I guess that should signal a considerable loosening of supply constraints from them (unless Pfizer have only solved production issues in their US plants).
Be interesting to see how those relative vaccination rates move once supply is no longer an issue.
There's little reason to think most EU nations could not achieve similar rates, or at least much better than current ones. Pfizer announced a slow down to increase capacity last month, so I should think most places will be getting more of it.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The problem is the space is occupied by plenty of bad faith actors...anybody producing inclusive training material telling people to be "less white" is at best terribly misguided, but is (given other examples of their work) probably best described as turning race baiting into a lucrative career.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
I see it from a different perspective. I see mostly white people telling me that I'm oppressed and that the only way to beat that is to drag down white people to "my level". It's a completely patronising and insulting thing to be told.
As for Lewis, I respect him and his achievements in motorsport. However, I'd like someone like Zaha or Les Ferdinand to ask him what he has achieved by making F1 drivers take the knee before each race? If it's such a powerful gesture then what tangible achievements have come from it?
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The problem is the space is occupied by plenty of bad faith actors...anybody producing inclusive training material telling people to be "less white" is at best terribly misguided, but is (given other examples of their work) is probably best described as turning race baiting into a lucrative career.
My position on this "be less white" nonsense is that while I do not think that would be in any way appropriate in Britain, America's history and relationship with race means things are rather more complicated there.
As far as I'm aware there's no examples of "be less white" in Britain and very few, if any, people calling for such things. We don't need to pre-empt the importation of every American "innovation" which may or may not be appropriate in their own context.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
I see it from a different perspective. I see mostly white people telling me that I'm oppressed and that the only way to beat that is to drag down white people to "my level". It's a completely patronising and insulting thing to be told.
As for Lewis, I respect him and his achievements in motorsport. However, I'd like someone like Zaha or Les Ferdinand to ask him what he has achieved by making F1 drivers take the knee before each race? If it's such a powerful gesture then what tangible achievements have come from it?
At least they aren't telling you you have internalised whiteness yourself. I hope race traitor accusations are minimal.
So the UK doing more than 50% of the combined EU total. I guess supply is still the rate limiting factor for us, and so probably is for them. But the US is expecting a doubling of deliveries from Pfizer in the coming weeks, so I guess that should signal a considerable loosening of supply constraints from them (unless Pfizer have only solved production issues in their US plants).
Be interesting to see how those relative vaccination rates move once supply is no longer an issue.
Denmark is the interesting one. Small, but not micro, doing a significantly better job than others in the EU, and sticking to their target of everyone fully done by the end of June;
A thought- if J+J comes good on schedule, a single jab vaccine allows for a lot of quick progress.
There is a ton of evidence now that a policy of one jab with an extended delay [12 weeks I think] is more efficacious so no need to wait for J & J. Yet I don't know of any EU country which is doing this. They are sticking to the 2 dose 3 weeks apart method which adds an additional brake on the speed of rollout.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
Those that make a habit of saying that Starmer is not doing well might recall David Cameron as LOTO. Cameron was regularly dismissed, partic by those of Labour sympathies, as lightweight and a chameleon with no substance. This view was shared by the Tory right that thought David Davis should have won (ffs!). Cameron did, of course, go on to win two GEs. Starmer has plenty of time. Cameron did have one major advantage; he was up against Brown. Labour must hope that Bozo the Clown is still PM at the next GE, with all the inevitable car crashes that he will create between now and then.
And don't forget Tony "Bambi, lightweight" Blair pre 1997.
It’s worth looking at the other side, too. But even I as a politics obsessive have hardly heard of most of these.
Rayner: Invisible Dodds: Would be good Treasury Chief Sec. Nandy: Excellent, but wasted in this post. Thomas-Symonds: Invisible. Reeves: Good. Lammy: OK. Gets press, at least. Healey: Invisible Miliband: In theory, v good in this role. Thornberry: Invisible. Reynolds: Literally, who? Ashworth: I don’t trust him for some reason. Green: Actively harmful. The rest: Who, who, who?
Honourable mentions: Allin-Khan: Excellent Murray, Griffiths: Sound, but invisible. Haigh, (Cat) Smith: Actively harmful to Labour’s electoral chances.
There should be front bench roles for Stephen Kinnock, Stella Creasey, Dan Jarvis, Rupa Huq, Sarah Champion, and Angela Eagle.
Benn and Cooper are both very effective in their current roles.
Bring back Balls, FGS.
And really quite white compared to their government equivalents.
Oh, hardly. The issue is they are not cutting the mustard, not because they aren’t “diverse” enough.
Both front benches are statistically more diverse, ethnically speaking, than the broader British population.
Missing my point. Labour and others talk a lot about inclusiveness - Tories go for the best .. and do it.
Patel, to take an example, is definitely not “the best”.
And yet if Boris had listened to her in February of last year and closed the border 80-100k people who died would probably still be alive today and we wouldn't have had anywhere near the level of economic carnage we experienced in 2020 while the whole second wave would have passed us by.
So the UK doing more than 50% of the combined EU total. I guess supply is still the rate limiting factor for us, and so probably is for them. But the US is expecting a doubling of deliveries from Pfizer in the coming weeks, so I guess that should signal a considerable loosening of supply constraints from them (unless Pfizer have only solved production issues in their US plants).
Be interesting to see how those relative vaccination rates move once supply is no longer an issue.
Denmark is the interesting one. Small, but not micro, doing a significantly better job than others in the EU, and sticking to their target of everyone fully done by the end of June;
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
I see it from a different perspective. I see mostly white people telling me that I'm oppressed and that the only way to beat that is to drag down white people to "my level". It's a completely patronising and insulting thing to be told.
As for Lewis, I respect him and his achievements in motorsport. However, I'd like someone like Zaha or Les Ferdinand to ask him what he has achieved by making F1 drivers take the knee before each race? If it's such a powerful gesture then what tangible achievements have come from it?
Its worth noting where it all started, the NFL, they don't have any league imposed policy to do so, nor is it a gesture that is widely practiced these days by their players.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The problem is the space is occupied by plenty of bad faith actors...anybody producing inclusive training material telling people to be "less white" is at best terribly misguided, but is (given other examples of their work) is probably best described as turning race baiting into a lucrative career.
My position on this "be less white" nonsense is that while I do not think that would be in any way appropriate in Britain, America's history and relationship with race means things are rather more complicated there.
As far as I'm aware there's no examples of "be less white" in Britain and very few, if any, people calling for such things. We don't need to pre-empt the importation of every American "innovation" which may or may not be appropriate in their own context.
Rather too many inappropriate American innovations end up over here, from the word "normalcy" to the Black Lives Matter movement. So it's best to squash them before they arrive.
After one too many last night I posted a WSJ article by Dr Marty Makary predicting US herd immunity by April - which rightly took a lot of criticism. The NYT has a model produced by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine that allows you to input various scenarios (speed of vaccine rollout, easing of NPI’s, virus variants etc) and yes, herd immunity by April is possible if an infectious new variant emerges and all restrictions are eased. There would be a further death toll of 500,000 between now and then though. However, it thinks that with a supply increase the US could get there in July with a “modest” 90,000 further deaths.
If I'm honest, a more useful move would be to abolish the Department of Education entirely and merge it with the MHCLG. It's fallen so far that the odds are nobody will be willing to work with it from now on. And even before this catastrophe hit it it was completely useless.
And that would mean he could fire Jenrick as well as Williamson.
Health to Education looks like a demotion to me. Seems unfair on Hancock, who I think is a bit of a dick but seems to have a...sense of responsibility...which is absent from many colleagues.
He seems to have committed the sin of parking his politics and just working to enable the health system and support his team. He’s grown on me (though in the past he’d not have been front rank minister material).
Nobody speculating on Hunt or Javid returns? Would strengthen the team.
Hunt is good. Javid is just an empty suit. Nothing there.
In years gone by I would agree with you, but this is a world where the alternative might be Jenrick or Sharma.
Hancock would definitely be preferable to most of the current options.
But the problem, as I said above, is the department itself. It just doesn't work and needs to go. Even if it isn't sued out of existence for offences under the Health and Safety and Work Act and for its constant manipulation of data.
From that point of view, whoever you put in will ultimately fail.
I think one of the issues is that (perhaps ironically for a Tory Government) the free schools agenda nationalised and centralised a lot of decision making just at the point that Gove hollowed out the Department and make it unattractive to work for. You can streamline or you can centralise; but you can’t easily do both.
I'm afraid it was always hollowed out and unattractive to work for. It's been one of the weaker government departments for many years.
What Gove's reforms did, by centralising power and forcing the civil servants concerned to work, was make this brutally obvious to teachers.
And what Covid has done is make it brutally obvious to everyone.
There is an interesting DH parallel, in that even before the creation of NHS England and the transfer out of staff, DH always had clinical expertise and medical experts. MOD and the Home Office have similar. It’s not clear to me that the DfE considers itself to need real deep experts. Same issue with MHCLG.
Anyone who have ever been to school considers themselves an expert on education.
I've been teaching for nearly thirty years and I don't think I'm an expert as all but three years of that has been in one school. Just reading some of the things that @ydoethur writes on here makes me realise that my school is unusual in many ways; I suspect they all are though. The "bog standard comp" is a myth.
It’s worth looking at the other side, too. But even I as a politics obsessive have hardly heard of most of these.
Rayner: Invisible Dodds: Would be good Treasury Chief Sec. Nandy: Excellent, but wasted in this post. Thomas-Symonds: Invisible. Reeves: Good. Lammy: OK. Gets press, at least. Healey: Invisible Miliband: In theory, v good in this role. Thornberry: Invisible. Reynolds: Literally, who? Ashworth: I don’t trust him for some reason. Green: Actively harmful. The rest: Who, who, who?
Honourable mentions: Allin-Khan: Excellent Murray, Griffiths: Sound, but invisible. Haigh, (Cat) Smith: Actively harmful to Labour’s electoral chances.
There should be front bench roles for Stephen Kinnock, Stella Creasey, Dan Jarvis, Rupa Huq, Sarah Champion, and Angela Eagle.
Benn and Cooper are both very effective in their current roles.
Bring back Balls, FGS.
And really quite white compared to their government equivalents.
Oh, hardly. The issue is they are not cutting the mustard, not because they aren’t “diverse” enough.
Both front benches are statistically more diverse, ethnically speaking, than the broader British population.
Missing my point. Labour and others talk a lot about inclusiveness - Tories go for the best .. and do it.
Patel, to take an example, is definitely not “the best”.
And yet if Boris had listened to her in February of last year and closed the border 80-100k people who died would probably still be alive today and we wouldn't have had anywhere near the level of economic carnage we experienced in 2020 while the whole second wave would have passed us by.
Stopped clock. But yes, it took just a basic common sense to make the call, without listening to the idiots in SAGE.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
Those that make a habit of saying that Starmer is not doing well might recall David Cameron as LOTO. Cameron was regularly dismissed, partic by those of Labour sympathies, as lightweight and a chameleon with no substance. This view was shared by the Tory right that thought David Davis should have won (ffs!). Cameron did, of course, go on to win two GEs. Starmer has plenty of time. Cameron did have one major advantage; he was up against Brown. Labour must hope that Bozo the Clown is still PM at the next GE, with all the inevitable car crashes that he will create between now and then.
It's a bizarre quirk of history that DD (though originally a Europhile) probably did more than anyone to bring about Brexit. He was even more of an oddball than Gordon Brown and would certainly have been trounced at the Election that Never Was. I very much doubt that Farage would have gained such a toehold in those circumstances.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
I see it from a different perspective. I see mostly white people telling me that I'm oppressed and that the only way to beat that is to drag down white people to "my level". It's a completely patronising and insulting thing to be told.
As for Lewis, I respect him and his achievements in motorsport. However, I'd like someone like Zaha or Les Ferdinand to ask him what he has achieved by making F1 drivers take the knee before each race? If it's such a powerful gesture then what tangible achievements have come from it?
At least they aren't telling you you have internalised whiteness yourself. I hope race traitor accusations are minimal.
Lol, as if. I've had many white people stop just short of calling me a coconut for not agreeing with their new love of racial equality gestures. Usually it becomes "well Indians are just elitists and not true minorities". It's why I have such strong opinions on these bullshit artists and don't for a second believe they have their hearts in the right place.
It’s worth looking at the other side, too. But even I as a politics obsessive have hardly heard of most of these.
Rayner: Invisible Dodds: Would be good Treasury Chief Sec. Nandy: Excellent, but wasted in this post. Thomas-Symonds: Invisible. Reeves: Good. Lammy: OK. Gets press, at least. Healey: Invisible Miliband: In theory, v good in this role. Thornberry: Invisible. Reynolds: Literally, who? Ashworth: I don’t trust him for some reason. Green: Actively harmful. The rest: Who, who, who?
Honourable mentions: Allin-Khan: Excellent Murray, Griffiths: Sound, but invisible. Haigh, (Cat) Smith: Actively harmful to Labour’s electoral chances.
There should be front bench roles for Stephen Kinnock, Stella Creasey, Dan Jarvis, Rupa Huq, Sarah Champion, and Angela Eagle.
Benn and Cooper are both very effective in their current roles.
Bring back Balls, FGS.
And really quite white compared to their government equivalents.
Oh, hardly. The issue is they are not cutting the mustard, not because they aren’t “diverse” enough.
Both front benches are statistically more diverse, ethnically speaking, than the broader British population.
Missing my point. Labour and others talk a lot about inclusiveness - Tories go for the best .. and do it.
Patel, to take an example, is definitely not “the best”.
And yet if Boris had listened to her in February of last year and closed the border 80-100k people who died would probably still be alive today and we wouldn't have had anywhere near the level of economic carnage we experienced in 2020 while the whole second wave would have passed us by.
Maybe that now buys her a whole lot of credibility in Government that makes her bomb-proof.
Or maybe there are a lot of nervous people who opposed that lockdown worried about that playing out, who would love to see the back of her....
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
I see it from a different perspective. I see mostly white people telling me that I'm oppressed and that the only way to beat that is to drag down white people to "my level". It's a completely patronising and insulting thing to be told.
As for Lewis, I respect him and his achievements in motorsport. However, I'd like someone like Zaha or Les Ferdinand to ask him what he has achieved by making F1 drivers take the knee before each race? If it's such a powerful gesture then what tangible achievements have come from it?
At least they aren't telling you you have internalised whiteness yourself. I hope race traitor accusations are minimal.
Lol, as if. I've had many white people stop just short of calling me a coconut for not agreeing with their new love of racial equality gestures. Usually it becomes "well Indians are just elitists and not true minorities". It's why I have such strong opinions on these bullshit artists and don't for a second believe they have their hearts in the right place.
But the government’s measures are just more centralising, ineffectual bollocks.
The Coke stuff shocks me.
I get that it is “America” and indeed Atlanta which has a unique position in American society —- but it does worry me that it could be on its way here.
It’s worth looking at the other side, too. But even I as a politics obsessive have hardly heard of most of these.
Rayner: Invisible Dodds: Would be good Treasury Chief Sec. Nandy: Excellent, but wasted in this post. Thomas-Symonds: Invisible. Reeves: Good. Lammy: OK. Gets press, at least. Healey: Invisible Miliband: In theory, v good in this role. Thornberry: Invisible. Reynolds: Literally, who? Ashworth: I don’t trust him for some reason. Green: Actively harmful. The rest: Who, who, who?
Honourable mentions: Allin-Khan: Excellent Murray, Griffiths: Sound, but invisible. Haigh, (Cat) Smith: Actively harmful to Labour’s electoral chances.
There should be front bench roles for Stephen Kinnock, Stella Creasey, Dan Jarvis, Rupa Huq, Sarah Champion, and Angela Eagle.
Benn and Cooper are both very effective in their current roles.
Bring back Balls, FGS.
And really quite white compared to their government equivalents.
Oh, hardly. The issue is they are not cutting the mustard, not because they aren’t “diverse” enough.
Both front benches are statistically more diverse, ethnically speaking, than the broader British population.
Missing my point. Labour and others talk a lot about inclusiveness - Tories go for the best .. and do it.
Patel, to take an example, is definitely not “the best”.
Again missing the point. Quality will always be a matter of judgement [& political views perhaps] . The fact is that in choosing leaders and appointing ministers the Tories are as pragmatic as they are in making policies. Silly things like ethnicity/sex simply doesn't come into it any more. Meanwhile Labour has yet to have a female leader and the shadow cabinet is almost as grey as their leader. Several posters on here bemoan that lack of big ideas in the current government. The only big idea that matters to Tories generally is to win. Society pivots and moves all the time both forward and back, left and right. Tories believe either way, they are the best ones to run the show. Tony Blair had a similar approach but he couldn't make it stick....
So the UK doing more than 50% of the combined EU total. I guess supply is still the rate limiting factor for us, and so probably is for them. But the US is expecting a doubling of deliveries from Pfizer in the coming weeks, so I guess that should signal a considerable loosening of supply constraints from them (unless Pfizer have only solved production issues in their US plants).
Be interesting to see how those relative vaccination rates move once supply is no longer an issue.
Denmark is the interesting one. Small, but not micro, doing a significantly better job than others in the EU, and sticking to their target of everyone fully done by the end of June;
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
I see it from a different perspective. I see mostly white people telling me that I'm oppressed and that the only way to beat that is to drag down white people to "my level". It's a completely patronising and insulting thing to be told.
As for Lewis, I respect him and his achievements in motorsport. However, I'd like someone like Zaha or Les Ferdinand to ask him what he has achieved by making F1 drivers take the knee before each race? If it's such a powerful gesture then what tangible achievements have come from it?
At least they aren't telling you you have internalised whiteness yourself. I hope race traitor accusations are minimal.
Lol, as if. I've had many white people stop just short of calling me a coconut for not agreeing with their new love of racial equality gestures. Usually it becomes "well Indians are just elitists and not true minorities". It's why I have such strong opinions on these bullshit artists and don't for a second believe they have their hearts in the right place.
In the US, it is of course the Asians i.e Japanese, Chinese, etc...that get this type of stuff...so successful that they are now been openly discriminated against when applying to top universities.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The problem is the space is occupied by plenty of bad faith actors...anybody producing inclusive training material telling people to be "less white" is at best terribly misguided, but is (given other examples of their work) is probably best described as turning race baiting into a lucrative career.
My position on this "be less white" nonsense is that while I do not think that would be in any way appropriate in Britain, America's history and relationship with race means things are rather more complicated there.
As far as I'm aware there's no examples of "be less white" in Britain and very few, if any, people calling for such things. We don't need to pre-empt the importation of every American "innovation" which may or may not be appropriate in their own context.
Rather too many inappropriate American innovations end up over here, from the word "normalcy" to the Black Lives Matter movement. So it's best to squash them before they arrive.
I have a vision from memory of the attempts to "squash" the BLM movement by the unofficial guardians of the Trump Administration. Presumably then, to prevent it from crossing the Atlantic.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The problem is the space is occupied by plenty of bad faith actors...anybody producing inclusive training material telling people to be "less white" is at best terribly misguided, but is (given other examples of their work) is probably best described as turning race baiting into a lucrative career.
My position on this "be less white" nonsense is that while I do not think that would be in any way appropriate in Britain, America's history and relationship with race means things are rather more complicated there.
As far as I'm aware there's no examples of "be less white" in Britain and very few, if any, people calling for such things. We don't need to pre-empt the importation of every American "innovation" which may or may not be appropriate in their own context.
Rather too many inappropriate American innovations end up over here, from the word "normalcy" to the Black Lives Matter movement. So it's best to squash them before they arrive.
Even @Foxy is at it. The NHS Diabetes Risk tool advertised on social media asks for weight in pounds, which is American, rather than the British stones and pounds.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The problem is the space is occupied by plenty of bad faith actors...anybody producing inclusive training material telling people to be "less white" is at best terribly misguided, but is (given other examples of their work) is probably best described as turning race baiting into a lucrative career.
My position on this "be less white" nonsense is that while I do not think that would be in any way appropriate in Britain, America's history and relationship with race means things are rather more complicated there.
As far as I'm aware there's no examples of "be less white" in Britain and very few, if any, people calling for such things. We don't need to pre-empt the importation of every American "innovation" which may or may not be appropriate in their own context.
Rather too many inappropriate American innovations end up over here, from the word "normalcy" to the Black Lives Matter movement. So it's best to squash them before they arrive.
I have a vision from memory of the attempts to "squash" the BLM movement by the unofficial guardians of the Trump Administration. Presumably then, to prevent it from crossing the Atlantic.
Don't worry, we'll all be able to envision a non-American future momentarily; we just need to get with the program to protect ourselves from inculturation.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
I see it from a different perspective. I see mostly white people telling me that I'm oppressed and that the only way to beat that is to drag down white people to "my level". It's a completely patronising and insulting thing to be told.
As for Lewis, I respect him and his achievements in motorsport. However, I'd like someone like Zaha or Les Ferdinand to ask him what he has achieved by making F1 drivers take the knee before each race? If it's such a powerful gesture then what tangible achievements have come from it?
At least they aren't telling you you have internalised whiteness yourself. I hope race traitor accusations are minimal.
Lol, as if. I've had many white people stop just short of calling me a coconut for not agreeing with their new love of racial equality gestures. Usually it becomes "well Indians are just elitists and not true minorities". It's why I have such strong opinions on these bullshit artists and don't for a second believe they have their hearts in the right place.
In my career in the oil business, long ago, I encountered a few Afrikaners working in the security side of things.
Interesting people. Most of them had worked all over Africa, spoke multiple languages..
Perhaps the most interesting part was that in a social situation, they would end up talking with the black Africans, out of the crowd. I was quite young, and rather surprised by that - former South African military, who'd left when Things Changed, didn't sound likely to be liberals.
Then one of the black Africans explained that the Afrikaners were really Africans in their own minds.... and that they regarded black people with degrees/white collar jobs as Honorary White people.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
Really, there's no kneed for that - you can just agree with me verbally.
The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
I think the "church of woke", as you call it, does generally want to make things better for black and Asian people but that doesn't mean their methods are effective or appropriate. Their heart is, on the whole, in the right place.
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The problem is the space is occupied by plenty of bad faith actors...anybody producing inclusive training material telling people to be "less white" is at best terribly misguided, but is (given other examples of their work) is probably best described as turning race baiting into a lucrative career.
My position on this "be less white" nonsense is that while I do not think that would be in any way appropriate in Britain, America's history and relationship with race means things are rather more complicated there.
As far as I'm aware there's no examples of "be less white" in Britain and very few, if any, people calling for such things. We don't need to pre-empt the importation of every American "innovation" which may or may not be appropriate in their own context.
Even in the american context there has to be a better way to describe it - there will be pushbacks against even the most reasonable of attempts to address ongoing racial issues, but telling people to 'be less white' and then having to go indepth to explain what that means seems designed to aggravate potential allies.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
Really, there's no kneed for that - you can just agree with me verbally.
I've been a Johnson-sceptic for many years on the simple grounds that anyone who appears on the telly must be a trivial, meretricious figure unworthy of serious consideration. From this lofty perspective I would just as soon have Ian Hislop or Paul Merton as PM. In other words, not at all.
But since Covid I have begun to detect just the tiniest glint of steel. His necessary daily involvement in the crisis has, I think, been the making of a new, better Boris. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The glint of steel has always been there. It is Boris who ruthlessly purged his party opponents (not Corbyn or Brown: Boris!); Boris who defied the law; Boris who ignored democratic conventions like being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But it is personal: it is about Boris, not Borisism.
Boris ruthlessly purged the deadwood.
Pruning away the dead wood allows healthy new growth.
Boris didn't ignore conventions like ignoring Neil. All successful PMs have played that game - Blair, Cameron etc managed which interviews or debates they attended (or no debates at all).
ETA Boris did not purge the dead wood. Boris purged his opponents. Like Stalin.
Which other party leader in modern history was not interviewed by the BBC during an election campaign? Gladstone? Mrs Thatcher might have preferred Jimmy Young to Robin Day but she did not hide in a fridge to avoid questions.
'Wasn't interviewed by the BBC' 'Gladstone' [?!] 'Hid in a fridge'
I love the way the voters illustrated the absolute irrelevance of these tedious talking-points. Within 24 hours of Boris 'hiding in a fridge', they gave him the largest majority for any party since Blair in 2001, the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1987, and the highest share of the popular vote since Thatcher in 1979.
But do tell us more about the fridge and Andrew Neil. Because people really seem to care about those things.
You're quite right, voters really don't care about such things. And they really don't care, either, that the government plays fast and loose with the law, or the constitution. DHSC/Hancock has broken the law? So what? The Home Secretary has breached the code of conduct and is a bully? So what? Lucrative contracts land on the desk of the government's mates? So what? Illegal prorogation of parliament? So what? I could go on.
We live in a political/populist culture now where stuff that used to get some traction simply doesn't, so you're right. The risk for the government, of course, is that the narrative of dodgy practices builds up over time and becomes a meta-narrative and damages the PM.
Meanwhile, an erudite commentator like you contributes to the demeaning of political culture by going on about Starmer and zoos. Surely you can do better? It may be that integrity will win out in the long term.
That the political machine should operate in an orderly manner is obviously important to you, but in my case at least, the priorities are simply different, which makes divergent approaches to various areas of life quite compatible with one another. One can be as elitist as one likes about certain aspects of culture and still favour a distinctly populist approach to politics – no lack of historical precedent for that. More to the point, Labour and the woke left as a whole threaten the foundations of our culture in a manner so profound that in the long view what Hancock does with contracts or whether Priti obeys the ministerial code merits little more than the most languid indifference from me. I want those aspects of British and Western culture that I love and care about the most to endure for the rest of my life and beyond, and that means keeping the modern left away from the levers of power by any and all means necessary – piling a little scorn upon Starmer that's rather milder than what Aristophanes used to excoriate Cleisthenes and Cleon is really the least of it.
Thanks for the decent response; and yes, I know that's your view. I can't help but think, though, that you exaggerate the threat to the "foundations of our culture" from a potential mild-mannered dose of Starmerism. I can see why you were so exercised about the risks of Corbynism, but that threat is long gone. Starmer has shown no inclination at all to pander to the 'woke left', unless you are one of those who think his symbolic gesture of kneeling against racism in the USA constitutes an existential threat to western civilisation. And of course you can pour scorn on Starmer. It's just that the scorn you (and others) pour on him is frequently rather puerile and doesn't advance the debate. Your comments otherwise are often really interesting, that's all.
It isn't really Starmer himself that's the problem, it's the true believers in Labour and allied parties more generally, much as in the US the problem isn't Biden - whom I really rather like - but the aggressive progressives to whom even a moderate leadership will give succour for the sake of a quiet life. Wokeism already dominates public discourse to an unacceptable extent after ten years of Conservative government, which is only now starting to get to grips with it under a populist leader willing to take it on more directly. I dread what would happen if even that moderate constraint on the wokavirus were removed.
Aside from that, I shall manfully ignore your canny strike on my greatest psychological weakness - vulnerability to compliments. Having to worry about sounding interesting to other posters would detract from the whimsical farting about that is PB's most attractive quality for me.
No Starmer is not the problem, and I genuinely believe wokeism is a faux construct by the reactionary right, either for political advantage or to promote their ideology.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
Really, there's no kneed for that - you can just agree with me verbally.
Ugh!
See? You instinctively concur with me in recoiling from that particular form of self-abasement after all.
Supply definitely being held back now IMO. There's no other explanation for the rate. I think we're probably going to be doing just a few hundred thousand Pfizer first doses per week from next week.
I'm not sure it changes the short term picture of all groups 1-9 being done at some point in March. We're still on course for that.
Would be good if @Anabobazina could get the Vaxometer running again with the new target and second doses as well.
Up to the 18th, about 16.9m first doses had been dished out. The total number of recipients in phase one was given as 31.8m, before the shielding list was updated and we found that there were about 800,000 additional shielders to be prioritised (and who hadn't already been lanced anyway by dint of their age.) But even if we assume that all of them are under 50, the phase one total still can't be any more than 32.6m.
That means 15.7 million first jabs to be given to complete phase one. Therefore, working forward from February 18th, the following average first dose rates would get all the first nine cohorts cleared by the indicated dates:
500,000/day: March 22nd 400,000/day: March 30th 300,000/day: April 12th 200,000/day: May 8th
So, the Government can hit the first dose target for phase one (i.e. the end of April) if it can keep the first doses running at a mean of 220k per day from hereon in. That would, in turn, require total supply to hit about 650k per day by the end of April, in order to deal simultaneously with all the second doses that will by then be coming due. A more ambitious goal, like getting the over 50s done by Easter and moving onto the fortysomethings, will therefore require more supply than that.
A thought- if J+J comes good on schedule, a single jab vaccine allows for a lot of quick progress.
It looks like J&J might end up needing a booster shot too. In practice all of the vaccines offer good protection after the first dose so it just vindicates the UK's strategy.
Supply definitely being held back now IMO. There's no other explanation for the rate. I think we're probably going to be doing just a few hundred thousand Pfizer first doses per week from next week.
I'm not sure it changes the short term picture of all groups 1-9 being done at some point in March. We're still on course for that.
Would be good if @Anabobazina could get the Vaxometer running again with the new target and second doses as well.
Up to the 18th, about 16.9m first doses had been dished out. The total number of recipients in phase one was given as 31.8m, before the shielding list was updated and we found that there were about 800,000 additional shielders to be prioritised (and who hadn't already been lanced anyway by dint of their age.) But even if we assume that all of them are under 50, the phase one total still can't be any more than 32.6m.
That means 15.7 million first jabs to be given to complete phase one. Therefore, working forward from February 18th, the following average first dose rates would get all the first nine cohorts cleared by the indicated dates:
500,000/day: March 22nd 400,000/day: March 30th 300,000/day: April 12th 200,000/day: May 8th
So, the Government can hit the first dose target for phase one (i.e. the end of April) if it can keep the first doses running at a mean of 220k per day from hereon in. That would, in turn, require total supply to hit about 650k per day by the end of April, in order to deal simultaneously with all the second doses that will by then be coming due. A more ambitious goal, like getting the over 50s done by Easter and moving onto the fortysomethings, will therefore require more supply than that.
I thought that there were reliable reports about UK supply restrictions this week and next?
I used to complain about Harriet Harman's "feminism for posh people" with its concern for women in the boardroom rather than women on the shop floor but apart from a few hundred elder daughters of aristocrats, does anyone care at all (well, their younger brothers too, I suppose)?
A thought- if J+J comes good on schedule, a single jab vaccine allows for a lot of quick progress.
It looks like J&J might end up needing a booster shot too. In practice all of the vaccines offer good protection after the first dose so it just vindicates the UK's strategy.
Yes, the single dose J&J actually offers lesser protection against symptoms than a single AZ dose at 67% vs 76% respectively. I think J&J saw the results from Pfizer and started the two dose trial because they realised that against a 95% efficacy vaccine people would rather have two doses to get near full protection.
Aiui, the 12 week two dose regime for AZ actually has a very similar immune response level for neutralising antibodies as Pfizer but in the trials it was up against the Kent, Brazil and SA variants in its trial while the Pfizer vaccine was trialled against normal COVID so the difference between AZ at 85% and Pfizer at 95% could actually be down to the dilution effect of the variants rather than a lesser immune response.
Additionally the UK is also ahead of the EU in the queue for the J&J vaccine as well though j suspect the government may decide that it would rather wait on deliveries of it and ask J&J to deliver a mutation adapted product rather than the standard one.
Far better to abolish all hereditary titles, of course. I defer to nobody who owes a position simply because some ancestor graced the royal bed.
You don't need to defer to an aristocrat. Any power they have now will be because of inherited wealth, not because they are the Earl of Blusterford. They really do need to do something about the remaining heriditaries in the Lords though. It's kind of funny that 22 years on that temporary solution is still in place, but it really is time to sort it out.
A thought- if J+J comes good on schedule, a single jab vaccine allows for a lot of quick progress.
It looks like J&J might end up needing a booster shot too. In practice all of the vaccines offer good protection after the first dose so it just vindicates the UK's strategy.
It's pretty basic maths, simple enough that even we the public can understand the balancing of risks there.
Far better to abolish all hereditary titles, of course. I defer to nobody who owes a position simply because some ancestor graced the royal bed.
Hasn't HMG got anything else to worry about?
Apparently not.
We have a Tory majority government not a Socialist one, it is an entirely sensible thing for them to be doing.
Even though most aristocrats are no longer in the Lords they still have estates and land to maintain, no reason women cannot head those estates as well as men
Supply definitely being held back now IMO. There's no other explanation for the rate. I think we're probably going to be doing just a few hundred thousand Pfizer first doses per week from next week.
I'm not sure it changes the short term picture of all groups 1-9 being done at some point in March. We're still on course for that.
Would be good if @Anabobazina could get the Vaxometer running again with the new target and second doses as well.
Up to the 18th, about 16.9m first doses had been dished out. The total number of recipients in phase one was given as 31.8m, before the shielding list was updated and we found that there were about 800,000 additional shielders to be prioritised (and who hadn't already been lanced anyway by dint of their age.) But even if we assume that all of them are under 50, the phase one total still can't be any more than 32.6m.
That means 15.7 million first jabs to be given to complete phase one. Therefore, working forward from February 18th, the following average first dose rates would get all the first nine cohorts cleared by the indicated dates:
500,000/day: March 22nd 400,000/day: March 30th 300,000/day: April 12th 200,000/day: May 8th
So, the Government can hit the first dose target for phase one (i.e. the end of April) if it can keep the first doses running at a mean of 220k per day from hereon in. That would, in turn, require total supply to hit about 650k per day by the end of April, in order to deal simultaneously with all the second doses that will by then be coming due. A more ambitious goal, like getting the over 50s done by Easter and moving onto the fortysomethings, will therefore require more supply than that.
I thought that there were reliable reports about UK supply restrictions this week and next?
Re Scotland "That will reduce our expected supply next week and the week after by about somewhere between 120,000 and 190,000 doses a week overall over the two vaccines."
If that is correct, and the numbers are in proportion to the UK supply, that is a drop in supply of millions per week for the UK as a whole.
The German magazine Spiegel reported this week figures from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute which show that of 736,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine delivered to Germany, just 64,869 have actually been used.
I remember being assured by EUphiles on here that there would be no additional anti-vaxxer sentiment from the comments of Macron and others maligning the AZ vaccine. Care to comment @kinabalu?
Yes, of course. The AZ vaccine is regarded by some as inferior due to lower efficacy and stronger side effects. You don't need to be a loonytunes antivaxxer to hold this view and expressing it is not necessarily to malign AZ. I can't comment on side effects (seen no relative data) but on efficacy the evidence is it's not as good as the Pfizer and others. When I get my jab I'll be hoping it isn't the AZ. But of course I will take what I'm offered because they are all miles better than nothing and it's a public duty to get protection. It's a problem that people are irrationally refusing the AZ because it slows the journey out of the pandemic. How much of this is down to Macron's comments, as opposed to the data and the fact it is not licensed for the over 65s in some countries, I don't know. Certainly he didn't help.
Supply definitely being held back now IMO. There's no other explanation for the rate. I think we're probably going to be doing just a few hundred thousand Pfizer first doses per week from next week.
I'm not sure it changes the short term picture of all groups 1-9 being done at some point in March. We're still on course for that.
Would be good if @Anabobazina could get the Vaxometer running again with the new target and second doses as well.
Up to the 18th, about 16.9m first doses had been dished out. The total number of recipients in phase one was given as 31.8m, before the shielding list was updated and we found that there were about 800,000 additional shielders to be prioritised (and who hadn't already been lanced anyway by dint of their age.) But even if we assume that all of them are under 50, the phase one total still can't be any more than 32.6m.
That means 15.7 million first jabs to be given to complete phase one. Therefore, working forward from February 18th, the following average first dose rates would get all the first nine cohorts cleared by the indicated dates:
500,000/day: March 22nd 400,000/day: March 30th 300,000/day: April 12th 200,000/day: May 8th
So, the Government can hit the first dose target for phase one (i.e. the end of April) if it can keep the first doses running at a mean of 220k per day from hereon in. That would, in turn, require total supply to hit about 650k per day by the end of April, in order to deal simultaneously with all the second doses that will by then be coming due. A more ambitious goal, like getting the over 50s done by Easter and moving onto the fortysomethings, will therefore require more supply than that.
I thought that there were reliable reports about UK supply restrictions this week and next?
Re Scotland "That will reduce our expected supply next week and the week after by about somewhere between 120,000 and 190,000 doses a week overall over the two vaccines."
If that is correct, and the numbers are in proportion to the UK supply, that is a drop in supply of millions per week for the UK as a whole.
Yes, if the over 50s target of the end of April really has been made as a realistic aim rather than being a case of under promising to over deliver, then this obviously implies a major slowdown in the effort. That, in turn, could easily mean only a token easing of lockdown - schools but very little else of anything - until the back end of May. Very, very depressing.
Far better to abolish all hereditary titles, of course. I defer to nobody who owes a position simply because some ancestor graced the royal bed.
Hasn't HMG got anything else to worry about?
Multiple things can be done at once. It's trivial and rightly who really cares, but how much legislative time is it really going to take up?
Thing is. It's making the news cos multiple things aren't happening at once. Brexit and Covid have sucked the energy out of everything else. But if and when they are gone what then? Statues and heredity don't inspire much confidence that this government has fleshed out what it actually wants to do with hard won power. Unfortunately, Labour hasn't much of a clue either.
Far better to abolish all hereditary titles, of course. I defer to nobody who owes a position simply because some ancestor graced the royal bed.
Hasn't HMG got anything else to worry about?
Multiple things can be done at once. It's trivial and rightly who really cares, but how much legislative time is it really going to take up?
Thing is. It's making the news cos multiple things aren't happening at once. Brexit and Covid have sucked the energy out of everything else. But if and when they are gone what then? Statues and heredity don't inspire much confidence that this government has fleshed out what it actually wants to do with hard won power. Unfortunately, Labour hasn't much of a clue either.
Except it's not true.
Lots have been going on. Take away Brexot and Covid and there are other things happening, they just don't get as much attention right now.
Stuff like the levelling up agenda etc will get more attention once the heat goes out of Brexit and Covid.
The medium post has ≈ 30 testimonies from working academics and researchers about problems they are having with academic freedom and free speech in our universities.
But the problem doesn't exist. They're making it all up and universities don't have any issues with free speech. Anyone saying otherwise is a liar or a transphobe.
Oh come off it Max. What has this got to do with people being invited to talk at Student Unions? This is a completely separate issue and I don't believe it has any relevance to the big Gavin's proposed new law?
I'm not saying this isn't an issue because it clearly is, but your response is ridiculous.
That's just a starting point in the war for free speech. The whole system needs upending including bringing protection from disciplinary action for faculty of students who have "controversial" opinions according to the church of woke.
Again. A ridiculously inflammatory comment.
I don't disagree that people should be protected from being discriminated against in response to having voiced their own views.
But "church of woke" ffs. You're better than this.
You're admitting there's a problem but then against any measures to actually try and fix them. I don't get it.
I'm happy to discuss each actual issue on its merits without resorting to divide and conquer "us vs them-ism".
Issue 1: academics are afraid to voice their opinions on certain topics due to fear of discrimination.
It's bad. Definitely. And I definitely agree that in certain circles there's a complete lack of effort in even trying to understand someone else's view point. It's either "you're with us or you're against us".
But what realistically can you do about that? Of course you can make laws that protect staff from clear discrimination based on their views but how can you legislate to stop "the majority" disliking you for voicing such views?
For example, @Casino_Royale clearly hates me for my views on the EU so if I worked for him he would be unlikely to give me a promotion based on simply disliking me. That is always the case in employment so how do you stop that?
No I don't. My best friend is a Remainer. In fact, most of them are - to varying degrees. Nor would I ever let my views of someone's personal politics colour my views on whether I thought they were fit for a promotion.
I simply don't think like that. In my professional life (which you don't know about, of course) my record in this speaks for itself: it would be based solely on your abilities.
I think you can be a bit of dick at times, and act like a stroppy teenager, but I think that's largely because you are young and passionate about certain things. I think you're essentially a good egg and you definitely have your own mind but, yeah, a bit dickish at times.
I *might* not promote you yet if you dickish in a professional context and that'd be because people skills and the ability to handle constructive disagreement become more and more important as you climb the ladder. But I'd at least sit you down and acknowledge your potential, and give you feedback as to where I thought you needed to work on, before you were promoted.
It wouldn't be because of your personal views.
In reality, we know that the secret pb.com handshake would get you the job...
There is surely no other explanation for the frequent* discussions of first class air travel on here....
Supply definitely being held back now IMO. There's no other explanation for the rate. I think we're probably going to be doing just a few hundred thousand Pfizer first doses per week from next week.
I'm not sure it changes the short term picture of all groups 1-9 being done at some point in March. We're still on course for that.
Would be good if @Anabobazina could get the Vaxometer running again with the new target and second doses as well.
Up to the 18th, about 16.9m first doses had been dished out. The total number of recipients in phase one was given as 31.8m, before the shielding list was updated and we found that there were about 800,000 additional shielders to be prioritised (and who hadn't already been lanced anyway by dint of their age.) But even if we assume that all of them are under 50, the phase one total still can't be any more than 32.6m.
That means 15.7 million first jabs to be given to complete phase one. Therefore, working forward from February 18th, the following average first dose rates would get all the first nine cohorts cleared by the indicated dates:
500,000/day: March 22nd 400,000/day: March 30th 300,000/day: April 12th 200,000/day: May 8th
So, the Government can hit the first dose target for phase one (i.e. the end of April) if it can keep the first doses running at a mean of 220k per day from hereon in. That would, in turn, require total supply to hit about 650k per day by the end of April, in order to deal simultaneously with all the second doses that will by then be coming due. A more ambitious goal, like getting the over 50s done by Easter and moving onto the fortysomethings, will therefore require more supply than that.
I thought that there were reliable reports about UK supply restrictions this week and next?
Re Scotland "That will reduce our expected supply next week and the week after by about somewhere between 120,000 and 190,000 doses a week overall over the two vaccines."
If that is correct, and the numbers are in proportion to the UK supply, that is a drop in supply of millions per week for the UK as a whole.
Yes, if the over 50s target of the end of April really has been made as a realistic aim rather than being a case of under promising to over deliver, then this obviously implies a major slowdown in the effort. That, in turn, could easily mean only a token easing of lockdown - schools but very little else of anything - until the back end of May. Very, very depressing.
Isn't it the exact same effort as has been getting made, once you add on the second doses being done?
It averages at about 400-450k per day doesn't it?
No increase in rate but if there's no increase in supply available then not sure what can be done about that? But it's steady as she goes not a drop off.
Far better to abolish all hereditary titles, of course. I defer to nobody who owes a position simply because some ancestor graced the royal bed.
Hasn't HMG got anything else to worry about?
Multiple things can be done at once. It's trivial and rightly who really cares, but how much legislative time is it really going to take up?
Thing is. It's making the news cos multiple things aren't happening at once. Brexit and Covid have sucked the energy out of everything else. But if and when they are gone what then? Statues and heredity don't inspire much confidence that this government has fleshed out what it actually wants to do with hard won power. Unfortunately, Labour hasn't much of a clue either.
That is being incredibly generous to Labour.
Even after Skyr's speech this week, there is nothing more than raising money from bonds at a rate that will, er, not actually raise money.
I have no idea how Labour propose the UK would be better if the Tories all just vanished down a rabbit hole and Labour were asked to form a Govt. by HM the Q. Really, not a clue.
The German magazine Spiegel reported this week figures from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute which show that of 736,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine delivered to Germany, just 64,869 have actually been used.
I remember being assured by EUphiles on here that there would be no additional anti-vaxxer sentiment from the comments of Macron and others maligning the AZ vaccine. Care to comment @kinabalu?
Yes, of course. The AZ vaccine is regarded by some as inferior due to lower efficacy and stronger side effects. You don't need to be a loonytunes antivaxxer to hold this view and expressing it is not necessarily to malign AZ. I can't comment on side effects (seen no relative data) but on efficacy the evidence is it's not as good as the Pfizer and others. When I get my jab I'll be hoping it isn't the AZ. But of course I will take what I'm offered because they are all miles better than nothing and it's a public duty to get protection. It's a problem that people are irrationally refusing the AZ because it slows the journey out of the pandemic. How much of this is down to Macron's comments, as opposed to the data and the fact it is not licensed for the over 65s in some countries, I don't know. Certainly he didn't help.
For me there is only one datum that matters, and that is that all the vaccines approved by the UK authorities convey very high levels of protection against severe disease. On that basis, I am totally agnostic on which jab I get.
The German magazine Spiegel reported this week figures from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute which show that of 736,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine delivered to Germany, just 64,869 have actually been used.
I remember being assured by EUphiles on here that there would be no additional anti-vaxxer sentiment from the comments of Macron and others maligning the AZ vaccine. Care to comment @kinabalu?
Yes, of course. The AZ vaccine is regarded by some as inferior due to lower efficacy and stronger side effects. You don't need to be a loonytunes antivaxxer to hold this view and expressing it is not necessarily to malign AZ. I can't comment on side effects (seen no relative data) but on efficacy the evidence is it's not as good as the Pfizer and others. When I get my jab I'll be hoping it isn't the AZ. But of course I will take what I'm offered because they are all miles better than nothing and it's a public duty to get protection. It's a problem that people are irrationally refusing the AZ because it slows the journey out of the pandemic. How much of this is down to Macron's comments, as opposed to the data and the fact it is not licensed for the over 65s in some countries, I don't know. Certainly he didn't help.
For me there is only one datum that matters, and that is that all the vaccines approved by the UK authorities convey very high levels of protection against severe disease. On that basis, I am totally agnostic on which jab I get.
Not to mention that all the vaccines have side effects. For Pfizer they recommend you sit down and take a break for 15 minutes after taking it....
Prince Charles visiting his father in hospital is probably not good news, given how careful the royals have tried to be seen following Government guidance. AIUI, visitors are mostly limited to patients in an end-of-life situation.
Far better to abolish all hereditary titles, of course. I defer to nobody who owes a position simply because some ancestor graced the royal bed.
You don't need to defer to an aristocrat. Any power they have now will be because of inherited wealth, not because they are the Earl of Blusterford. They really do need to do something about the remaining heriditaries in the Lords though. It's kind of funny that 22 years on that temporary solution is still in place, but it really is time to sort it out.
I went down a wiki hole a few days ago and discovered the Baronetcy of Sinha.
The German magazine Spiegel reported this week figures from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute which show that of 736,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine delivered to Germany, just 64,869 have actually been used.
I remember being assured by EUphiles on here that there would be no additional anti-vaxxer sentiment from the comments of Macron and others maligning the AZ vaccine. Care to comment @kinabalu?
Yes, of course. The AZ vaccine is regarded by some as inferior due to lower efficacy and stronger side effects. You don't need to be a loonytunes antivaxxer to hold this view and expressing it is not necessarily to malign AZ. I can't comment on side effects (seen no relative data) but on efficacy the evidence is it's not as good as the Pfizer and others. When I get my jab I'll be hoping it isn't the AZ. But of course I will take what I'm offered because they are all miles better than nothing and it's a public duty to get protection. It's a problem that people are irrationally refusing the AZ because it slows the journey out of the pandemic. How much of this is down to Macron's comments, as opposed to the data and the fact it is not licensed for the over 65s in some countries, I don't know. Certainly he didn't help.
You're falling for the narrative of AZ having more side effects, in the actual data they're referencing the AZ vaccine showed 11k incidences of side effects in 3.5m doses administered and the Pfizer one showed 20 incidences of side effects in 7m doses administered. The EU media and politicians have chosen to publicise the AZ side effects as part of their war against AZ but the reality is that neither has a particularly significant difference in the rate of side effects and Pfizer actually has a huge drawback in that it can elicit anaphylaxis in people who have allergies which means the addition of monitoring time for recipients. That doesn't make it a bad vaccine though.
As usual you're far too ready to accept the EU fake news because you want them to be right about this. Though it's good that you wouldn't go as far as rejecting the AZ vaccine.
David Cameron's original concept of "sharing the proceeds of growth".
I think it will be viable over the next decade as I think we will see some stonking high growth in the next few years. A roaring twenties.
PS for any on the loony left who still believe the ludicrous notion that austerity or the Brexit result choked off economic growth it's worth remembering in the real world that Britain grew faster than Europe in the past decade.
What does make me laugh is how selective people's memories were. Brown definitely was a Bad Man and Cameron would have done it all differently apparently. Yet, as you say, the alternative Tory economic plan was to "match Labour spending plans pound for pound" - because people feared Tory cuts - and inflate the bubble even faster so that he could "share the proceeds of [even more] growth" in the form of tax cuts which would drive spending and inflate the bubble even faster.
Yet after the event people seemed to be under the impression that Cameron and Osbrown were sagely warning against (their own policies) and planning to regulate the banks by deregulating them even further than Darling had. Not that Darling had deregulated *that* far - Barclays were prevented from buying Leeman remember...
Well said. It's beyond tedious, all these years after the 08 crash, to still encounter the fictional Tory Story about it.
I predict it will stop two decades after the "Fatcha shut down all the minesandfactories and schoolsandhospitals" talk ends.
If rather than call out lies we seek to excuse them by pointing to other lies, we end up in a bad place. But in any event this is false equivalence. The Labour Story in 1997 was that our public services needed a major upgrade after 18 years of Tory neglect. There was much truth in this. Such cannot be said for the almost wholly fictional Tory Story that Labour overspending had by 2008 bankrupted Britain.
Far better to abolish all hereditary titles, of course. I defer to nobody who owes a position simply because some ancestor graced the royal bed.
Hasn't HMG got anything else to worry about?
Multiple things can be done at once. It's trivial and rightly who really cares, but how much legislative time is it really going to take up?
Thing is. It's making the news cos multiple things aren't happening at once. Brexit and Covid have sucked the energy out of everything else. But if and when they are gone what then? Statues and heredity don't inspire much confidence that this government has fleshed out what it actually wants to do with hard won power. Unfortunately, Labour hasn't much of a clue either.
That is being incredibly generous to Labour.
Even after Skyr's speech this week, there is nothing more than raising money from bonds at a rate that will, er, not actually raise money.
I have no idea how Labour propose the UK would be better if the Tories all just vanished down a rabbit hole and Labour were asked to form a Govt. by HM the Q. Really, not a clue.
A few days on and I have no idea what the Covid bonds are supposed to be achieve.
He could have / should have announced a sovereign wealth fund instead.
The German magazine Spiegel reported this week figures from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute which show that of 736,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine delivered to Germany, just 64,869 have actually been used.
I remember being assured by EUphiles on here that there would be no additional anti-vaxxer sentiment from the comments of Macron and others maligning the AZ vaccine. Care to comment @kinabalu?
Yes, of course. The AZ vaccine is regarded by some as inferior due to lower efficacy and stronger side effects. You don't need to be a loonytunes antivaxxer to hold this view and expressing it is not necessarily to malign AZ. I can't comment on side effects (seen no relative data) but on efficacy the evidence is it's not as good as the Pfizer and others. When I get my jab I'll be hoping it isn't the AZ. But of course I will take what I'm offered because they are all miles better than nothing and it's a public duty to get protection. It's a problem that people are irrationally refusing the AZ because it slows the journey out of the pandemic. How much of this is down to Macron's comments, as opposed to the data and the fact it is not licensed for the over 65s in some countries, I don't know. Certainly he didn't help.
You're falling for the narrative of AZ having more side effects, in the actual data they're referencing the AZ vaccine showed 11k incidences of side effects in 3.5m doses administered and the Pfizer one showed 20 incidences of side effects in 7m doses administered. The EU media and politicians have chosen to publicise the AZ side effects as part of their war against AZ but the reality is that neither has a particularly significant difference in the rate of side effects and Pfizer actually has a huge drawback in that it can elicit anaphylaxis in people who have allergies which means the addition of monitoring time for recipients. That doesn't make it a bad vaccine though.
As usual you're far too ready to accept the EU fake news because you want them to be right about this. Though it's good that you wouldn't go as far as rejecting the AZ vaccine.
I think you're missing a rather important k there?
Comments
She hadn't come across it before - but was interested in the idea that falsifying results to meet a pre-determined result had been a known management problem in the.... 18th cent.
Now excuse me while I take the knee.
The issue is they are not cutting the mustard, not because they aren’t “diverse” enough.
Both front benches are statistically more diverse, ethnically speaking, than the broader British population.
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1363127314977013760?s=19
His specific message was actually great, footballers taking the knee allows those in charge to pretend that everything is ok now even though nothing has actually changed, players are still being racially abused and there is still a huge lack of diversity in backroom staff for football clubs never mind management.
These woke gestures that make people feel good about themselves are counterproductive in actually effecting real change for people. The Coke training example from yesterday is just another example of how the church of woke doesn't want to make things better for black and Asian people, it just wants to drag white people down with insults discrimination.
Moral tariffs. Assess each and every country. So many points for democracy, so many for human rights, so many for policies on pizza toppings etc. Each country gets a grade. Tarrifs calculated from there.
Work on a scale where, say, Sweden gets zero moral tariff.
I said this before but I think tue NFL "inspire change" is a far more positive and inclusive initiative.
I'm not sure it changes the short term picture of all groups 1-9 being done at some point in March. We're still on course for that.
Would be good if @Anabobazina could get the Vaxometer running again with the new target and second doses as well.
There is an amusing, often-told anecdote about a senior American officer proudly regaling his British counterpart regarding the many fine traditions of the United States military. Not surprisingly, the Englishman was less than impressed. “You Yanks have no traditions,” he brusquely interrupted, sniffing dismissively. “You have habits. And bad ones at that.”
Bringing us back round to the issue at hand, my argument was that we should be discussing the actual issues in play and what the government, if anything, can do.
There are already laws against bullying and discrimination in the workplace which apply equally to the left and the right. Ultimately you cant force university employees to like their colleagues who have views they dislike, so is the complaint that universities are doing nothing to dispel the "group think"? I wouldn't be against requiring higher educational establishments to run training programmes encouraging mutual respect and civilised debate. However I would prefer if it was framed in a manner that encourages mutual respect rather than in the "war on woke" way.
I know that isn't politics, and "war on woke" is better politics, but it isn't necessarily the best thing for the country and is bound to continue to breed resentment on both sides.
https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1363075679164760064?s=21
https://www.sst.dk/en/english/corona-eng/vaccination-against-covid-19#:~:text=In Denmark, the first citizens,the end of June 2021.
A thought- if J+J comes good on schedule, a single jab vaccine allows for a lot of quick progress.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date
Total 323,802 3,895 14,214,176
East Of England 34,567 573 1,698,521
London 46,921 703 1,640,550
Midlands 63,406 1,003 2,728,604
North East And Yorkshire 51,933 576 2,231,603
North West 42,566 261 1,872,065
South East 47,563 462 2,323,412
South West 35,274 315 1,648,929
You have to remember that for every Zaha there is a black or Asian person who does think the taking the knee is a powerful gesture. See Sir Lewis Hamilton.
As for Lewis, I respect him and his achievements in motorsport. However, I'd like someone like Zaha or Les Ferdinand to ask him what he has achieved by making F1 drivers take the knee before each race? If it's such a powerful gesture then what tangible achievements have come from it?
As far as I'm aware there's no examples of "be less white" in Britain and very few, if any, people calling for such things. We don't need to pre-empt the importation of every American "innovation" which may or may not be appropriate in their own context.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/20/us/us-herd-immunity-covid.html
I've been teaching for nearly thirty years and I don't think I'm an expert as all but three years of that has been in one school. Just reading some of the things that @ydoethur writes on here makes me realise that my school is unusual in many ways; I suspect they all are though. The "bog standard comp" is a myth.
But yes, it took just a basic common sense to make the call, without listening to the idiots in SAGE.
I am not convinced by all this speculation that Gove is on the outer; I think he is being refocused on Union duties. At least that is what I would do.
https://twitter.com/sime0nstylites/status/1363038964047777793?s=21
Or maybe there are a lot of nervous people who opposed that lockdown worried about that playing out, who would love to see the back of her....
The Coke stuff shocks me.
I get that it is “America” and indeed Atlanta which has a unique position in American society —- but it does worry me that it could be on its way here.
As discussed, there’s a lack of that combination in the New Model Tories.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56137815
Interesting people. Most of them had worked all over Africa, spoke multiple languages..
Perhaps the most interesting part was that in a social situation, they would end up talking with the black Africans, out of the crowd. I was quite young, and rather surprised by that - former South African military, who'd left when Things Changed, didn't sound likely to be liberals.
Then one of the black Africans explained that the Afrikaners were really Africans in their own minds.... and that they regarded black people with degrees/white collar jobs as Honorary White people.
Rutland would announce a UDI and begin building up a naval force to annex Huntingdonshire.
With no ability to deliver it
https://www.cogconsortium.uk/news_item/reflections-on-the-achievements-of-cog-uk/
That means 15.7 million first jabs to be given to complete phase one. Therefore, working forward from February 18th, the following average first dose rates would get all the first nine cohorts cleared by the indicated dates:
500,000/day: March 22nd
400,000/day: March 30th
300,000/day: April 12th
200,000/day: May 8th
So, the Government can hit the first dose target for phase one (i.e. the end of April) if it can keep the first doses running at a mean of 220k per day from hereon in. That would, in turn, require total supply to hit about 650k per day by the end of April, in order to deal simultaneously with all the second doses that will by then be coming due. A more ambitious goal, like getting the over 50s done by Easter and moving onto the fortysomethings, will therefore require more supply than that.
Aiui, the 12 week two dose regime for AZ actually has a very similar immune response level for neutralising antibodies as Pfizer but in the trials it was up against the Kent, Brazil and SA variants in its trial while the Pfizer vaccine was trialled against normal COVID so the difference between AZ at 85% and Pfizer at 95% could actually be down to the dilution effect of the variants rather than a lesser immune response.
Additionally the UK is also ahead of the EU in the queue for the J&J vaccine as well though j suspect the government may decide that it would rather wait on deliveries of it and ask J&J to deliver a mutation adapted product rather than the standard one.
Even though most aristocrats are no longer in the Lords they still have estates and land to maintain, no reason women cannot head those estates as well as men
Re Scotland "That will reduce our expected supply next week and the week after by about somewhere between 120,000 and 190,000 doses a week overall over the two vaccines."
If that is correct, and the numbers are in proportion to the UK supply, that is a drop in supply of millions per week for the UK as a whole.
Brexit and Covid have sucked the energy out of everything else. But if and when they are gone what then?
Statues and heredity don't inspire much confidence that this government has fleshed out what it actually wants to do with hard won power.
Unfortunately, Labour hasn't much of a clue either.
Lots have been going on. Take away Brexot and Covid and there are other things happening, they just don't get as much attention right now.
Stuff like the levelling up agenda etc will get more attention once the heat goes out of Brexit and Covid.
*until about last March, strangely.
It averages at about 400-450k per day doesn't it?
No increase in rate but if there's no increase in supply available then not sure what can be done about that? But it's steady as she goes not a drop off.
Even after Skyr's speech this week, there is nothing more than raising money from bonds at a rate that will, er, not actually raise money.
I have no idea how Labour propose the UK would be better if the Tories all just vanished down a rabbit hole and Labour were asked to form a Govt. by HM the Q. Really, not a clue.
Macron acted like a twat from Twatter.
The current Baron is a travel agent.
As usual you're far too ready to accept the EU fake news because you want them to be right about this. Though it's good that you wouldn't go as far as rejecting the AZ vaccine.
He could have / should have announced a sovereign wealth fund instead.
20 incidents from 7m doses would be incredible!