Yes, I had the Oxford jab and had quite a strong reaction to it. My sister suffers from anxiety so I have some understanding of that. Here's what I can say.
The reaction wasn't pleasant, but nothing unusual for a mild illness and all described in the data sheet. It started about 15 hours after the jab: injection site swelled & was tight, hard & tender; I had aches & shivers, then a high-ish temp (101F, ~38C). The temp came down within 24 hours, then was just feeling mildly flu-ey plus intermittent nausea. Almost all of that resolved in about a week, except for occasional nausea. It's nearly two weeks since I had the jab. The swelling in my arm has been slowly reducing and is now almost gone.
I found the swelling in my arm reassuring because it showed my body was reacting to the vaccine and therefore reactions in other ways were highly likely, so I wasn't worried about the other symptoms.
I also found that xkcd cartoon, which compares the vaccination to a Star Wars episode, really encouraging because it gave me an amusing view of what was happening in my body. (Link below; it's about mRNA vaccines, but that doesn't really matter.)
I gather a strong reaction to Oxford/AZ is more likely in younger people. I'm 72, and am the only one I know personally who's had a strong reaction; also among my friends no-one else knows anyone besides myself who's had a strong reaction. However my god-daughter who is 28 reports that many of the people who've had the AZ in her circles have had a strong enough reaction to be off work for a few days. (I don't know what work she does now; she used to be a teaching assistant but maybe she's moved into care work.)
I would echo what @rcs1000 says; it's better than getting Covid. If you do have a strong reaction, be grateful that your body is fighting fit enough to get to action stations and prepare itself to fight off the Covid.
My mother, who is also 72, and with a weakened immune system (rheumatoid arthritis) had almost exactly the same reaction as you. I reassured her that it showed the body was reacting and therefore was building immunity.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
I'm not totally sure I share that analysis, as the 2017 election was remarkable in its relative lack of focus on Brexit, and Labour's campaign surge was more related to the fact May unwisely had a manifesto covering other issues.
Also, in 2019, the modest LD recovery was more in the area of Tory remainers - stockbroker belt types.
It's also a shade churlish to say Corbyn was unloved. He was divisive, certainly. But there was a non-trivial group who felt it was a more authentic form of Labour politics - a view that struggled to survive the anti-semitism rows that followed.
Thanks to all who offered their experiences with the Oxford vaccine - really helped me in my discussions with wife - she is still anxious - but I think she will go now .
My father (71) had a sore arm for a couple of days, and felt a little cold for 24 hours, but fine after that.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
I'm not convinced it was Salisbury. There were rumours of CCHQ under-the-radar social media campaigns linking Corbyn with IRA atrocities.
My guess is that recent attempts to link SKS with Savile and other nonce cases reflect trial runs to see what mud sticks, ready for reuse in 2024.
Never thought Id say this but Im starting to move in favour of compulsory vaccinations if the alternative is never-ending lockdown measures, due to the fact that a small percentage of people not having had the jab might be used as a reason why we cant return to normal life. At least with the jab you can get it over and done with.
Impossible, sadly. It would create a never ending series of martyrs - you can't compel something without real sanctions, which ultimately put people in prison. There is nothing some QAnon supporters and leftie extremists would like better.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
Are we heading in the same direction as this? Not able to do anything without scanning a QR code:
”David Rennie, Beijing bureau chief of The Economist, recently gave an astonishingly candid account of current ZeroCovid life in the Chinese capital:
“China’s strategy, from the start, was to have no infections at all… Still in Beijing, where we have hardly any cases, every time you step outside your door you have to use a smartphone to scan a QR code — every shop, every taxi, every bus, every metro station. You have no privacy at all — it’s all built around this electronic system of contact tracing. To leave Beijing you have to have a Covid test, to come back in you have to have a Covid test…. We basically don’t have the virus here, but the flip side is that they are keeping this place locked down as tight as a drum… It’s very hard to know where Covid containment starts and a Communist police state with an obsession with control kicks in.””
No, because only North Korea can deliver a zero covid strategy.
But I do find it amusing.
People complain about lockdown then the same people complain about things that can and will end lockdown.
If I need a QR code to enter Sainsbury or hop on a bus but in return can be confident I won't catch Covid that's fine with me. If MI5 would like to know that I've visited Sainsbury, ditto. Now I'm at the why-worry end of the spectrum about stuff like this, not least since I'm quite sure that if MI5 want to keep tabs on me they can do so anyway, but I actually think most people will feel the same, the main resistance coming from people who don't have smartphones or find QR codes fiddly. Sites like Unherd think that there is no essential difference between freedom from oppression (democracy, rule of law for all, right to express any legal opinion, independent courts) and freedom from saying they've gone to Sainsbury - slippery slope and all that. I don't think most people think like that.
I know you were in favour of ID cards Nick - I think you were at one time advocating voluntary ID cards - but if Sainsburys demanded a QR scan, I'd go to Aldi. If Aldi demanded a QR scan, I'd go to the local greengrocer. If the pub demands a QR scan, I'm staying at home. I'm not going to starve to death, but I am going to inconvenience myself quite a lot in order for the state not to know where I've been. I absolutely do not trust them. And I work for the public sector and generally vote Conservative!
It is said that 1.3 million people don't even have a bank account. There must be a couple of million people who won't have, don't have, can't afford, electronic gadgetry of the smartphone sort. m any of them older and vulnerable. The use of compulsory electronic ID to access everyday services would be indirect discrimination on massive scale.
You can pick up a smartphone for less than £20 that the NHS can work on, I'm sure the government could help out.
Might well be an issue with 'I can't work one of those things' with that section of the population.
You can get a basic bank account for nothing but 1.3 million people apparently havn't got one.
Are we heading in the same direction as this? Not able to do anything without scanning a QR code:
”David Rennie, Beijing bureau chief of The Economist, recently gave an astonishingly candid account of current ZeroCovid life in the Chinese capital:
“China’s strategy, from the start, was to have no infections at all… Still in Beijing, where we have hardly any cases, every time you step outside your door you have to use a smartphone to scan a QR code — every shop, every taxi, every bus, every metro station. You have no privacy at all — it’s all built around this electronic system of contact tracing. To leave Beijing you have to have a Covid test, to come back in you have to have a Covid test…. We basically don’t have the virus here, but the flip side is that they are keeping this place locked down as tight as a drum… It’s very hard to know where Covid containment starts and a Communist police state with an obsession with control kicks in.””
No, because only North Korea can deliver a zero covid strategy.
But I do find it amusing.
People complain about lockdown then the same people complain about things that can and will end lockdown.
If I need a QR code to enter Sainsbury or hop on a bus but in return can be confident I won't catch Covid that's fine with me. If MI5 would like to know that I've visited Sainsbury, ditto. Now I'm at the why-worry end of the spectrum about stuff like this, not least since I'm quite sure that if MI5 want to keep tabs on me they can do so anyway, but I actually think most people will feel the same, the main resistance coming from people who don't have smartphones or find QR codes fiddly. Sites like Unherd think that there is no essential difference between freedom from oppression (democracy, rule of law for all, right to express any legal opinion, independent courts) and freedom from saying they've gone to Sainsbury - slippery slope and all that. I don't think most people think like that.
I know you were in favour of ID cards Nick - I think you were at one time advocating voluntary ID cards - but if Sainsburys demanded a QR scan, I'd go to Aldi. If Aldi demanded a QR scan, I'd go to the local greengrocer. If the pub demands a QR scan, I'm staying at home. I'm not going to starve to death, but I am going to inconvenience myself quite a lot in order for the state not to know where I've been. I absolutely do not trust them. And I work for the public sector and generally vote Conservative!
It is said that 1.3 million people don't even have a bank account. There must be a couple of million people who won't have, don't have, can't afford, electronic gadgetry of the smartphone sort. m any of them older and vulnerable. The use of compulsory electronic ID to access everyday services would be indirect discrimination on massive scale.
You can pick up a smartphone for less than £20 that the NHS can work on...
That would be a remarkable solution to NHS IT, but I must confess I'm sceptical...
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
Never thought Id say this but Im starting to move in favour of compulsory vaccinations if the alternative is never-ending lockdown measures, due to the fact that a small percentage of people not having had the jab might be used as a reason why we cant return to normal life. At least with the jab you can get it over and done with.
There is a very hardhearted way of looking at it that lack of immunity in a fraction of the population due to vaccine hesitancy is an unstable situation that resolves itself over time.
Either we have enough immune to reach herd immunity or we do not. If we do, there is not a problem here.
If we do not, we have three sections of the population with regards to vaccination:
1 - Vaccine willing and eligible. These get vaccinated. Immunity rises in this section 2 - Vaccine willing but ineligible. This is overwhelmingly under-16s and trials are already in train for these; I'd expect them to be eligible by autumn at the latest. These get vaccinated; immunity rises. 3 - Vaccine hesitant.
The crucial number is Number-immune / Number-total. We need this to be as large a fraction as possible. In a situation with an endemic virus and lack of herd immunity, reality itself imposes a harsh choice: vaccine or virus. You will get exposed to the virus in time.
Accordingly, category three will slough away into three sub-categories: - Vaccine-reluctant-but-eventually-willing. As time goes by, their fears are mollified, and they take the vaccine, anyway. Result. - Vaccine-rejected-but-infected-and-acquired-immunity. Fine, they got there the hard way, but ended up ticking up the numerator in that fraction in the end, anyway. - Vaccine-rejected-but-infected-and-died. They tried the hard way and, tragically, were unfortunate. They reduced the denominator in the end and the fraction ticks up in the harshest possible way.
"The first freedom is the freedom to take the consequences," as Pratchett put into the mouth of the Patrician. As long as the consequences are on the one who makes the choice, it's an exercise in their freedom.
Of course, there will be those (very) few who took the vaccination and still were infected and died. This is horrible, and weighs on the refusers. It is, though, looking more and more like the infected-and-died will be overwhelmingly in the vaccine-refusers over time, which is up to them.
As alluded above, the key questions on compulsion are: - How long will that take? - How much of the cost will be paid by those who took the vaccine and got enormously unlucky?
That's what needs to be weighed up in the question of making it compulsory - and in when we say "enough is enough, you had your chance of vaccination, you still do, we're not stopping everything to protect you if you won't protect yourself."
Regarding the SNP / Salmond / Sturgeon fandango, it reminds me a lot of the he said / she said absurdities that have divided the Labour Party. Salmond claims to have sworn statements of collusion at the top, a conspiracy to defame him by his former colleagues. His problem is that he needs to put up or shut up, not just to have any credibility but to avoid being sued to death by the people he is making allegations against.
As with the Labour internal "report" leak which miraculously cleared The Jeremy and blamed the Blairites, the allegations have a whiff about them. There is definitely cack-handed closing of ranks going on as seen with the absurd post-facto redacting of documents that were already in the public eye. But the burdon of proof is on Salmond, and so far I can't see anything that is going to dislodge either Sturgeon or the SNP.
IF (planet-sized if, admittedly) Sturgeon has to fall on her sword/gets pushed under the bus - who replaces her? Who goes with her? And how much (have to add "if at all" I suppose) does it hurt the case for independence?
Seems the case made by Salmond is that a criminal prosecution was concocted out of his, er, forceful but lawful sexual advances - in order to finish his career/cement that of a rival. And the Scottish Establishment has been bent all out of shape in a ludicrous/desperate effort to support/save that rival. If that allegation can be stood up, there must surely be some more criminal trials?
Kate Forbes to replace please. She isn't old enough to have a past and would add greatly to the amount of old fashioned charm and courtesy in modern politics. if Scotland gets independence under her I am off to live in Edinburgh.
Kate's nice and popular but over-ramped. The fact that she managed to read Derek Mackay's speech at short notice after he was defenestrated without stumbling led to rave reviews, but I wouldn't read too much into it. Making her leader now would be an even worse decision than the over-promotion of WIlliam Hague when he was far too young.
There's a bubbling under issue here in Scotland of the SNP seemingly holding back a large quantity of UK funding (Brexit, Covid, Barnett consequential), perhaps (and this is wild speculation) as some sort of Indy set up cost fund. I say this only because negative stuff seems to come all at once, and it looks like (nobody tell TUD I said this) the SNP honeymoon might be drawing to a close. If this does become a story, it's Kate Forbes who is in the firing line. Otherwise I agree - she isn't competent, but she presents herself well.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
I'm not totally sure I share that analysis, as the 2017 election was remarkable in its relative lack of focus on Brexit, and Labour's campaign surge was more related to the fact May unwisely had a manifesto covering other issues.
Also, in 2019, the modest LD recovery was more in the area of Tory remainers - stockbroker belt types.
It's also a shade churlish to say Corbyn was unloved. He was divisive, certainly. But there was a non-trivial group who felt it was a more authentic form of Labour politics - a view that struggled to survive the anti-semitism rows that followed.
Blaming May's 2017 manifesto absolves Sir Lynton Crosby of blame for possibly the most ill-directed campaigns ever. You can't parrot "strong and stable" after a U-turn on the second day. However, the crucial role of events, dear boy, events is too often overlooked.
There were two terrorist outrages during the campaign itself. London Bridge and the Ariana Grande concert. Normally, these would have favoured the blue team except Theresa May had personally given 20,000 coppers their cards. That is why Theresa May lost her majority.
And we know I'm right because, well, it's me, and because Boris won in 2019 with a promise to recruit 20,000 new police officers. In general, we can see what worked for Corbyn in 2017 because CCHQ shamelessly lifted it for Boris in 2019.
There's no point worrying too much about variants, simply put i) Get vaccinated when it's your turn ii) Obey the restrictions and be a good citizen iii) Live your best life when restrictions end.
A colleague of my wife's refused the vaccine as "they don't work against the variants so why bother getting it." 🤦♂️
He has tested positive. 🤦♂️
Self inflicted so no sympathy and it's a bit annoying that he still qualifies for sick pay but hopefully it's not too serious.
Agreed - and hopefully he's not passed the bug onto somebody more vulnerable as a result.
People such as him should be now at the back of the queue I think ? I mean not for punishment/moral reasons but anyone infected there's no real point getting the jab for a few months after ?
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
I'm not totally sure I share that analysis, as the 2017 election was remarkable in its relative lack of focus on Brexit, and Labour's campaign surge was more related to the fact May unwisely had a manifesto covering other issues.
Also, in 2019, the modest LD recovery was more in the area of Tory remainers - stockbroker belt types.
It's also a shade churlish to say Corbyn was unloved. He was divisive, certainly. But there was a non-trivial group who felt it was a more authentic form of Labour politics - a view that struggled to survive the anti-semitism rows that followed.
2017 saw Corbyn neutralise Brexit by promising Remainers he would stop Brexit and Leavers he would deliver Brexit, he lost support from both in 2019 as he had done neither. In 2017 though he could focus on austerity and the dementia tax, both of which Boris avoided in 2019.
His core support still voted for him in 2019 but his core support ie the hard left, were never enough to get anyway near power as the Boris landslide proved.
There's no point worrying too much about variants, simply put i) Get vaccinated when it's your turn ii) Obey the restrictions and be a good citizen iii) Live your best life when restrictions end.
I bought some shit hot trainers last night ready for iii – much better than anything @TheScreamingEagles could come up with.
Regarding the SNP / Salmond / Sturgeon fandango, it reminds me a lot of the he said / she said absurdities that have divided the Labour Party. Salmond claims to have sworn statements of collusion at the top, a conspiracy to defame him by his former colleagues. His problem is that he needs to put up or shut up, not just to have any credibility but to avoid being sued to death by the people he is making allegations against.
Hahaha, are you actually going for comedy here? This is Sturgeon's interview from the other night practically verbatim! Let me point out a couple of things that are wrong here, if you don't mind Nicola.
Firstly, Salmond does not have to prove 'a conspiracy', that's a huge straw man. If he wants to get rid of Sturgeon, he needs to prove that she misled Parliament.
Secondly, the rich irony of telling Salmond to 'put up or shut up' followed by the swift censoring of everything in his written submission that refers to Sturgeon breaking the Ministerial code seems to have escaped you. It is worthy of Zanu PF.
Joking aside, your attitude to this is quite shocking.
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
HMG has missed an opportunity to persuade the vaccine-shy. Where in the roadmap is there any reward for being vaccinated? Why is there nothing the vaccinated can be allowed to do, that remains forbidden to the unvaccinated? Whether that be visiting care homes, coffee shops or park benches, there must be vast scope for incentivising vaccination by opening up along these lines.
There's no point worrying too much about variants, simply put i) Get vaccinated when it's your turn ii) Obey the restrictions and be a good citizen iii) Live your best life when restrictions end.
Fully agree, I'd add:
iv) get the mutation busting booster vaccine in September or when it becomes available.
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
HMG has missed an opportunity to persuade the vaccine-shy. Where in the roadmap is there any reward for being vaccinated? Why is there nothing the vaccinated can be allowed to do, that remains forbidden to the unvaccinated? Whether that be visiting care homes, coffee shops or park benches, there must be vast scope for incentivising vaccination by opening up along these lines.
The vaccinated can avoid dying of a deadly disease. That's a pretty good incentive.
Is that really true? Or just Russian fake news? Seems quite unlikely to me to be honest.
Let's say he has in the past said hateful things. How does that make him not a prisoner of conscience? The two don't seem mutually exclusive to me. Seems like the Russians taking advantage of Amnesty being a woke mess.
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
A colleague of my wife's refused the vaccine as "they don't work against the variants so why bother getting it." 🤦♂️
He has tested positive. 🤦♂️
Self inflicted so no sympathy and it's a bit annoying that he still qualifies for sick pay but hopefully it's not too serious.
Agreed - and hopefully he's not passed the bug onto somebody more vulnerable as a result.
People such as him should be now at the back of the queue I think ? I mean not for punishment/moral reasons but anyone infected there's no real point getting the jab for a few months after ?
Priority group 1 working with the vulnerable which is why they're eligible. So yes there is still a point, its maddening.
But I'm not sure how recently infected affects vaccinations.
Is that really true? Or just Russian fake news? Seems quite unlikely to me to be honest.
Navalny has occupied many points on the ideological spectrum as convenience has dictated. He was a very strident Russian nationalist at one point and given to Islamophobic utterances. His pivot to the anti-corruption stuff is because that's what works at the moment.
Just seen a snippet of Maitlis being incompetent on Newsnight. Apparently the story is the Spectator opposing independence rather than any kind of dodginess from the SNP.
It's very rare that I regret not watching much news/current events programming any more, and such nonsense doesn't exactly encourage me to return to see what journalistic offerings the BBC has.
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
I'm not totally sure I share that analysis, as the 2017 election was remarkable in its relative lack of focus on Brexit, and Labour's campaign surge was more related to the fact May unwisely had a manifesto covering other issues.
Also, in 2019, the modest LD recovery was more in the area of Tory remainers - stockbroker belt types.
It's also a shade churlish to say Corbyn was unloved. He was divisive, certainly. But there was a non-trivial group who felt it was a more authentic form of Labour politics - a view that struggled to survive the anti-semitism rows that followed.
Blaming May's 2017 manifesto absolves Sir Lynton Crosby of blame for possibly the most ill-directed campaigns ever. You can't parrot "strong and stable" after a U-turn on the second day. However, the crucial role of events, dear boy, events is too often overlooked.
There were two terrorist outrages during the campaign itself. London Bridge and the Ariana Grande concert. Normally, these would have favoured the blue team except Theresa May had personally given 20,000 coppers their cards. That is why Theresa May lost her majority.
And we know I'm right because, well, it's me, and because Boris won in 2019 with a promise to recruit 20,000 new police officers. In general, we can see what worked for Corbyn in 2017 because CCHQ shamelessly lifted it for Boris in 2019.
There is something odd about reportage of the failure of the May election campaign. Vs 2015 she increased the Tory vote by 2.3m, a 20% increase. So the idea that she was unpopular or that she repelled voters isn't true - the opposite is.
Where the Tory campaign fell apart was its shit targeting. They did a sensational job in Scotland and started the process of nibbling away at the red wall. Their problem was that they lost a stack of seats in mainly urban areas to small majorities - Bedford, Canterbury, Colne Valley, Crewe & Nantwich, Ipswich, Keighley, Kensington, Peterborough, Stockton South, Stroud - and others by a few thousand which mainly came straight back in 2019.
So the question is less "why were the Tories so unpopular" or even "why were Labour so popular" and more "why did the Tories ground campaign fall apart?"
Is that really true? Or just Russian fake news? Seems quite unlikely to me to be honest.
Navalny has occupied many points on the ideological spectrum as convenience has dictated. He was a very strident Russian nationalist at one point and given to Islamophobic utterances. His pivot to the anti-corruption stuff is because that's what works at the moment.
Amnesty and the American ACLU quite explicitly moved away from "protect the rights of everyone" to "protect the rights of people who are OK" quite some time ago.
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
I downloaded the Alex Salmond evidence documents yesterday as some light reading. I have compared the unredacted and redacted ministerial code submissions. The only changes were to remove references to 2 meetings to discuss the handling of the allegations against AS, with the redactions having no relation at all to the accusers identity. I understand the redactions were made after a request from the Crown Office, but I do not understand on what basis that objection was made or agreed to.
I assume the committee cannot now ask AS about these meetings because the sections have been redacted, and AS cannot talk about them in front of the committee.
This really stinks. Parliaments should be able to dig into things like this without fear or favour, otherwise future governments with really unpleasant leaders could use the precedent to cover up anything. I am amazed that the committee are being so supine.
Is that really true? Or just Russian fake news? Seems quite unlikely to me to be honest.
Navalny has occupied many points on the ideological spectrum as convenience has dictated. He was a very strident Russian nationalist at one point and given to Islamophobic utterances. His pivot to the anti-corruption stuff is because that's what works at the moment.
Amnesty and the American ACLU quite explicitly moved away from "protect the rights of everyone" to "protect the rights of people who are OK" quite some time ago.
Have Amnesty actually done that or is it Russian fake news though? Why is there nothing being shared from Amnesty themselves?
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
by smear you mean pointing out all the things that made the man and those that surrounded him a disgrace?
Regarding the SNP / Salmond / Sturgeon fandango, it reminds me a lot of the he said / she said absurdities that have divided the Labour Party. Salmond claims to have sworn statements of collusion at the top, a conspiracy to defame him by his former colleagues. His problem is that he needs to put up or shut up, not just to have any credibility but to avoid being sued to death by the people he is making allegations against.
Hahaha, are you actually going for comedy here? This is Sturgeon's interview from the other night practically verbatim! Let me point out a couple of things that are wrong here, if you don't mind Nicola.
Firstly, Salmond does not have to prove 'a conspiracy', that's a huge straw man. If he wants to get rid of Sturgeon, he needs to prove that she misled Parliament.
Secondly, the rich irony of telling Salmond to 'put up or shut up' followed by the swift censoring of everything in his written submission that refers to Sturgeon breaking the Ministerial code seems to have escaped you. It is worthy of Zanu PF.
Joking aside, your attitude to this is quite shocking.
I haven't seen her interview so wouldn't know. Question - why would misleading parliament or breaking the ministerial code bring her or the government down? This is 2021, and thanks to Shagger and his band of brigands you can corruptly hand over gazillions to your mates and not need to even apologise. Thats assuming Salmond can prove his conspiracy and thus her malfeasance.
The big question in modern day post-truth politics isn't "what happened" but "does anyone care".
I downloaded the Alex Salmond evidence documents yesterday as some light reading. I have compared the unredacted and redacted ministerial code submissions. The only changes were to remove references to 2 meetings to discuss the handling of the allegations against AS, with the redactions having no relation at all to the accusers identity. I understand the redactions were made after a request from the Crown Office, but I do not understand on what basis that objection was made or agreed to.
I assume the committee cannot now ask AS about these meetings because the sections have been redacted, and AS cannot talk about them in front of the committee.
This really stinks. Parliaments should be able to dig into things like this without fear or favour, otherwise future governments with really unpleasant leaders could use the precedent to cover up anything. I am amazed that the committee are being so supine.
Just seen a snippet of Maitlis being incompetent on Newsnight. Apparently the story is the Spectator opposing independence rather than any kind of dodginess from the SNP.
It's very rare that I regret not watching much news/current events programming any more, and such nonsense doesn't exactly encourage me to return to see what journalistic offerings the BBC has.
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
HMG has missed an opportunity to persuade the vaccine-shy. Where in the roadmap is there any reward for being vaccinated? Why is there nothing the vaccinated can be allowed to do, that remains forbidden to the unvaccinated? Whether that be visiting care homes, coffee shops or park benches, there must be vast scope for incentivising vaccination by opening up along these lines.
The vaccinated can avoid dying of a deadly disease. That's a pretty good incentive.
Not if you think the vaccination will not work, it isn't. HMG needs to do more along the lines I suggested. The affluent have the prospect of skiing holidays as an indirect incentive. What about everyone else?
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
If by smear you mean educating the public in what Corbyn actually said and did then yes.
If by smear you mean making things up then no. There was no need to do that as Corbyn had such a rich history there was literally no point in making anything up about him, it was rendered entirely redundant.
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
Intriguing that being male doesn't look to be much of a contributor.
That said, if the figure of 10 years for the average amount of life lost is true, then we should expect underlying health conditions to be largely immaterial.
The USA has an odd relationship with masks, half the population aren't bothering and a good portion of the other half seem to wear them in their cars... alone... Most of the UK in a far more sensible middle ground with them.
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
HMG has missed an opportunity to persuade the vaccine-shy. Where in the roadmap is there any reward for being vaccinated? Why is there nothing the vaccinated can be allowed to do, that remains forbidden to the unvaccinated? Whether that be visiting care homes, coffee shops or park benches, there must be vast scope for incentivising vaccination by opening up along these lines.
The vaccinated can avoid dying of a deadly disease. That's a pretty good incentive.
Not if you think the vaccination will not work, it isn't. HMG needs to do more along the lines I suggested. The affluent have the prospect of skiing holidays as an indirect incentive. What about everyone else?
I would have thought being able to hang out with your friends is a pretty big indirect incentive even for the poor.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
The big question in modern day post-truth politics isn't "what happened" but "does anyone care".
This tartan-on-tartan SNP fight is Schleswig-Holstein stuff. Almost nobody understands it or cares about it. Even if the GILF enthusiast thinks he's proved Sturgeon has lied she is going nowhere.
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
HMG has missed an opportunity to persuade the vaccine-shy. Where in the roadmap is there any reward for being vaccinated? Why is there nothing the vaccinated can be allowed to do, that remains forbidden to the unvaccinated? Whether that be visiting care homes, coffee shops or park benches, there must be vast scope for incentivising vaccination by opening up along these lines.
The vaccinated can avoid dying of a deadly disease. That's a pretty good incentive.
Not if you think the vaccination will not work, it isn't. HMG needs to do more along the lines I suggested. The affluent have the prospect of skiing holidays as an indirect incentive. What about everyone else?
Its not fair or reasonable to allow the vaccinated to do things the unvaccinated can't unless or until being unvaccinated is a choice rather than because its not your turn yet.
Considering everyone will be vaccinated by 31/7, add 3 weeks and by 21/8 being unvaccinated would be a choice - but all restrictions might be removed by 21/6 then how is that going to work?
I downloaded the Alex Salmond evidence documents yesterday as some light reading. I have compared the unredacted and redacted ministerial code submissions. The only changes were to remove references to 2 meetings to discuss the handling of the allegations against AS, with the redactions having no relation at all to the accusers identity. I understand the redactions were made after a request from the Crown Office, but I do not understand on what basis that objection was made or agreed to.
I assume the committee cannot now ask AS about these meetings because the sections have been redacted, and AS cannot talk about them in front of the committee.
This really stinks. Parliaments should be able to dig into things like this without fear or favour, otherwise future governments with really unpleasant leaders could use the precedent to cover up anything. I am amazed that the committee are being so supine.
I have to credit full marks for your observation and to be honest, irrespective of the Independence debate, the SNP have the air of decay and corruption that often comes with dominant power
My wife is very sad to observe the state of Scottish politics and does not recognise the nasty and toxic culture which has no part in the open generous nature of Scots
I have no idea how this will effect the polling but maybe Scots will look again before empowering the SNP yet again in May
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
HMG has missed an opportunity to persuade the vaccine-shy. Where in the roadmap is there any reward for being vaccinated? Why is there nothing the vaccinated can be allowed to do, that remains forbidden to the unvaccinated? Whether that be visiting care homes, coffee shops or park benches, there must be vast scope for incentivising vaccination by opening up along these lines.
The vaccinated can avoid dying of a deadly disease. That's a pretty good incentive.
Not if you think the vaccination will not work, it isn't. HMG needs to do more along the lines I suggested. The affluent have the prospect of skiing holidays as an indirect incentive. What about everyone else?
I would have thought being able to hang out with your friends is a pretty big indirect incentive even for the poor.
They will get that anyway but at the same time as everyone else; it is not contingent on vaccination. What the government could do, and imo should do, is start to lift restrictions for those who have been vaccinated.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Thank goodness for Keir Starmer that they didn't do that.
I think Corbyn did indeed want to abstain and see that happen, it was Starmer I suspect that was so adamant to vote against.
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
HMG has missed an opportunity to persuade the vaccine-shy. Where in the roadmap is there any reward for being vaccinated? Why is there nothing the vaccinated can be allowed to do, that remains forbidden to the unvaccinated? Whether that be visiting care homes, coffee shops or park benches, there must be vast scope for incentivising vaccination by opening up along these lines.
The vaccinated can avoid dying of a deadly disease. That's a pretty good incentive.
Not if you think the vaccination will not work, it isn't. HMG needs to do more along the lines I suggested. The affluent have the prospect of skiing holidays as an indirect incentive. What about everyone else?
I would have thought being able to hang out with your friends is a pretty big indirect incentive even for the poor.
They will get that anyway but at the same time as everyone else; it is not contingent on vaccination. What the government could do, and imo should do, is start to lift restrictions for those who have been vaccinated.
How is that going to work before being unvaccinated is a choice?
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
HMG has missed an opportunity to persuade the vaccine-shy. Where in the roadmap is there any reward for being vaccinated? Why is there nothing the vaccinated can be allowed to do, that remains forbidden to the unvaccinated? Whether that be visiting care homes, coffee shops or park benches, there must be vast scope for incentivising vaccination by opening up along these lines.
The vaccinated can avoid dying of a deadly disease. That's a pretty good incentive.
Not if you think the vaccination will not work, it isn't. HMG needs to do more along the lines I suggested. The affluent have the prospect of skiing holidays as an indirect incentive. What about everyone else?
I would have thought being able to hang out with your friends is a pretty big indirect incentive even for the poor.
They will get that anyway but at the same time as everyone else; it is not contingent on vaccination. What the government could do, and imo should do, is start to lift restrictions for those who have been vaccinated.
But it IS contingent on vaccination. I haven't been able to hang out with my friends inside since September purely because we haven't been vaccinated.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
Oh come off it. No-one needed to smear Jeremy Corbyn, he achieved all that himself. His apologists used that to try and cover up hide total awfulness. By all means disabuse me and tell me something that Jeremy Corbyn was "smeared" about was not a result of his own previous history or just his genuine stupidity? I am genuinely interested to hear about it.
The big problem that I have with Jeremy Corbyn, and those that supported him being leader of the Labour Party is not just the fact that he was an even more absurd applicant to the post of PM than the current incumbent, but because he was the facilitator of said current incumbent being there. Had we had a decent LoTO it is highly unlikely that the Clown would now be in No!0.
It’s getting beyond ridiculous now. Some of my friends are endlessly going on “but, the variants!” I have signed out of WhatsApp groups because I have lost the will to endlessly correct them.
The anti-vaxxers who don't want a vaccine are going to find any excuse they can to avoid taking it.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
HMG has missed an opportunity to persuade the vaccine-shy. Where in the roadmap is there any reward for being vaccinated? Why is there nothing the vaccinated can be allowed to do, that remains forbidden to the unvaccinated? Whether that be visiting care homes, coffee shops or park benches, there must be vast scope for incentivising vaccination by opening up along these lines.
Until everyone has had a chance to be vaccinated you cannot start penalizing people who haven't been vaccinated (for that is the sort of thing people WILL remember come the next election).
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
Is that really true? Or just Russian fake news? Seems quite unlikely to me to be honest.
Navalny has occupied many points on the ideological spectrum as convenience has dictated. He was a very strident Russian nationalist at one point and given to Islamophobic utterances. His pivot to the anti-corruption stuff is because that's what works at the moment.
Freedom from arrest, of speech, etc ought not to be contingent on holding a particular set of opinions.
Well, clearly they are in Russia, but that surely is the point ?
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
The issue is that the others weren't taken out of context or Tory smears either. Corbyn was just genuinely that awful as was being said and Salisbury made it crystal clear.
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There was quite a smear campaign waged in many places against Jeremy Corbyn. It's plain silly not to acknowledge this.
Oh come off it. No-one needed to smear Jeremy Corbyn, he achieved all that himself. His apologists used that to try and cover up hide total awfulness. By all means disabuse me and tell me something that Jeremy Corbyn was "smeared" about was not a result of his own previous history or just his genuine stupidity? I am genuinely interested to hear about it.
The big problem that I have with Jeremy Corbyn, and those that supported him being leader of the Labour Party is not just the fact that he was an even more absurd applicant to the post of PM than the current incumbent, but because he was the facilitator of said current incumbent being there. Had we had a decent LoTO it is highly unlikely that the Clown would now be in No!0.
Or perhaps Boris owes being PM to Theresa May being quite woeful?
Never thought Id say this but Im starting to move in favour of compulsory vaccinations if the alternative is never-ending lockdown measures, due to the fact that a small percentage of people not having had the jab might be used as a reason why we cant return to normal life. At least with the jab you can get it over and done with.
I get the annoyance - anger even - about this but I'm not sure it's a massive problem in the grand scheme of things. The objective of the vaccine rollout is to create sufficient population immunity to open up society, in stages culminating in Freedom Day on 21st June. Vaccine hesitancy or refusal should be countered in every conceivable way short of compulsion, but so long as it's not high enough to derail the reboot I won't be getting too animated about it.
At the 2019 general election Labour was down 8% compared to the 2017 election, the LDs up 4% and the Greens and Tories were each up 1% with the Brexit Party on 2%.
So most of the movement was Remainers from Labour to the LDs and Greens to try and stop Brexit, with working class Leavers moving to the Tories and Brexit Party to try and deliver Brexit.
There was never any real love for Corbyn in 2017 from many Labour voters, he was just a vehicle to stop Brexit, when he did not do so lots of those voters went LD while his failure to back Brexit also lost him Leave votes too.
What could have been if Labour had voted for Theresa May's deal and then set back and watched the Tories tear themselves apart...
Had Labour done that after 2017 though, they would have lost even more diehard Remainers to the LDs (remember even in 2019 Corbyn and Starmer promised EUref2) while the Tories would still have lost the Leavers to the Brexit Party that Boris won back.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
Just seen a snippet of Maitlis being incompetent on Newsnight. Apparently the story is the Spectator opposing independence rather than any kind of dodginess from the SNP.
It's very rare that I regret not watching much news/current events programming any more, and such nonsense doesn't exactly encourage me to return to see what journalistic offerings the BBC has.
I don't know which astonishes me most. Her bias or her failure as a journalist to comprehend how big this story is.
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
Intriguing that being male doesn't look to be much of a contributor.
That said, if the figure of 10 years for the average amount of life lost is true, then we should expect underlying health conditions to be largely immaterial.
The graphic is not good, because age makes everything else look the same by dwarfing other variables, but in the text we see male sex is a significant risk factor:
"Male sex was also associated with increased risk of in-hospital mortality (OR 1.76, 95%CI=1.33-2.35)"
Can we have a thread header on this Salmond/Sturgeon thing please? I honestly have no idea what's going on.
2018, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades exploded with joy at the prospect of him being tried & convicted for attempted rape, and going to jail. A side note was a belief that Sturgeon was trying to protect Salmond.
2020, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades broke into a howl of rage that he had got off, with much blubbering about fixes and the women alleging assault having been let down.
2021, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades went through a Damascene conversion to believing a great injustice had been done to him, and that Sturgeon, the most popular politician in Scotland, must resign.
The unifying factor of these chameleon-like changes is that each time these people believed that they had found yet another silver bullet to destroy Scottish Indy and the SNP. Because they have no talented politicians, policies, positive cases for the UK or consistent principles of their own, they have to cling to these external events to preserve their fraying union.
I think that just about covers a particular aspect of what's going on.
It was Corbyn's reaction to the Salisbury that destroyed Corbyn's rating irrevocably.
I think every party in the Commons, from the Tories, most of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid, the Irish mobs, and Greens all said it was the Russians, but not Jez.
Yes. That was Corbyn's worst moment. It was very damaging and unlike with many of his controversies there was no viable defence of "taken out of context" or "tory smear" or "providing robust challenge to reactionary groupthink". It was obviously Putin and Putin is a horrible little man. Jeremy should have simply joined in the condemnation and preferably with gusto. What he did instead was like collecting up a load of putative GE votes and casually tossing them into the bin. It was an absolute gift to the enemy. It's hard enough for Labour to win elections in this strange country of ours that seems to fetishize inequality and privilege without the leader going out of his way to lose them.
Just looking at countries with large populations (more than 40 million), we are 5th in the list for reducing inequality according to this page.
Never thought Id say this but Im starting to move in favour of compulsory vaccinations if the alternative is never-ending lockdown measures, due to the fact that a small percentage of people not having had the jab might be used as a reason why we cant return to normal life. At least with the jab you can get it over and done with.
I get the annoyance - anger even - about this but I'm not sure it's a massive problem in the grand scheme of things. The objective of the vaccine rollout is to create sufficient population immunity to open up society, in stages culminating in Freedom Day on 21st June. Vaccine hesitancy or refusal should be countered in every conceivable way short of compulsion, but so long as it's not high enough to derail the reboot I won't be getting too animated about it.
The unvaccinated should become social lepers like drunk drivers, but once the vaccine rollout is done then all lockdown must be over. No ifs, no buts.
If the unvaccinated are the primary ones who die as a result that is Darwinian but so be it. I feel sorry for those they infect but we can't have lockdowns for that.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
Can we have a thread header on this Salmond/Sturgeon thing please? I honestly have no idea what's going on.
2018, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades exploded with joy at the prospect of him being tried & convicted for attempted rape, and going to jail. A side note was a belief that Sturgeon was trying to protect Salmond.
2020, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades broke into a howl of rage that he had got off, with much blubbering about fixes and the women alleging assault having been let down.
2021, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades went through a Damascene conversion to believing a great injustice had been done to him, and that Sturgeon, the most popular politician in Scotland, must resign.
The unifying factor of these chameleon-like changes is that each time these people believed that they had found yet another silver bullet to destroy Scottish Indy and the SNP. Because they have no talented politicians, policies, positive cases for the UK or consistent principles of their own, they have to cling to these external events to preserve their fraying union.
I think that just about covers a particular aspect of what's going on.
I think that seems about right but to be honest it is not a good look for the SNP to be caught up in a bitter civil war and with no certainty of the longer term implications for the SNP
This is a remarkable data visualisation from a study of hospitalised patient outcomes (likelihood of discharge vs mortality), which suggests that much of the mortality risk from pre-existing conditions suggested by other studies might simply be because those conditions become more prevalent with age.
Intriguing that being male doesn't look to be much of a contributor.
That said, if the figure of 10 years for the average amount of life lost is true, then we should expect underlying health conditions to be largely immaterial.
The graphic is not good, because age makes everything else look the same by dwarfing other variables, but in the text we see male sex is a significant risk factor:
"Male sex was also associated with increased risk of in-hospital mortality (OR 1.76, 95%CI=1.33-2.35)"
If age is such a major, major factor, it is hard to believe in the figure of an average of 10 years life lost. Surely all those 85+ years olds (which will obviously include a lot of 90+s and 95+s) can't have all had that long left?
Is that really true? Or just Russian fake news? Seems quite unlikely to me to be honest.
Navalny has occupied many points on the ideological spectrum as convenience has dictated. He was a very strident Russian nationalist at one point and given to Islamophobic utterances. His pivot to the anti-corruption stuff is because that's what works at the moment.
Freedom from arrest, of speech, etc ought not to be contingent on holding a particular set of opinions.
Well, clearly they are in Russia, but that surely is the point ?
Amnesty International is cagey about prisoners who advocate violence though.
I don't know enough about Navalny to know if he does, or has a history of threatened violence.
On thread - Theresa May's failure in 2017 wasn't in failing to persuade enough people to vote Conservative - Con in 2017 received the third highest vote total of any party at any GE ever (yes I know the electoral roll is gradually expanding, but still...) but in failing to persuade sufficient people not to vote Labour. It's not exactly edifying for democracy, but the conclusion is that the campaign was insufficiently negative.
May's mistake was trying to fix the cost of social care.
Without that she would have won a majority but with it she lost just enough votes to create a problem.
I really don't think Corbyn was much of an issue one way or the other.
Can we have a thread header on this Salmond/Sturgeon thing please? I honestly have no idea what's going on.
2018, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades exploded with joy at the prospect of him being tried & convicted for attempted rape, and going to jail. A side note was a belief that Sturgeon was trying to protect Salmond.
2020, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades broke into a howl of rage that he had got off, with much blubbering about fixes and the women alleging assault having been let down.
2021, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades went through a Damascene conversion to believing a great injustice had been done to him, and that Sturgeon, the most popular politician in Scotland, must resign.
The unifying factor of these chameleon-like changes is that each time these people believed that they had found yet another silver bullet to destroy Scottish Indy and the SNP. Because they have no talented politicians, policies, positive cases for the UK or consistent principles of their own, they have to cling to these external events to preserve their fraying union.
I think that just about covers a particular aspect of what's going on.
Any thoughts on the performance of the Crown Office?
Comments
Also, in 2019, the modest LD recovery was more in the area of Tory remainers - stockbroker belt types.
It's also a shade churlish to say Corbyn was unloved. He was divisive, certainly. But there was a non-trivial group who felt it was a more authentic form of Labour politics - a view that struggled to survive the anti-semitism rows that followed.
He has tested positive. 🤦♂️
My guess is that recent attempts to link SKS with Savile and other nonce cases reflect trial runs to see what mud sticks, ready for reuse in 2024.
There is nothing some QAnon supporters and leftie extremists would like better.
Worse they would be the people who kick up a stink if vaccine passports are required and would probably rapidly turn violent as well.
Now I don't know what the solution is but you can't enable vaccine passports until everyone has had a chance of being vaccinated so it's not something you can insist upon as pubs initially open (as not everyone will have had a chance yet). And it's not something you can introduce later as that would really annoy those who won't accept one.
Either we have enough immune to reach herd immunity or we do not. If we do, there is not a problem here.
If we do not, we have three sections of the population with regards to vaccination:
1 - Vaccine willing and eligible. These get vaccinated. Immunity rises in this section
2 - Vaccine willing but ineligible. This is overwhelmingly under-16s and trials are already in train for these; I'd expect them to be eligible by autumn at the latest. These get vaccinated; immunity rises.
3 - Vaccine hesitant.
The crucial number is Number-immune / Number-total. We need this to be as large a fraction as possible.
In a situation with an endemic virus and lack of herd immunity, reality itself imposes a harsh choice: vaccine or virus. You will get exposed to the virus in time.
Accordingly, category three will slough away into three sub-categories:
- Vaccine-reluctant-but-eventually-willing. As time goes by, their fears are mollified, and they take the vaccine, anyway. Result.
- Vaccine-rejected-but-infected-and-acquired-immunity. Fine, they got there the hard way, but ended up ticking up the numerator in that fraction in the end, anyway.
- Vaccine-rejected-but-infected-and-died. They tried the hard way and, tragically, were unfortunate. They reduced the denominator in the end and the fraction ticks up in the harshest possible way.
"The first freedom is the freedom to take the consequences," as Pratchett put into the mouth of the Patrician. As long as the consequences are on the one who makes the choice, it's an exercise in their freedom.
Of course, there will be those (very) few who took the vaccination and still were infected and died. This is horrible, and weighs on the refusers. It is, though, looking more and more like the infected-and-died will be overwhelmingly in the vaccine-refusers over time, which is up to them.
As alluded above, the key questions on compulsion are:
- How long will that take?
- How much of the cost will be paid by those who took the vaccine and got enormously unlucky?
That's what needs to be weighed up in the question of making it compulsory - and in when we say "enough is enough, you had your chance of vaccination, you still do, we're not stopping everything to protect you if you won't protect yourself."
As with the Labour internal "report" leak which miraculously cleared The Jeremy and blamed the Blairites, the allegations have a whiff about them. There is definitely cack-handed closing of ranks going on as seen with the absurd post-facto redacting of documents that were already in the public eye. But the burdon of proof is on Salmond, and so far I can't see anything that is going to dislodge either Sturgeon or the SNP.
https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/scotland_firstvaccinedata_preprint.pdf
By viable defence I think you mean face saving excuse.
There were two terrorist outrages during the campaign itself. London Bridge and the Ariana Grande concert. Normally, these would have favoured the blue team except Theresa May had personally given 20,000 coppers their cards. That is why Theresa May lost her majority.
And we know I'm right because, well, it's me, and because Boris won in 2019 with a promise to recruit 20,000 new police officers. In general, we can see what worked for Corbyn in 2017 because CCHQ shamelessly lifted it for Boris in 2019.
i) Get vaccinated when it's your turn
ii) Obey the restrictions and be a good citizen
iii) Live your best life when restrictions end.
I mean not for punishment/moral reasons but anyone infected there's no real point getting the jab for a few months after ?
His core support still voted for him in 2019 but his core support ie the hard left, were never enough to get anyway near power as the Boris landslide proved.
Firstly, Salmond does not have to prove 'a conspiracy', that's a huge straw man. If he wants to get rid of Sturgeon, he needs to prove that she misled Parliament.
Secondly, the rich irony of telling Salmond to 'put up or shut up' followed by the swift censoring of everything in his written submission that refers to Sturgeon breaking the Ministerial code seems to have escaped you. It is worthy of Zanu PF.
Joking aside, your attitude to this is quite shocking.
Seems quite unlikely to me to be honest.
https://order-order.com/2021/02/24/labour-councillor-pushes-antivaxxer-themes-yet-wants-jabs-for-palestinians/
iv) get the mutation busting booster vaccine in September or when it becomes available.
https://twitter.com/VirusesImmunity/status/1364327660244066306
But I'm not sure how recently infected affects vaccinations.
It's very rare that I regret not watching much news/current events programming any more, and such nonsense doesn't exactly encourage me to return to see what journalistic offerings the BBC has.
Where the Tory campaign fell apart was its shit targeting. They did a sensational job in Scotland and started the process of nibbling away at the red wall. Their problem was that they lost a stack of seats in mainly urban areas to small majorities - Bedford, Canterbury, Colne Valley, Crewe & Nantwich, Ipswich, Keighley, Kensington, Peterborough, Stockton South, Stroud - and others by a few thousand which mainly came straight back in 2019.
So the question is less "why were the Tories so unpopular" or even "why were Labour so popular" and more "why did the Tories ground campaign fall apart?"
Ooops...................
And lots of other health risks despite death.
I downloaded the Alex Salmond evidence documents yesterday as some light reading. I have compared the unredacted and redacted ministerial code submissions. The only changes were to remove references to 2 meetings to discuss the handling of the allegations against AS, with the redactions having no relation at all to the accusers identity. I understand the redactions were made after a request from the Crown Office, but I do not understand on what basis that objection was made or agreed to.
I assume the committee cannot now ask AS about these meetings because the sections have been redacted, and AS cannot talk about them in front of the committee.
This really stinks. Parliaments should be able to dig into things like this without fear or favour, otherwise future governments with really unpleasant leaders could use the precedent to cover up anything. I am amazed that the committee are being so supine.
Amnesty are a farce if that's true.
The big question in modern day post-truth politics isn't "what happened" but "does anyone care".
If by smear you mean making things up then no. There was no need to do that as Corbyn had such a rich history there was literally no point in making anything up about him, it was rendered entirely redundant.
That said, if the figure of 10 years for the average amount of life lost is true, then we should expect underlying health conditions to be largely immaterial.
Most of the UK in a far more sensible middle ground with them.
Considering everyone will be vaccinated by 31/7, add 3 weeks and by 21/8 being unvaccinated would be a choice - but all restrictions might be removed by 21/6 then how is that going to work?
Looks very promising.
What seems clear is that 1st vaccinations are effective. To get a nailed down percentage effectiveness will take a few more weeks of data.
My wife is very sad to observe the state of Scottish politics and does not recognise the nasty and toxic culture which has no part in the open generous nature of Scots
I have no idea how this will effect the polling but maybe Scots will look again before empowering the SNP yet again in May
I think Corbyn did indeed want to abstain and see that happen, it was Starmer I suspect that was so adamant to vote against.
Can't see anything on the Amnesty website.
The big problem that I have with Jeremy Corbyn, and those that supported him being leader of the Labour Party is not just the fact that he was an even more absurd applicant to the post of PM than the current incumbent, but because he was the facilitator of said current incumbent being there. Had we had a decent LoTO it is highly unlikely that the Clown would now be in No!0.
Well, clearly they are in Russia, but that surely is the point ?
100 years ago there wouldn't have been that many elderly still alive.
So the main gainers would have been Farage and the LDs rather than Labour
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
"Male sex was also associated with increased risk of in-hospital mortality (OR 1.76, 95%CI=1.33-2.35)"
2020, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades broke into a howl of rage that he had got off, with much blubbering about fixes and the women alleging assault having been let down.
2021, all the people who had loathed Salmond for decades went through a Damascene conversion to believing a great injustice had been done to him, and that Sturgeon, the most popular politician in Scotland, must resign.
The unifying factor of these chameleon-like changes is that each time these people believed that they had found yet another silver bullet to destroy Scottish Indy and the SNP. Because they have no talented politicians, policies, positive cases for the UK or consistent principles of their own, they have to cling to these external events to preserve their fraying union.
I think that just about covers a particular aspect of what's going on.
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/datablog/2017/jul/17/which-countries-most-and-least-committed-to-reducing-inequality-oxfam-dfi
https://twitter.com/EyeEdinburgh/status/1364131714042368001
this is a take I suppose...
The unvaccinated should become social lepers like drunk drivers, but once the vaccine rollout is done then all lockdown must be over. No ifs, no buts.
If the unvaccinated are the primary ones who die as a result that is Darwinian but so be it. I feel sorry for those they infect but we can't have lockdowns for that.
I don't know enough about Navalny to know if he does, or has a history of threatened violence.
Without that she would have won a majority but with it she lost just enough votes to create a problem.
I really don't think Corbyn was much of an issue one way or the other.