Because the EU was months later than the UK at ordering. They only have themselves to blame.
I still cannot comprehend that the EU prioritised price over speed when it came to the vaccine.
They thought being able to negotiate a discount would show the value of the EU. They didn't place an order with Pfizer until November 2020 and were boasting about paying less than the Americans.
The European Union has struck a deal to initially pay less for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate than the United States, an EU official told Reuters as the bloc announced on Wednesday
They struck a bargain to pay cheap and will pay far more than twice in consequence.
A spectacular miscalculation - not just in emphasising price over speed, but also in not subsidising manufacturers to produce locally.
It's hard to imagine how they possible thought that saving a few hundred million on procurement costs was worth an extra quarter of deaths, lockdowns and diminished GDP.
If you want an argument against an unaccountable administrative class, too far from voters, it would be hard to find a better one.
Of course, it's been compounded by appalling errors at the national level. The German insistence on keeping doses back is stupid beyond belief.
FPT TimT Posts: 2,683 1:40PM Northern_Al said: » show previous quotes That's utter nonsense. He just wants the (culture) 'war' to continue for clicks, as do some on here. I've just read the statement - in case anybody hasn't, here it is:
"The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan. "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. "Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members."
I just don't get how anybody could interpret that as a "fuck you" statement unless they were positively malign.
PS. I'm really not at all interested in this, but felt provoked enough to comment. I'll translate:
"The family does not understand what Meghan and Harry have to complain about. "The racism card is over-played and the comment made was not as reported. "We have already looked into this to the extent we intend to and will say nothing further. "Meghan and Harry are acting like little shits"
Yes, @Northern_Al seems to require open vituperation of the sort so masterfully demonstrated in the 16th-century correspondence between Tsar Ivan IV and his self-exiled courtier Prince Kurbsky. But there's no need for that kind of unsubtle display here: we're British.
On the contrary. His analysis is not skewed by the desperate need to see a "Fuck You Meghan" and is for this reason vastly superior to yours and your dim and tawdry crew.
Well, there is text, there is context, and there is subtext. If the two premier lefties on the site are getting this upset about some fairly obvious implications, I rather suspect our dim crew may be on to something after all...
You're behaving like one of those ultra-woke lefties who doesn't take stuff at face value but looks for a 'subtext' where the real meaning of the author can be seen, even if it was said/written in all innocence. So in this context 'saddened' becomes 'couldn't care less', 'concerned' becomes 'couldn't give a fuck', and 'much-loved family members' becomes 'we hate your guts'. It's really weird. Before you know it, you'll be deconstructing the sayings of B. Johnson to reveal the hidden offensiveness behind his liberal platitudes.
Oh and by the way, in reference to an earlier post of yours, I don't take you personally at all. Really not bothered - I enjoy the cut and thrust. I merely replied to a response that you'd made to me, er, personally.
I've posted relatively little on this topic because despite being an ideological monarchist I take very little interest in the royal family as people, so I won't drag this out too much.
Of course the statement has been carefuly formulated to admit a polite interpretation and so close the issue down in the public sphere. Nonetheless, it adopts neither a neutral nor a submissive posture. 'The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent' necessitates that the family was not fully informed by the couple about their grievances at the time (for whatever reason). 'Some recollections may vary' means that not all family members agree that it happened at all. 'Addressed by the family privately' implies that internal discussion, as opposed to an interview with a global audience, was the better course to pursue.
That much clearly follows from even a superficial reading of the text. Then add in the formal elements: the extreme laconicism and the written medium form an object contrast to spilling your guts to a billion people live on Oprah. Even the paratext 'ENDS' - the inclusion of which I suspect was not in fact an error - underscores both the message's finality and its almost telegrammatic brevity.
I don't feel that I'm particularly reaching with the above observations - I'll spare you the significance of the missing Oxford comma after 'Meghan' in the last line - they're there for any pract. crit. tyro to detect.
There has clearly been a shift to No since the vaccination programme proved so successful, No Deal Brexit was avoided and Salmond tore Sturgeon apart.
Indeed on the latest poll the SNP has also fallen below 50% and is at risk of no Holyrood majority at all which would destroy any hopes it had of pushing for indyref2 completely
Because the EU was months later than the UK at ordering. They only have themselves to blame.
I still cannot comprehend that the EU prioritised price over speed when it came to the vaccine.
They thought being able to negotiate a discount would show the value of the EU. They didn't place an order with Pfizer until November 2020 and were boasting about paying less than the Americans.
The European Union has struck a deal to initially pay less for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate than the United States, an EU official told Reuters as the bloc announced on Wednesday
There's a lot of talk at the moment in Government about "replicating" the success of the vaccine taskforce.
I said you can certainly cut out all the bureaucratic layers of governance and get all the key players in one room, and give them the authority to get on with it, but you have to accept that money was no object and they took all the liability risk.
Funnily enough you can get quite a lot done quite quickly when money is no object and take on board all the risk, but the real world in normal times for big projects isn't like that.
Plus the reality is that the situation in Italy is probably far, far worse than those figures say.
Afterall while the UK has recorded more 'Covid deaths within 28 days of a test' than our real excess deaths, Italy has nearly two excess deaths for every recorded death. So the real daily death toll might be more like 750.
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
I would be staggered if we didn't grow a lot quicker than them (at least 3 percentage points) this year, as we (a) are leaving this faster, and (b) had a bigger dip last year.
By contrast, because the EU is going to have a terrible Q1 and Q2 of this year, it would be extremely surprising if they didn't manage a faster number for next year.
Imagine if normal quarterly output is 100.
We might have:
90, 100, 102, 102 - this year
and
103, 103, 103, 103 - next year
For the Eurozone, they would likely have something like
90, 90, 100, 101 - this year
and even if they barely reached normal output next year, i.e. something like
101, 101, 101, 101 - next year
They would still (mathematically) have faster growth than us, because they have one more period from this year with is CV19 riven than us.
It follows from this, of course, that the longer CV19 continues in the Eurozone, the faster the 2022 growth is, as the bigger the jump back to "normal".
As @FrankBooth says, the key thing is not "growth" but what is output relative to pre-CV19 levels.
Has Mike Smithson misread this data? Surely the polls are not showing whether voters favour a second Independence Referendum - but rather how they are likely to vote in the event of it taking place!
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
There has clearly been a shift to No since the vaccination programme proved so successful, No Deal Brexit was avoided and Salmond tore Sturgeon apart.
Indeed on the latest poll the SNP has also fallen below 50% and is at risk of no Holyrood majority at all which would destroy any hopes it had of pushing for indyref2 completely
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
FPT TimT Posts: 2,683 1:40PM Northern_Al said: » show previous quotes That's utter nonsense. He just wants the (culture) 'war' to continue for clicks, as do some on here. I've just read the statement - in case anybody hasn't, here it is:
"The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan. "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. "Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members."
I just don't get how anybody could interpret that as a "fuck you" statement unless they were positively malign.
PS. I'm really not at all interested in this, but felt provoked enough to comment. I'll translate:
"The family does not understand what Meghan and Harry have to complain about. "The racism card is over-played and the comment made was not as reported. "We have already looked into this to the extent we intend to and will say nothing further. "Meghan and Harry are acting like little shits"
Yes, @Northern_Al seems to require open vituperation of the sort so masterfully demonstrated in the 16th-century correspondence between Tsar Ivan IV and his self-exiled courtier Prince Kurbsky. But there's no need for that kind of unsubtle display here: we're British.
On the contrary. His analysis is not skewed by the desperate need to see a "Fuck You Meghan" and is for this reason vastly superior to yours and your dim and tawdry crew.
Well, there is text, there is context, and there is subtext. If the two premier lefties on the site are getting this upset about some fairly obvious implications, I rather suspect our dim crew may be on to something after all...
You're behaving like one of those ultra-woke lefties who doesn't take stuff at face value but looks for a 'subtext' where the real meaning of the author can be seen, even if it was said/written in all innocence. So in this context 'saddened' becomes 'couldn't care less', 'concerned' becomes 'couldn't give a fuck', and 'much-loved family members' becomes 'we hate your guts'. It's really weird. Before you know it, you'll be deconstructing the sayings of B. Johnson to reveal the hidden offensiveness behind his liberal platitudes.
Oh and by the way, in reference to an earlier post of yours, I don't take you personally at all. Really not bothered - I enjoy the cut and thrust. I merely replied to a response that you'd made to me, er, personally.
I've posted relatively little on this topic because despite being an ideological monarchist I take very little interest in the royal family as people, so I won't drag this out too much.
Of course the statement has been carefuly formulated to admit a polite interpretation and so close the issue down in the public sphere. Nonetheless, it adopts neither a neutral nor a submissive posture. 'The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent' necessitates that the family was not fully informed by the couple about their grievances at the time (for whatever reason). 'Some recollections may vary' means that not all family members agree that it happened at all. 'Addressed by the family privately' implies that internal discussion, as opposed to an interview with a global audience, was the better course to pursue.
That much clearly follows from even a superficial reading of the text. Then add in the formal elements: the extreme laconicism and the written medium form an object contrast to spilling your guts to a billion people live on Oprah. Even the paratext 'ENDS' - the inclusion of which I suspect was not in fact an error - underscores both the message's finality and its almost telegrammatic brevity.
I don't feel that I'm particularly reaching with the above observations - I'll spare you the significance of the missing Oxford comma after 'Meghan' in the last line - they're there for any pract. crit. tyro to detect.
This could have all been achieved without mentioning "issues" that were "concerning", or that Harry and Megan were "much-loved members of the family", which was not the language of any palace statement before Diana. If that had been done, both the Guardian and the Mail wouldn't have been able to run their conflicting, relatively satisfied headlines. That was the point of it.
Yes, you put all that faith in these EU people. You really did.
To be fair to you, the alternative was Nigel Farage. But still - bloody embarrassing isn't it?
This is a new EU Commission. We Remainers had put our faith in a totally different set of clowns, now all gone.
Although how you have the nerve to talk about amateur hour with Boris in charge... a former journalist who has been fired for making his quotes up and who then hides in fridges from other journalists.
Under Johnson's govt we are in the top ten of deaths per 100,000.
There has clearly been a shift to No since the vaccination programme proved so successful, No Deal Brexit was avoided and Salmond tore Sturgeon apart.
Indeed on the latest poll the SNP has also fallen below 50% and is at risk of no Holyrood majority at all which would destroy any hopes it had of pushing for indyref2 completely
No they don't, there is already an SNP and Green majority now at Holyrood, no SNP majority despite Brexit means no material change in circumstances since the 'once in a generation' 2014 referendum and the UK government will easily refuse a legal indyref2.
FPT TimT Posts: 2,683 1:40PM Northern_Al said: » show previous quotes That's utter nonsense. He just wants the (culture) 'war' to continue for clicks, as do some on here. I've just read the statement - in case anybody hasn't, here it is:
"The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan. "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. "Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members."
I just don't get how anybody could interpret that as a "fuck you" statement unless they were positively malign.
PS. I'm really not at all interested in this, but felt provoked enough to comment. I'll translate:
"The family does not understand what Meghan and Harry have to complain about. "The racism card is over-played and the comment made was not as reported. "We have already looked into this to the extent we intend to and will say nothing further. "Meghan and Harry are acting like little shits"
Yes, @Northern_Al seems to require open vituperation of the sort so masterfully demonstrated in the 16th-century correspondence between Tsar Ivan IV and his self-exiled courtier Prince Kurbsky. But there's no need for that kind of unsubtle display here: we're British.
On the contrary. His analysis is not skewed by the desperate need to see a "Fuck You Meghan" and is for this reason vastly superior to yours and your dim and tawdry crew.
Well, there is text, there is context, and there is subtext. If the two premier lefties on the site are getting this upset about some fairly obvious implications, I rather suspect our dim crew may be on to something after all...
You're behaving like one of those ultra-woke lefties who doesn't take stuff at face value but looks for a 'subtext' where the real meaning of the author can be seen, even if it was said/written in all innocence. So in this context 'saddened' becomes 'couldn't care less', 'concerned' becomes 'couldn't give a fuck', and 'much-loved family members' becomes 'we hate your guts'. It's really weird. Before you know it, you'll be deconstructing the sayings of B. Johnson to reveal the hidden offensiveness behind his liberal platitudes.
Oh and by the way, in reference to an earlier post of yours, I don't take you personally at all. Really not bothered - I enjoy the cut and thrust. I merely replied to a response that you'd made to me, er, personally.
I've posted relatively little on this topic because despite being an ideological monarchist I take very little interest in the royal family as people, so I won't drag this out too much.
Of course the statement has been carefuly formulated to admit a polite interpretation and so close the issue down in the public sphere. Nonetheless, it adopts neither a neutral nor a submissive posture. 'The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent' necessitates that the family was not fully informed by the couple about their grievances at the time (for whatever reason). 'Some recollections may vary' means that not all family members agree that it happened at all. 'Addressed by the family privately' implies that internal discussion, as opposed to an interview with a global audience, was the better course to pursue.
That much clearly follows from even a superficial reading of the text. Then add in the formal elements: the extreme laconicism and the written medium form an object contrast to spilling your guts to a billion people live on Oprah. Even the paratext 'ENDS' - the inclusion of which I suspect was not in fact an error - underscores both the message's finality and its almost telegrammatic brevity.
I don't feel that I'm particularly reaching with the above observations - I'll spare you the significance of the missing Oxford comma after 'Meghan' in the last line - they're there for any pract. crit. tyro to detect.
This could have all been achieved without mentioning "issues" that were "concerning", or that Harry and Megan were "much-loved members of the family", which was not the language of any palace statement before Diana. If that had been done, both the Guardian and the Mail wouldn't have been able to run their conflicting, relatively satisfied headlines. That was the point of it.
NorthernAI is right. It is a masterpiece of laconicism. Designed to euthanise the whole argument. An injection in a clinic in Switzerland.
Dunno if it will work, but it is well-judged. Just enough, and no more
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
FPT TimT Posts: 2,683 1:40PM Northern_Al said: » show previous quotes That's utter nonsense. He just wants the (culture) 'war' to continue for clicks, as do some on here. I've just read the statement - in case anybody hasn't, here it is:
"The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan. "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. "Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members."
I just don't get how anybody could interpret that as a "fuck you" statement unless they were positively malign.
PS. I'm really not at all interested in this, but felt provoked enough to comment. I'll translate:
"The family does not understand what Meghan and Harry have to complain about. "The racism card is over-played and the comment made was not as reported. "We have already looked into this to the extent we intend to and will say nothing further. "Meghan and Harry are acting like little shits"
Yes, @Northern_Al seems to require open vituperation of the sort so masterfully demonstrated in the 16th-century correspondence between Tsar Ivan IV and his self-exiled courtier Prince Kurbsky. But there's no need for that kind of unsubtle display here: we're British.
On the contrary. His analysis is not skewed by the desperate need to see a "Fuck You Meghan" and is for this reason vastly superior to yours and your dim and tawdry crew.
Well, there is text, there is context, and there is subtext. If the two premier lefties on the site are getting this upset about some fairly obvious implications, I rather suspect our dim crew may be on to something after all...
You're behaving like one of those ultra-woke lefties who doesn't take stuff at face value but looks for a 'subtext' where the real meaning of the author can be seen, even if it was said/written in all innocence. So in this context 'saddened' becomes 'couldn't care less', 'concerned' becomes 'couldn't give a fuck', and 'much-loved family members' becomes 'we hate your guts'. It's really weird. Before you know it, you'll be deconstructing the sayings of B. Johnson to reveal the hidden offensiveness behind his liberal platitudes.
Oh and by the way, in reference to an earlier post of yours, I don't take you personally at all. Really not bothered - I enjoy the cut and thrust. I merely replied to a response that you'd made to me, er, personally.
I've posted relatively little on this topic because despite being an ideological monarchist I take very little interest in the royal family as people, so I won't drag this out too much.
Of course the statement has been carefuly formulated to admit a polite interpretation and so close the issue down in the public sphere. Nonetheless, it adopts neither a neutral nor a submissive posture. 'The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent' necessitates that the family was not fully informed by the couple about their grievances at the time (for whatever reason). 'Some recollections may vary' means that not all family members agree that it happened at all. 'Addressed by the family privately' implies that internal discussion, as opposed to an interview with a global audience, was the better course to pursue.
That much clearly follows from even a superficial reading of the text. Then add in the formal elements: the extreme laconicism and the written medium form an object contrast to spilling your guts to a billion people live on Oprah. Even the paratext 'ENDS' - the inclusion of which I suspect was not in fact an error - underscores both the message's finality and its almost telegrammatic brevity.
I don't feel that I'm particularly reaching with the above observations - I'll spare you the significance of the missing Oxford comma after 'Meghan' in the last line - they're there for any pract. crit. tyro to detect.
This could have all been achieved without mentioning "issues" that were "concerning", or that Harry and Megan were "much-loved members of the family", which was not the language of any palace statement before Diana. If that had been done, both the Guardian and the Mail wouldn't have been able to run their conflicting, relatively satisfied headlines. That was the point of it.
But the genius is that they were able to run their conflicting headlines - all things to all men*.
Yes, you put all that faith in these EU people. You really did.
To be fair to you, the alternative was Nigel Farage. But still - bloody embarrassing isn't it?
This is a new EU Commission. We Remainers had put our faith in a totally different set of clowns, now all gone.
Although how you have the nerve to talk about amateur hour with Boris in charge... a former journalist who has been fired for making his quotes up and who then hides in fridges from other journalists.
Under Johnson's govt we are in the top ten of deaths per 100,000.
. You could be dying and catch covid which finishes you off. Still a covid death . Not sure the that is realistic....
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Centurion was a post-war tank.
One would indeed naturally think that, and it was in service effectively so, but it was a WW2 design - see Operation Sentry, e.g.
FPT TimT Posts: 2,683 1:40PM Northern_Al said: » show previous quotes That's utter nonsense. He just wants the (culture) 'war' to continue for clicks, as do some on here. I've just read the statement - in case anybody hasn't, here it is:
"The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan. "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. "Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members."
I just don't get how anybody could interpret that as a "fuck you" statement unless they were positively malign.
PS. I'm really not at all interested in this, but felt provoked enough to comment. I'll translate:
"The family does not understand what Meghan and Harry have to complain about. "The racism card is over-played and the comment made was not as reported. "We have already looked into this to the extent we intend to and will say nothing further. "Meghan and Harry are acting like little shits"
Yes, @Northern_Al seems to require open vituperation of the sort so masterfully demonstrated in the 16th-century correspondence between Tsar Ivan IV and his self-exiled courtier Prince Kurbsky. But there's no need for that kind of unsubtle display here: we're British.
On the contrary. His analysis is not skewed by the desperate need to see a "Fuck You Meghan" and is for this reason vastly superior to yours and your dim and tawdry crew.
Well, there is text, there is context, and there is subtext. If the two premier lefties on the site are getting this upset about some fairly obvious implications, I rather suspect our dim crew may be on to something after all...
You're behaving like one of those ultra-woke lefties who doesn't take stuff at face value but looks for a 'subtext' where the real meaning of the author can be seen, even if it was said/written in all innocence. So in this context 'saddened' becomes 'couldn't care less', 'concerned' becomes 'couldn't give a fuck', and 'much-loved family members' becomes 'we hate your guts'. It's really weird. Before you know it, you'll be deconstructing the sayings of B. Johnson to reveal the hidden offensiveness behind his liberal platitudes.
Oh and by the way, in reference to an earlier post of yours, I don't take you personally at all. Really not bothered - I enjoy the cut and thrust. I merely replied to a response that you'd made to me, er, personally.
I've posted relatively little on this topic because despite being an ideological monarchist I take very little interest in the royal family as people, so I won't drag this out too much.
Of course the statement has been carefuly formulated to admit a polite interpretation and so close the issue down in the public sphere. Nonetheless, it adopts neither a neutral nor a submissive posture. 'The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent' necessitates that the family was not fully informed by the couple about their grievances at the time (for whatever reason). 'Some recollections may vary' means that not all family members agree that it happened at all. 'Addressed by the family privately' implies that internal discussion, as opposed to an interview with a global audience, was the better course to pursue.
That much clearly follows from even a superficial reading of the text. Then add in the formal elements: the extreme laconicism and the written medium form an object contrast to spilling your guts to a billion people live on Oprah. Even the paratext 'ENDS' - the inclusion of which I suspect was not in fact an error - underscores both the message's finality and its almost telegrammatic brevity.
I don't feel that I'm particularly reaching with the above observations - I'll spare you the significance of the missing Oxford comma after 'Meghan' in the last line - they're there for any pract. crit. tyro to detect.
This could have all been achieved without mentioning "issues" that were "concerning", or that Harry and Megan were "much-loved members of the family", which was not the language of any palace statement before Diana. If that had been done, both the Guardian and the Mail wouldn't have been able to run their conflicting, relatively satisfied headlines. That was the point of it.
But the genius is that they were able to run their conflicting headlines - all things to all men*.
*Women too obvs.
Yes, and as I've been saying since the statement came out.
There has clearly been a shift to No since the vaccination programme proved so successful, No Deal Brexit was avoided and Salmond tore Sturgeon apart.
Indeed on the latest poll the SNP has also fallen below 50% and is at risk of no Holyrood majority at all which would destroy any hopes it had of pushing for indyref2 completely
No they don't, there is already an SNP and Green majority now at Holyrood, no SNP majority despite Brexit means no material change in circumstances since the 'once in a generation' 2014 referendum and the UK government will easily refuse a legal indyref2.
You move goalposts like Pickfords Removals. That is arrant nonsense alien to the British Constitution, Henrician, Carolingian or Glorious, or the Treaties of Union.
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Sir max hastings wouldn’t agree. I picked up a hardback of his ‘Bomber Command’ cheap in Smiths a couple of weeks back. Full of praise, rightly so, for the courage of the air crew, and full of anger at the misguided approach of the senior air staff, and sadly, Harris himself. Harris tried to prove that bombing alone could defeat Germany, but only really proved able to inflict sufficient damage by late ‘44 and into ‘45, when the ground forces of all the nations, notably the Russians, had won the war. Hastings is quite convincing that the strategic bombing was the wrong approach, at least after ‘41 and ‘42 when the air campaign was crucial for morale, and to placate Stalin. The efforts of British industry to create the vast heavy bomber fleet could have been better used elsewhere. It’s a good book, and great value at the £6 I paid.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Quite. Having worse thanks than the enemy is not fatal if you have enough of them, as the Soviets proved. But poor aircraft are next to useless. And Britain shelled out superb planes like they were peas.
That ICU nurse - basically 'the President said AZ was crap, a month later the Government turned round and said it wasn't, now my trust is undermined - I'm not against vaccines BUT I want to pick which one I get'
There has clearly been a shift to No since the vaccination programme proved so successful, No Deal Brexit was avoided and Salmond tore Sturgeon apart.
Indeed on the latest poll the SNP has also fallen below 50% and is at risk of no Holyrood majority at all which would destroy any hopes it had of pushing for indyref2 completely
The UK Govt will use any available argument to refuse an indyref2. If the SNP fail to get a Maj then they will use that, even if Holyrood has a technically pro-indy majority (if you combine all pro-Indy parties). They will also, by the by, likely use Salmondgate too.
There may soon come a time when Sturgeon is grateful for Bojo's obstinacy, if the polls stay knife-edge (or worse) for YES.
Another failed indyref just 7-10 years after the first would mean no mote votes for 3 decades. Settled will of the people and all that. The whole idea would be parked, long term. Which means the end of the SNP, I think, as it fractures into warring factions
Because the EU was months later than the UK at ordering. They only have themselves to blame.
I still cannot comprehend that the EU prioritised price over speed when it came to the vaccine.
They thought being able to negotiate a discount would show the value of the EU. They didn't place an order with Pfizer until November 2020 and were boasting about paying less than the Americans.
The European Union has struck a deal to initially pay less for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate than the United States, an EU official told Reuters as the bloc announced on Wednesday
They struck a bargain to pay cheap and will pay far more than twice in consequence.
A spectacular miscalculation - not just in emphasising price over speed, but also in not subsidising manufacturers to produce locally.
It's hard to imagine how they possible thought that saving a few hundred million on procurement costs was worth an extra quarter of deaths, lockdowns and diminished GDP.
If you want an argument against an unaccountable administrative class, too far from voters, it would be hard to find a better one.
Of course, it's been compounded by appalling errors at the national level. The German insistence on keeping doses back is stupid beyond belief.
Andalucia today paused all Pfizer vaccines to over 80s for 2 weeks to ensure their remianing supply can be used for 2nd doses. They are still giving AZN to fit 30 year olds while denying it to anyone over 55.
My inputs weren't very sophisticated but FWIW: "British royal Prince. American actress. Whirlwind romance. Fairytale wedding. High hopes. All went wrong. Accusations of racism. Tabloid press pulled no punches. Family feuds. Great bitterness. No-one is talking, except to the media. Sad."
My inputs weren't very sophisticated but FWIW: "British royal Prince. American actress. Whirlwind romance. Fairytale wedding. High hopes. All went wrong. Accusations of racism. Tabloid press pulled no punches. Family feuds. Great bitterness. No-one is talking, except to the media. Sad."
Yes, you put all that faith in these EU people. You really did.
To be fair to you, the alternative was Nigel Farage. But still - bloody embarrassing isn't it?
This is a new EU Commission. We Remainers had put our faith in a totally different set of clowns, now all gone.
Although how you have the nerve to talk about amateur hour with Boris in charge... a former journalist who has been fired for making his quotes up and who then hides in fridges from other journalists.
Under Johnson's govt we are in the top ten of deaths per 100,000.
The clown production line has no off-switch. Brussels just churns them out. And you, as a simple pleb, have no way to block that production line.
You can always vote to chuck out our clowns.
And on the deaths per 100,000? Let's see how it looks at the end eh? When the cheating and undercounting gets exposed by the excess death numbers.
So they don't have an export ban. Glad we cleared that up.
Neither did the EU, but it didnt stop 99% of this board stating they had a few weeks ago.
Wrong. They tried and then only backed down because of the uproar over the NI border.
And now that they don't have to worry about such nicities they are quite happy to impose an export ban on Australia. You are trying to defend the indefensible.
I am not defending the EU, their actions were silly, unhelpful, and purely theatre for a domestic audience. I said so at the time, whilst also making it clear they would not block exports.
I am pointing out the hypocrisy of criticising misleading commentary from the EU when many Brits are happy to dish such misinformation out freely if it suits their agenda.
And I am pointing out it wasn't misinformation. The EU absolutely did attempt to block exports of vaccine to the UK and only backed down when they realised they had bollocksed it up so badly by dragging in the NI protocol. And they are the organisation currently blocking exports of the vaccine to Australia and trying to deflect attention by lying about other countries.
If you are going to 'point things out' then I suggest you make sure those things are accurate.
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Sir max hastings wouldn’t agree. I picked up a hardback of his ‘Bomber Command’ cheap in Smiths a couple of weeks back. Full of praise, rightly so, for the courage of the air crew, and full of anger at the misguided approach of the senior air staff, and sadly, Harris himself. Harris tried to prove that bombing alone could defeat Germany, but only really proved able to inflict sufficient damage by late ‘44 and into ‘45, when the ground forces of all the nations, notably the Russians, had won the war. Hastings is quite convincing that the strategic bombing was the wrong approach, at least after ‘41 and ‘42 when the air campaign was crucial for morale, and to placate Stalin. The efforts of British industry to create the vast heavy bomber fleet could have been better used elsewhere. It’s a good book, and great value at the £6 I paid.
I fundamentally disagree. And I have read widely on this subject (inc Hastings)
By the end, the UK and US were flattening German cities day and night. Total annihilation. It might have been cruel and unjustified, I certainly see that argument - but was it effective? Absolutely.
Total bombing works. The conventional but total bombing of Tokyo was part of the reason the Japanese surrendered, it wasn't just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] Of central Tokyo 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1]"
No society can withstand such total destruction. Germany and Japan were being reduced to Neolithic living conditions by the outright air supremacy of the enemy. We *could* have won by bombing alone, I reckon - but at what moral cost? Bombing certainly aided our cause
I accept this is a debate which has lasted many decades and is unlikely to be settled tonight on PB
Mike, you better exclude discussion of the Sevanta ConRes Scotsman poll before you lose years of credibility.
From Business for Scotland:
“Savanta ComRes, who carried out the poll for the Scotsman organisation, excluded a weighting mechanism that changed a previous poll last month from a Yes minority to a majority of 53%.
We spoke exclusively to Savanta ComRes who explained that the question of voting likelihood ”wasn’t asked purely because we knew we wouldn’t end up using it for weighting.”
To be clear, a unionist newspaper commissioned a poll and agreed that it would not be carried out with the normal weighting procedure.”
The raw figures are the same as the Feb poll by them which resulted in the 53% Yes vote after the standard weighting was applied.
I'm not sure why a question "Should Scotland be an independent country?" needs to be turnout weighted. And if it is, what turnout do you use? UK elections? Scottish elections? The last Indyref?
There was a big hooha here regarding the last poll from The Scotsman, where Twitter account 'Scot Fax' claimed that the poll was only a win for 'Yes' because of a new weighting system weighting for enthusiasm. That turned out wrong - it wasn't a new weighting system, but it still isn't without controversy. Once you have weeded out those unlikely to vote, one vote is worth any other, regardless of enthusiasm.
I've been reading Peter Hitchens' book about the Second World War, The Phoney Victory. He's very critical of most of the decisions taken by Churchill during the war.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Quite. Having worse thanks than the enemy is not fatal if you have enough of them, as the Soviets proved. But poor aircraft are next to useless. And Britain shelled out superb planes like they were peas.
The Soviets didn’t have worse ‘thanks’ than the enemy, the Western allies otoh did.
Yes, you put all that faith in these EU people. You really did.
To be fair to you, the alternative was Nigel Farage. But still - bloody embarrassing isn't it?
This is a new EU Commission. We Remainers had put our faith in a totally different set of clowns, now all gone.
Although how you have the nerve to talk about amateur hour with Boris in charge... a former journalist who has been fired for making his quotes up and who then hides in fridges from other journalists.
Under Johnson's govt we are in the top ten of deaths per 100,000.
WRONG.
We almost certainly won't even be even in the top 20 when all is said and done.
I've been reading Peter Hitchens' book about the Second World War, The Phoney Victory. He's very critical of most of the decisions taken by Churchill during the war.
Viscount Alanbrooke, who was privy to all the decisons, was very critical too, although he thought he was the right crucial and eccentric character to take a stand at the beginning of the war. Didn't he say that he'd never so "simultaneously despised and loved the same person", or something like that.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Quite. Having worse thanks than the enemy is not fatal if you have enough of them, as the Soviets proved. But poor aircraft are next to useless. And Britain shelled out superb planes like they were peas.
Spitfires (and Seafires) second only to the Messerchmitt 109 in terms of numbers of WW2-era single-engined fighters produced:
"The tabloids had some fun for a while. Then the marriage ended in great bitterness. Everyone should be able to celebrate their love, whatever shape it takes. That’s why Harry & Meghan is on sale, now only $3.99. #JustLove"
Through the bizzarely cryptic:
"Coincidentally, no-one is talking about it either. Shocking silence and buried mates is what I call “the party line”."
And the strangely Tenet like take:
"Harry & Meghan will be released in August 2019 worldwide after a major acquisition by Bloomsbury Publishing. Protagonist Kate Westchester is on assignment for the UK’s biggest magazine editor when she lands the story of her career: interviewing Harry and Meghan on their honeymoon while covering the royals in their final months."
To the unintentionally profound:
"Where did it all go wrong? Why is everyone so angry? What’s with the racism?"
And, finally, my favourite because the AI seemingly does humour:
"Prince Harry and Meghan, sick of their exploitation by the media and papparazzi, are taking back control over THEIR life. Fuelled by fury at the way they have been treated for the last year, Meghan and Harry have launched a new reality show."
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Quite. Having worse thanks than the enemy is not fatal if you have enough of them, as the Soviets proved. But poor aircraft are next to useless. And Britain shelled out superb planes like they were peas.
The Soviets didn’t have worse ‘thanks’ than the enemy, the Western allies otoh did.
Everyone had worse tanks than the Germans in WW2. The Tiger, and the Panther, were - one on one - superior to any tank produced by an allied nation in WW2
The problem was the German tanks were too sophisticated and tricky to manufacture, and prone to breakdowns, like hi-tech racing cars. The Soviet T34 was no supertank, but it was easy to make in huge numbers, and that's how the USSR overwhelmed the Nazis. With numbers
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Sir max hastings wouldn’t agree. I picked up a hardback of his ‘Bomber Command’ cheap in Smiths a couple of weeks back. Full of praise, rightly so, for the courage of the air crew, and full of anger at the misguided approach of the senior air staff, and sadly, Harris himself. Harris tried to prove that bombing alone could defeat Germany, but only really proved able to inflict sufficient damage by late ‘44 and into ‘45, when the ground forces of all the nations, notably the Russians, had won the war. Hastings is quite convincing that the strategic bombing was the wrong approach, at least after ‘41 and ‘42 when the air campaign was crucial for morale, and to placate Stalin. The efforts of British industry to create the vast heavy bomber fleet could have been better used elsewhere. It’s a good book, and great value at the £6 I paid.
I fundamentally disagree. And I have read widely on this subject (inc Hastings)
By the end, the UK and US were flattening German cities day and night. Total annihilation. It might have been cruel and unjustified, I certainly see that argument - but was it effective? Absolutely.
Total bombing works. The conventional but total bombing of Tokyo was part of the reason the Japanese surrendered, it wasn't just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] Of central Tokyo 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1]"
No society can withstand such total destruction. Germany and Japan were being reduced to Neolithic living conditions by the outright air supremacy of the enemy. We *could* have won by bombing alone, I reckon - but at what moral cost? Bombing certainly aided our cause
I accept this is a debate which has lasted many decades and is unlikely to be settled tonight on PB
Japan also surrendered quickly because the Russians finally decided to enter the Pacific War, invading Manchuria, Korea and Sakhalin, all Japanese-held at the time.
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Sir max hastings wouldn’t agree. I picked up a hardback of his ‘Bomber Command’ cheap in Smiths a couple of weeks back. Full of praise, rightly so, for the courage of the air crew, and full of anger at the misguided approach of the senior air staff, and sadly, Harris himself. Harris tried to prove that bombing alone could defeat Germany, but only really proved able to inflict sufficient damage by late ‘44 and into ‘45, when the ground forces of all the nations, notably the Russians, had won the war. Hastings is quite convincing that the strategic bombing was the wrong approach, at least after ‘41 and ‘42 when the air campaign was crucial for morale, and to placate Stalin. The efforts of British industry to create the vast heavy bomber fleet could have been better used elsewhere. It’s a good book, and great value at the £6 I paid.
I fundamentally disagree. And I have read widely on this subject (inc Hastings)
By the end, the UK and US were flattening German cities day and night. Total annihilation. It might have been cruel and unjustified, I certainly see that argument - but was it effective? Absolutely.
Total bombing works. The conventional but total bombing of Tokyo was part of the reason the Japanese surrendered, it wasn't just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] Of central Tokyo 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1]"
No society can withstand such total destruction. Germany and Japan were being reduced to Neolithic living conditions by the outright air supremacy of the enemy. We *could* have won by bombing alone, I reckon - but at what moral cost? Bombing certainly aided our cause
I accept this is a debate which has lasted many decades and is unlikely to be settled tonight on PB
All good points, and I respect that you disagree. No question enormous destruction was being wrought by the end. The counter factual of a realistic attack on synthetic oil is of interest, but of course Harris abhorred the ‘panacea’ approach. I’d argue that the bomber campaigns were not fought in isolation from the epic eastern front conflict. Could the bombing campaign have been sustained if Germany had been solely concerned with air defence? The loses for both bomber command and 8th Air Force were colossal until almost the end. I cannot imagine the bravery of those airmen embarking on a tour with less than even chance of survival. You are wise to say that we will not settle this, tonight, on pb, but it’s a fascinating subject.
There has clearly been a shift to No since the vaccination programme proved so successful, No Deal Brexit was avoided and Salmond tore Sturgeon apart.
Indeed on the latest poll the SNP has also fallen below 50% and is at risk of no Holyrood majority at all which would destroy any hopes it had of pushing for indyref2 completely
No they don't, there is already an SNP and Green majority now at Holyrood, no SNP majority despite Brexit means no material change in circumstances since the 'once in a generation' 2014 referendum and the UK government will easily refuse a legal indyref2.
You move goalposts like Pickfords Removals. That is arrant nonsense alien to the British Constitution, Henrician, Carolingian or Glorious, or the Treaties of Union.
The Scotland Áct 1998 affirms the final say on the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster and Westminster has been the supreme legislative body across the UK since 1707
"The tabloids had some fun for a while. Then the marriage ended in great bitterness. Everyone should be able to celebrate their love, whatever shape it takes. That’s why Harry & Meghan is on sale, now only $3.99. #JustLove"
Through the bizzarely cryptic:
"Coincidentally, no-one is talking about it either. Shocking silence and buried mates is what I call “the party line”."
And the strangely Tenet like take:
"Harry & Meghan will be released in August 2019 worldwide after a major acquisition by Bloomsbury Publishing. Protagonist Kate Westchester is on assignment for the UK’s biggest magazine editor when she lands the story of her career: interviewing Harry and Meghan on their honeymoon while covering the royals in their final months."
To the unintentionally profound:
"Where did it all go wrong? Why is everyone so angry? What’s with the racism?"
And, finally, my favourite because the AI seemingly does humour:
"Prince Harry and Meghan, sick of their exploitation by the media and papparazzi, are taking back control over THEIR life. Fuelled by fury at the way they have been treated for the last year, Meghan and Harry have launched a new reality show."
With both Netflix and Spotify deals exactly what else do you think they will end up doing to ensure the firms recover the money.
I've been reading Peter Hitchens' book about the Second World War, The Phoney Victory. He's very critical of most of the decisions taken by Churchill during the war.
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Sir max hastings wouldn’t agree. I picked up a hardback of his ‘Bomber Command’ cheap in Smiths a couple of weeks back. Full of praise, rightly so, for the courage of the air crew, and full of anger at the misguided approach of the senior air staff, and sadly, Harris himself. Harris tried to prove that bombing alone could defeat Germany, but only really proved able to inflict sufficient damage by late ‘44 and into ‘45, when the ground forces of all the nations, notably the Russians, had won the war. Hastings is quite convincing that the strategic bombing was the wrong approach, at least after ‘41 and ‘42 when the air campaign was crucial for morale, and to placate Stalin. The efforts of British industry to create the vast heavy bomber fleet could have been better used elsewhere. It’s a good book, and great value at the £6 I paid.
I fundamentally disagree. And I have read widely on this subject (inc Hastings)
By the end, the UK and US were flattening German cities day and night. Total annihilation. It might have been cruel and unjustified, I certainly see that argument - but was it effective? Absolutely.
Total bombing works. The conventional but total bombing of Tokyo was part of the reason the Japanese surrendered, it wasn't just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] Of central Tokyo 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1]"
No society can withstand such total destruction. Germany and Japan were being reduced to Neolithic living conditions by the outright air supremacy of the enemy. We *could* have won by bombing alone, I reckon - but at what moral cost? Bombing certainly aided our cause
I accept this is a debate which has lasted many decades and is unlikely to be settled tonight on PB
Hastings’ Nemesis posited that the intensive assault on Japan’s (an island country dependent on supplying its spread out forces and itself by sea) merchant navy was ultimately more effective in destroying their capability to wage war than the area bombing. Similarly the UK came closer to defeat by U-Boats rather than any Blitz.
Oh for christ's sake, they don't need to remind everyone of how bloody united they are at every step. It's like a verbal tic or signal of paranoia at this point. We will assume everyone was on board fully unless we hear otherwise.
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Centurion was a post-war tank.
One would indeed naturally think that, and it was in service effectively so, but it was a WW2 design - see Operation Sentry, e.g.
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Sir max hastings wouldn’t agree. I picked up a hardback of his ‘Bomber Command’ cheap in Smiths a couple of weeks back. Full of praise, rightly so, for the courage of the air crew, and full of anger at the misguided approach of the senior air staff, and sadly, Harris himself. Harris tried to prove that bombing alone could defeat Germany, but only really proved able to inflict sufficient damage by late ‘44 and into ‘45, when the ground forces of all the nations, notably the Russians, had won the war. Hastings is quite convincing that the strategic bombing was the wrong approach, at least after ‘41 and ‘42 when the air campaign was crucial for morale, and to placate Stalin. The efforts of British industry to create the vast heavy bomber fleet could have been better used elsewhere. It’s a good book, and great value at the £6 I paid.
I fundamentally disagree. And I have read widely on this subject (inc Hastings)
By the end, the UK and US were flattening German cities day and night. Total annihilation. It might have been cruel and unjustified, I certainly see that argument - but was it effective? Absolutely.
Total bombing works. The conventional but total bombing of Tokyo was part of the reason the Japanese surrendered, it wasn't just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] Of central Tokyo 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1]"
No society can withstand such total destruction. Germany and Japan were being reduced to Neolithic living conditions by the outright air supremacy of the enemy. We *could* have won by bombing alone, I reckon - but at what moral cost? Bombing certainly aided our cause
I accept this is a debate which has lasted many decades and is unlikely to be settled tonight on PB
All good points, and I respect that you disagree. No question enormous destruction was being wrought by the end. The counter factual of a realistic attack on synthetic oil is of interest, but of course Harris abhorred the ‘panacea’ approach. I’d argue that the bomber campaigns were not fought in isolation from the epic eastern front conflict. Could the bombing campaign have been sustained if Germany had been solely concerned with air defence? The loses for both bomber command and 8th Air Force were colossal until almost the end. I cannot imagine the bravery of those airmen embarking on a tour with less than even chance of survival. You are wise to say that we will not settle this, tonight, on pb, but it’s a fascinating subject.
It is fascinating. The counter argument is the Vietnam war, where America dropped more bombs than in all of WW2 (and that's just in Laos, I think) yet still lost.
But this is because SE Asia was a deeply poor, rural society, with few big cities to hammer, and a reduction to peasant life was far easier to endure, as most of it was down there already. Reducing Germans and Japanese in 1945 to living in fields was a very different matter
And it could have happened
When people speculate on what America might have done with Japan, absent nukes, and regarding the potential costs of the invasion (so many American troops dead and so on) I wonder if America would even have invaded. With total air supremacy, the Yanks could have conventionally reduced every single Japanese city to rubble, a la Tokyo, and done it again and again, even without invading. An endless obliteration. Just a few American lives lost. Millions of Japanese dead
Japan would surely have surrendered anyway, within weeks
Because the EU was months later than the UK at ordering. They only have themselves to blame.
I still cannot comprehend that the EU prioritised price over speed when it came to the vaccine.
They thought being able to negotiate a discount would show the value of the EU. They didn't place an order with Pfizer until November 2020 and were boasting about paying less than the Americans.
The European Union has struck a deal to initially pay less for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate than the United States, an EU official told Reuters as the bloc announced on Wednesday
They struck a bargain to pay cheap and will pay far more than twice in consequence.
A spectacular miscalculation - not just in emphasising price over speed, but also in not subsidising manufacturers to produce locally.
It's hard to imagine how they possible thought that saving a few hundred million on procurement costs was worth an extra quarter of deaths, lockdowns and diminished GDP.
If you want an argument against an unaccountable administrative class, too far from voters, it would be hard to find a better one.
Of course, it's been compounded by appalling errors at the national level. The German insistence on keeping doses back is stupid beyond belief.
Andalucia today paused all Pfizer vaccines to over 80s for 2 weeks to ensure their remianing supply can be used for 2nd doses. They are still giving AZN to fit 30 year olds while denying it to anyone over 55.
The first is utterly incomprehensible. How can anyone think that it is better not to offer some protection now?
The latter is not completely stupid. There is an excellent case that the people you should be vaccinating are those most likely to spread the disease, rather than those most susceptible to it. A small number of people who meet lots of other people are likely to be reponsible for a lot of the virus jumping from one group of people to the next. Still, I suspect that's not the strategy the government is taking.
I've been reading Peter Hitchens' book about the Second World War, The Phoney Victory. He's very critical of most of the decisions taken by Churchill during the war.
Exposes myths and narratives of the war sounds like it might be interesting, though as titles go it seems misleading in an over attempt at being provocative.
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Sir max hastings wouldn’t agree. I picked up a hardback of his ‘Bomber Command’ cheap in Smiths a couple of weeks back. Full of praise, rightly so, for the courage of the air crew, and full of anger at the misguided approach of the senior air staff, and sadly, Harris himself. Harris tried to prove that bombing alone could defeat Germany, but only really proved able to inflict sufficient damage by late ‘44 and into ‘45, when the ground forces of all the nations, notably the Russians, had won the war. Hastings is quite convincing that the strategic bombing was the wrong approach, at least after ‘41 and ‘42 when the air campaign was crucial for morale, and to placate Stalin. The efforts of British industry to create the vast heavy bomber fleet could have been better used elsewhere. It’s a good book, and great value at the £6 I paid.
I fundamentally disagree. And I have read widely on this subject (inc Hastings)
By the end, the UK and US were flattening German cities day and night. Total annihilation. It might have been cruel and unjustified, I certainly see that argument - but was it effective? Absolutely.
Total bombing works. The conventional but total bombing of Tokyo was part of the reason the Japanese surrendered, it wasn't just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] Of central Tokyo 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1]"
No society can withstand such total destruction. Germany and Japan were being reduced to Neolithic living conditions by the outright air supremacy of the enemy. We *could* have won by bombing alone, I reckon - but at what moral cost? Bombing certainly aided our cause
I accept this is a debate which has lasted many decades and is unlikely to be settled tonight on PB
All good points, and I respect that you disagree. No question enormous destruction was being wrought by the end. The counter factual of a realistic attack on synthetic oil is of interest, but of course Harris abhorred the ‘panacea’ approach. I’d argue that the bomber campaigns were not fought in isolation from the epic eastern front conflict. Could the bombing campaign have been sustained if Germany had been solely concerned with air defence? The loses for both bomber command and 8th Air Force were colossal until almost the end. I cannot imagine the bravery of those airmen embarking on a tour with less than even chance of survival. You are wise to say that we will not settle this, tonight, on pb, but it’s a fascinating subject.
It is fascinating. The counter argument is the Vietnam war, where America dropped more bombs than in all of WW2 (and that's just in Laos, I think) yet still lost.
But this is because SE Asia was a deeply poor, rural society, with few big cities to hammer, and a reduction to peasant life was far easier to endure, as most of it was down there already. Reducing Germans and Japanese in 1945 to living in fields was a very different matter
And it could have happened
When people speculate on what America might have done with Japan, absent nukes, and regarding the potential costs of the invasion (so many American troops dead and so on) I wonder if America would even have invaded. With total air supremacy, the Yanks could have conventionally reduced every single Japanese city to rubble, a la Tokyo, and done it again and again, even without invading. An endless obliteration. Just a few American lives lost. Millions of Japanese dead
Japan would surely have surrendered anyway, within weeks
Read Ian Toll's Pacific War Trilogy, it's the best history series I've read in a decade.
I might start putting my whole life through GPT-3: the advice I give to clients at work; the arguments I play back to my wife; the excuses I give to my colleagues; the banter I have with my friends.
I might start putting my whole life through GPT-3: the advice I give to clients at work; the arguments I play back to my wife; the excuses I give to my colleagues; the banter I have with my friends.
An elderly couple, friends of my mum, both sadly died within a week of each other in February and were buried today. The lady died in hospital with pneumonia and suspected Covid, her husband for whom she was the carer died at home a week later (despite others stepping to provide care).
My mum found out today that they have both been recorded as having died of Covid because according to a family member 'the alternative would be for them to require post mortems and no one wanted that'.
IANAE, so I don't know whether it's true that putting Covid on the death certificate avoids a post mortem but if it does, and if this anecdote is not unique, I can see why the reported Covid deaths might be higher than actual.
The UK did.... 1.5m tests yesterday. Kids going back to school I guess (inc my older daughter)
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
'Outclassing'. Not in tanks, the UK weren't, apart from half a dozen Centurion barely in time to see any action, and thay as a special rush operation.
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Sir max hastings wouldn’t agree. I picked up a hardback of his ‘Bomber Command’ cheap in Smiths a couple of weeks back. Full of praise, rightly so, for the courage of the air crew, and full of anger at the misguided approach of the senior air staff, and sadly, Harris himself. Harris tried to prove that bombing alone could defeat Germany, but only really proved able to inflict sufficient damage by late ‘44 and into ‘45, when the ground forces of all the nations, notably the Russians, had won the war. Hastings is quite convincing that the strategic bombing was the wrong approach, at least after ‘41 and ‘42 when the air campaign was crucial for morale, and to placate Stalin. The efforts of British industry to create the vast heavy bomber fleet could have been better used elsewhere. It’s a good book, and great value at the £6 I paid.
I fundamentally disagree. And I have read widely on this subject (inc Hastings)
By the end, the UK and US were flattening German cities day and night. Total annihilation. It might have been cruel and unjustified, I certainly see that argument - but was it effective? Absolutely.
Total bombing works. The conventional but total bombing of Tokyo was part of the reason the Japanese surrendered, it wasn't just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] Of central Tokyo 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1]"
No society can withstand such total destruction. Germany and Japan were being reduced to Neolithic living conditions by the outright air supremacy of the enemy. We *could* have won by bombing alone, I reckon - but at what moral cost? Bombing certainly aided our cause
I accept this is a debate which has lasted many decades and is unlikely to be settled tonight on PB
All good points, and I respect that you disagree. No question enormous destruction was being wrought by the end. The counter factual of a realistic attack on synthetic oil is of interest, but of course Harris abhorred the ‘panacea’ approach. I’d argue that the bomber campaigns were not fought in isolation from the epic eastern front conflict. Could the bombing campaign have been sustained if Germany had been solely concerned with air defence? The loses for both bomber command and 8th Air Force were colossal until almost the end. I cannot imagine the bravery of those airmen embarking on a tour with less than even chance of survival. You are wise to say that we will not settle this, tonight, on pb, but it’s a fascinating subject.
It is fascinating. The counter argument is the Vietnam war, where America dropped more bombs than in all of WW2 (and that's just in Laos, I think) yet still lost.
But this is because SE Asia was a deeply poor, rural society, with few big cities to hammer, and a reduction to peasant life was far easier to endure, as most of it was down there already. Reducing Germans and Japanese in 1945 to living in fields was a very different matter
And it could have happened
When people speculate on what America might have done with Japan, absent nukes, and regarding the potential costs of the invasion (so many American troops dead and so on) I wonder if America would even have invaded. With total air supremacy, the Yanks could have conventionally reduced every single Japanese city to rubble, a la Tokyo, and done it again and again, even without invading. An endless obliteration. Just a few American lives lost. Millions of Japanese dead
Japan would surely have surrendered anyway, within weeks
Japan also surrendered quickly because the Russians finally decided to enter the Pacific War, invading Manchuria, Korea and Sakhalin, all Japanese-held at the time.
Because the EU was months later than the UK at ordering. They only have themselves to blame.
I still cannot comprehend that the EU prioritised price over speed when it came to the vaccine.
They thought being able to negotiate a discount would show the value of the EU. They didn't place an order with Pfizer until November 2020 and were boasting about paying less than the Americans.
The European Union has struck a deal to initially pay less for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate than the United States, an EU official told Reuters as the bloc announced on Wednesday
They struck a bargain to pay cheap and will pay far more than twice in consequence.
A spectacular miscalculation - not just in emphasising price over speed, but also in not subsidising manufacturers to produce locally.
It's hard to imagine how they possible thought that saving a few hundred million on procurement costs was worth an extra quarter of deaths, lockdowns and diminished GDP.
If you want an argument against an unaccountable administrative class, too far from voters, it would be hard to find a better one.
Of course, it's been compounded by appalling errors at the national level. The German insistence on keeping doses back is stupid beyond belief.
Andalucia today paused all Pfizer vaccines to over 80s for 2 weeks to ensure their remianing supply can be used for 2nd doses. They are still giving AZN to fit 30 year olds while denying it to anyone over 55.
The first is utterly incomprehensible. How can anyone think that it is better not to offer some protection now?
It's one of those aspects of the matter which seems so straightfoward. It's a very simple point of basic mathematics, for once it isn't something we laymen cannot grasp.
Yes, you put all that faith in these EU people. You really did.
To be fair to you, the alternative was Nigel Farage. But still - bloody embarrassing isn't it?
This is a new EU Commission. We Remainers had put our faith in a totally different set of clowns, now all gone.
Although how you have the nerve to talk about amateur hour with Boris in charge... a former journalist who has been fired for making his quotes up and who then hides in fridges from other journalists.
Under Johnson's govt we are in the top ten of deaths per 100,000.
The clown production line has no off-switch. Brussels just churns them out. And you, as a simple pleb, have no way to block that production line.
You can always vote to chuck out our clowns.
And on the deaths per 100,000? Let's see how it looks at the end eh? When the cheating and undercounting gets exposed by the excess death numbers.
Why would you assume EU nations are cheating and under counting? They aren't China, Russia, and such like. By all accounts Belgium is being stricter on numbers.
I might start putting my whole life through GPT-3: the advice I give to clients at work; the arguments I play back to my wife; the excuses I give to my colleagues; the banter I have with my friends.
Everything.
I warned you. Once you go down the GPT3 rabbit hole you do not emerge. It really is AGI, or so close to it as to be super uncanny. And it is FUNNY
I might start putting my whole life through GPT-3: the advice I give to clients at work; the arguments I play back to my wife; the excuses I give to my colleagues; the banter I have with my friends.
Everything.
I'd wait for the fourth iteration, experience tells me the such AI's are more convincing.
An elderly couple, friends of my mum, both sadly died within a week of each other in February and were buried today. The lady died in hospital with pneumonia and suspected Covid, her husband for whom she was the carer died at home a week later (despite others stepping to provide care).
My mum found out today that they have both been recorded as having died of Covid because according to a family member 'the alternative would be for them to require post mortems and no one wanted that'.
IANAE, so I don't know whether it's true that putting Covid on the death certificate avoids a post mortem but if it does, and if this anecdote is not unique, I can see why the reported Covid deaths might be higher than actual.
Which is why anyone clueful has been saying that the only useful figures are going to be excess deaths.
And even the excess death figures will be gamed by countries but it's harder to hide than other methods.
I might start putting my whole life through GPT-3: the advice I give to clients at work; the arguments I play back to my wife; the excuses I give to my colleagues; the banter I have with my friends.
Strikingly bitter, glad only one side is wallowing in history there.
More like an Irish Times version of Quentin Letts, but he got one thing spot on ... "The contemporary royals have no real power. They serve entirely to enshrine classism in the British nonconstitution."
Strikingly bitter, glad only one side is wallowing in history there.
More like an Irish Times version of Quentin Letts, but he got one thing spot on ... "The contemporary royals have no real power. They serve entirely to enshrine classism in the British nonconstitution."
So what was the Guardian going on about when it was complaining about the number of times HM and Charles have influenced laws and debates in Parliament?
Fair enough. Planes. Which were the thing that mattered. As Bomber Harris knew
Quite. Having worse thanks than the enemy is not fatal if you have enough of them, as the Soviets proved. But poor aircraft are next to useless. And Britain shelled out superb planes like they were peas.
The Soviets didn’t have worse ‘thanks’ than the enemy, the Western allies otoh did.
Everyone had worse tanks than the Germans in WW2. The Tiger, and the Panther, were - one on one - superior to any tank produced by an allied nation in WW2
The problem was the German tanks were too sophisticated and tricky to manufacture, and prone to breakdowns, like hi-tech racing cars. The Soviet T34 was no supertank, but it was easy to make in huge numbers, and that's how the USSR overwhelmed the Nazis. With numbers
Same story with the Kalashnikov, of course.
T34/85, IS2, SU85, SU100, all a match for their German equivalents (and more of them of course).
Strikingly bitter, glad only one side is wallowing in history there.
More like an Irish Times version of Quentin Letts, but he got one thing spot on ... "The contemporary royals have no real power. They serve entirely to enshrine classism in the British nonconstitution."
I'm not sure classism would disappear without the royals.
Besides, there's no classism. Anyone can rise to the top, they just need to get enough money to send their sprogs to Eton.
Edit: Classism, not classicism. That you do get at Eton I imagine.
Because the EU was months later than the UK at ordering. They only have themselves to blame.
I still cannot comprehend that the EU prioritised price over speed when it came to the vaccine.
They thought being able to negotiate a discount would show the value of the EU. They didn't place an order with Pfizer until November 2020 and were boasting about paying less than the Americans.
The European Union has struck a deal to initially pay less for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate than the United States, an EU official told Reuters as the bloc announced on Wednesday
They struck a bargain to pay cheap and will pay far more than twice in consequence.
A spectacular miscalculation - not just in emphasising price over speed, but also in not subsidising manufacturers to produce locally.
It's hard to imagine how they possible thought that saving a few hundred million on procurement costs was worth an extra quarter of deaths, lockdowns and diminished GDP.
If you want an argument against an unaccountable administrative class, too far from voters, it would be hard to find a better one.
Of course, it's been compounded by appalling errors at the national level. The German insistence on keeping doses back is stupid beyond belief.
Andalucia today paused all Pfizer vaccines to over 80s for 2 weeks to ensure their remianing supply can be used for 2nd doses. They are still giving AZN to fit 30 year olds while denying it to anyone over 55.
The first is utterly incomprehensible. How can anyone think that it is better not to offer some protection now?
The latter is not completely stupid. There is an excellent case that the people you should be vaccinating are those most likely to spread the disease, rather than those most susceptible to it. A small number of people who meet lots of other people are likely to be reponsible for a lot of the virus jumping from one group of people to the next. Still, I suspect that's not the strategy the government is taking.
It's not - the strategy is that AZN is not safe for oldies.
The allied bombing campaign was really only effective in reducing German industry and capacity to fight in the last 9 months of the war when it became more sophisticated and targeted.
Prior to that it was largely political (showing it could strike back prior to D-Day and demonstrating to the Russians we were doing something) but it had little effect on German war production, which increased all the way to summer 1944. That's because it stuck to city area bombing for far too long, rather than factory, war, industry and oil production targeting. Harris was a nihilist who just wanted to target the population and level cities.
It diverted a fair bit of Nazi manpower and resources, including fighters, into anti-air defence but then the allied air offensive was very costly in resources too.
On the subject of "who to jab", there is a great Wired article from a few weeks ago that basically said that - in the US - you only need to vaccinate a couple of million people to reduce R below 1, if you identify and get those people protected.
It's really counter-intuitive, because it means jabbing young healthy people, rather than old (potentially sick) ones.
In a country like Spain or Italy (with multigenerational households) it would be a case of getting the same degree of protection from deaths and hospitalisations by jabbing the 22 year old grandson, rather than three 75 year old grandparents.
Because the EU was months later than the UK at ordering. They only have themselves to blame.
I still cannot comprehend that the EU prioritised price over speed when it came to the vaccine.
They thought being able to negotiate a discount would show the value of the EU. They didn't place an order with Pfizer until November 2020 and were boasting about paying less than the Americans.
The European Union has struck a deal to initially pay less for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate than the United States, an EU official told Reuters as the bloc announced on Wednesday
They struck a bargain to pay cheap and will pay far more than twice in consequence.
A spectacular miscalculation - not just in emphasising price over speed, but also in not subsidising manufacturers to produce locally.
It's hard to imagine how they possible thought that saving a few hundred million on procurement costs was worth an extra quarter of deaths, lockdowns and diminished GDP.
If you want an argument against an unaccountable administrative class, too far from voters, it would be hard to find a better one.
Of course, it's been compounded by appalling errors at the national level. The German insistence on keeping doses back is stupid beyond belief.
Andalucia today paused all Pfizer vaccines to over 80s for 2 weeks to ensure their remianing supply can be used for 2nd doses. They are still giving AZN to fit 30 year olds while denying it to anyone over 55.
The first is utterly incomprehensible. How can anyone think that it is better not to offer some protection now?
The latter is not completely stupid. There is an excellent case that the people you should be vaccinating are those most likely to spread the disease, rather than those most susceptible to it. A small number of people who meet lots of other people are likely to be reponsible for a lot of the virus jumping from one group of people to the next. Still, I suspect that's not the strategy the government is taking.
It's not - the strategy is that AZN is not safe for oldies.
Isn't it that AZN is not considered *effective* for oldies?
Yes, you put all that faith in these EU people. You really did.
To be fair to you, the alternative was Nigel Farage. But still - bloody embarrassing isn't it?
This is a new EU Commission. We Remainers had put our faith in a totally different set of clowns, now all gone.
Although how you have the nerve to talk about amateur hour with Boris in charge... a former journalist who has been fired for making his quotes up and who then hides in fridges from other journalists.
Under Johnson's govt we are in the top ten of deaths per 100,000.
The clown production line has no off-switch. Brussels just churns them out. And you, as a simple pleb, have no way to block that production line.
You can always vote to chuck out our clowns.
And on the deaths per 100,000? Let's see how it looks at the end eh? When the cheating and undercounting gets exposed by the excess death numbers.
Except we DID vote to chuck out the EU clowns. We did exactly what you are claiming we could not do.
I might start putting my whole life through GPT-3: the advice I give to clients at work; the arguments I play back to my wife; the excuses I give to my colleagues; the banter I have with my friends.
Everything.
So, what does it think about AV?
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Are you tired of voting for a MP who doesn’t represent you? If so, switch to the Alternative Vote. It allows you to rank your choices, ensuring every vote is counted and that elected officials are truly accountable to their constituency.
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I might start putting my whole life through GPT-3: the advice I give to clients at work; the arguments I play back to my wife; the excuses I give to my colleagues; the banter I have with my friends.
Everything.
I warned you. Once you go down the GPT3 rabbit hole you do not emerge. It really is AGI, or so close to it as to be super uncanny. And it is FUNNY
It's utterly hilarious.
I had to go in the bathroom because I couldn't stop snorting, and my wife was getting annoyed.
Strikingly bitter, glad only one side is wallowing in history there.
More like an Irish Times version of Quentin Letts, but he got one thing spot on ... "The contemporary royals have no real power. They serve entirely to enshrine classism in the British nonconstitution."
So what was the Guardian going on about when it was complaining about the number of times HM and Charles have influenced laws and debates in Parliament?
I have no idea. Send them an email and let us know what they say
A key quote for me from the 'Vaccination plans for PCN vaccination sites for 8 to 29 March' letter:
"The Government now expects vaccine supply for new first doses to increase substantially over the weeks of 15, 22 and 29 March. Every site should expect to be able to receive, and use swiftly in each of these weeks, around twice the level of vaccine supply previously available with precise details to be confirmed shortly on a site-by-site level. We are expecting that much of the vaccine supplied to the programme and allocated to sites in the weeks of 15 and 22 March will need to be used by the end of the month."
Yes, you put all that faith in these EU people. You really did.
To be fair to you, the alternative was Nigel Farage. But still - bloody embarrassing isn't it?
This is a new EU Commission. We Remainers had put our faith in a totally different set of clowns, now all gone.
Although how you have the nerve to talk about amateur hour with Boris in charge... a former journalist who has been fired for making his quotes up and who then hides in fridges from other journalists.
Under Johnson's govt we are in the top ten of deaths per 100,000.
The clown production line has no off-switch. Brussels just churns them out. And you, as a simple pleb, have no way to block that production line.
You can always vote to chuck out our clowns.
And on the deaths per 100,000? Let's see how it looks at the end eh? When the cheating and undercounting gets exposed by the excess death numbers.
Why would you assume EU nations are cheating and under counting? They aren't China, Russia, and such like. By all accounts Belgium is being stricter on numbers.
Because of data.
Look at Portugal, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Croatia, Hungary, Netherlands, Austria, Slovakia. Some by 20-50%, some much much more.
Because the EU was months later than the UK at ordering. They only have themselves to blame.
I still cannot comprehend that the EU prioritised price over speed when it came to the vaccine.
They thought being able to negotiate a discount would show the value of the EU. They didn't place an order with Pfizer until November 2020 and were boasting about paying less than the Americans.
The European Union has struck a deal to initially pay less for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate than the United States, an EU official told Reuters as the bloc announced on Wednesday
They struck a bargain to pay cheap and will pay far more than twice in consequence.
A spectacular miscalculation - not just in emphasising price over speed, but also in not subsidising manufacturers to produce locally.
It's hard to imagine how they possible thought that saving a few hundred million on procurement costs was worth an extra quarter of deaths, lockdowns and diminished GDP.
If you want an argument against an unaccountable administrative class, too far from voters, it would be hard to find a better one.
Of course, it's been compounded by appalling errors at the national level. The German insistence on keeping doses back is stupid beyond belief.
They also i think refused to underwrite any liability on behalf of the vaccine manufacturers if something went wrong with the vaccine. Which i suspect is in part why they have been so slow to follow the UK example on 1st/2nd doses. Because following the UK example would have meant ignoring the vaccine manufacturers recommendations - which presumably would have, at least in part, invalidated the liability clauses.
Even if GPT3 isn't as good as the best human writers, a lot of people looking to save money will use it anyway. A bit like the way TV intros today are often not as good as they were in the 1990s, because producers don't pay experts to make them anymore when anyone can rustle a reasonably good one up on a computer. Tom Scott did a video about this recently. The most impressive intro for a particular show was in 1996.
I might start putting my whole life through GPT-3: the advice I give to clients at work; the arguments I play back to my wife; the excuses I give to my colleagues; the banter I have with my friends.
Everything.
I warned you. Once you go down the GPT3 rabbit hole you do not emerge. It really is AGI, or so close to it as to be super uncanny. And it is FUNNY
AI can come up with some real FUNNY stuff, for sure:
We are advocating a change to UK legislation relating to SeanT’s use of the term ‘Tory Boy’.
You probably think you've heard of everything, but this is a level of hypocrisy that has to be seen to be believed.
We represent the SeanT community in our fight for fairness.
SeanT's presence here has been ever-increasingly in poor taste. As his desperation to make a point has increased his bile levels too. Clearly SeanT would not be content with his own site, of which he does not share his password (yes that was checked) and be content with users who are not concerned with politicalbetting.com members' comments. Also it seems the site is no longer called 'politicalbetting.com', but 'politicalbetting.org'. This was pointed out in August in an editorial on this site, but SeanT clearly missed it and continued to use the incorrect title for another seven months while telling everyone he was being "censored".
Comments
It's hard to imagine how they possible thought that saving a few hundred million on procurement costs was worth an extra quarter of deaths, lockdowns and diminished GDP.
If you want an argument against an unaccountable administrative class, too far from voters, it would be hard to find a better one.
Of course, it's been compounded by appalling errors at the national level. The German insistence on keeping doses back is stupid beyond belief.
History shows that the Royal Family has always been a better friend to minorities than American democrats
BY ED WEST"
https://unherd.com/2021/03/why-monarchies-are-more-tolerant/
I've posted relatively little on this topic because despite being an ideological monarchist I take very little interest in the royal family as people, so I won't drag this out too much.
Of course the statement has been carefuly formulated to admit a polite interpretation and so close the issue down in the public sphere. Nonetheless, it adopts neither a neutral nor a submissive posture. 'The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent' necessitates that the family was not fully informed by the couple about their grievances at the time (for whatever reason). 'Some recollections may vary' means that not all family members agree that it happened at all. 'Addressed by the family privately' implies that internal discussion, as opposed to an interview with a global audience, was the better course to pursue.
That much clearly follows from even a superficial reading of the text. Then add in the formal elements: the extreme laconicism and the written medium form an object contrast to spilling your guts to a billion people live on Oprah. Even the paratext 'ENDS' - the inclusion of which I suspect was not in fact an error - underscores both the message's finality and its almost telegrammatic brevity.
I don't feel that I'm particularly reaching with the above observations - I'll spare you the significance of the missing Oxford comma after 'Meghan' in the last line - they're there for any pract. crit. tyro to detect.
Indeed on the latest poll the SNP has also fallen below 50% and is at risk of no Holyrood majority at all which would destroy any hopes it had of pushing for indyref2 completely
https://twitter.com/SundayTimesScot/status/1368460645964935170?s=20
I said you can certainly cut out all the bureaucratic layers of governance and get all the key players in one room, and give them the authority to get on with it, but you have to accept that money was no object and they took all the liability risk.
Funnily enough you can get quite a lot done quite quickly when money is no object and take on board all the risk, but the real world in normal times for big projects isn't like that.
Afterall while the UK has recorded more 'Covid deaths within 28 days of a test' than our real excess deaths, Italy has nearly two excess deaths for every recorded death. So the real daily death toll might be more like 750.
That might be a record for any non micro-country throughout this hideous pandemic. We tested more than 2% of the entire population in a day.
At some point we reach overkill
On the other hand it does pleasingly remind me of the UK war industry in WW2. We started off sluggish and clueless. By the end we were churning out bombers and tanks by the ton, outclassing any enemy
As @FrankBooth says, the key thing is not "growth" but what is output relative to pre-CV19 levels.
independents
New pro-indy parties
all count in the arithmetic.
When you think of it like that its irrational behaviour makes sense.
Although how you have the nerve to talk about amateur hour with Boris in charge... a former journalist who has been fired for making his quotes up and who then hides in fridges from other journalists.
Under Johnson's govt we are in the top ten of deaths per 100,000.
Dunno if it will work, but it is well-judged. Just enough, and no more
*Women too obvs.
https://www.facebook.com/tankmuseum/photos/operation-sentry-was-unprecedented-it-planned-to-put-prototypes-of-the-new-a41-c/10157627745610842/
It’s a good book, and great value at the £6 I paid.
Macron's chickens coming home to roost.
There may soon come a time when Sturgeon is grateful for Bojo's obstinacy, if the polls stay knife-edge (or worse) for YES.
Another failed indyref just 7-10 years after the first would mean no mote votes for 3 decades. Settled will of the people and all that. The whole idea would be parked, long term. Which means the end of the SNP, I think, as it fractures into warring factions
Chortle.
You can always vote to chuck out our clowns.
And on the deaths per 100,000? Let's see how it looks at the end eh? When the cheating and undercounting gets exposed by the excess death numbers.
If you are going to 'point things out' then I suggest you make sure those things are accurate.
By the end, the UK and US were flattening German cities day and night. Total annihilation. It might have been cruel and unjustified, I certainly see that argument - but was it effective? Absolutely.
Total bombing works. The conventional but total bombing of Tokyo was part of the reason the Japanese surrendered, it wasn't just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] Of central Tokyo 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
No society can withstand such total destruction. Germany and Japan were being reduced to Neolithic living conditions by the outright air supremacy of the enemy. We *could* have won by bombing alone, I reckon - but at what moral cost? Bombing certainly aided our cause
I accept this is a debate which has lasted many decades and is unlikely to be settled tonight on PB
It's how their nation was founded.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phoney-Victory-World-War-Illusion/dp/1788313291
We almost certainly won't even be even in the top 20 when all is said and done.
22,997 v. 33,984
Hurricanes also in top 6.
"The tabloids had some fun for a while. Then the marriage ended in great bitterness. Everyone should be able to celebrate their love, whatever shape it takes. That’s why Harry & Meghan is on sale, now only $3.99. #JustLove"
Through the bizzarely cryptic:
"Coincidentally, no-one is talking about it either. Shocking silence and buried mates is what I call “the party line”."
And the strangely Tenet like take:
"Harry & Meghan will be released in August 2019 worldwide after a major acquisition by Bloomsbury Publishing. Protagonist Kate Westchester is on assignment for the UK’s biggest magazine editor when she lands the story of her career: interviewing Harry and Meghan on their honeymoon while covering the royals in their final months."
To the unintentionally profound:
"Where did it all go wrong? Why is everyone so angry? What’s with the racism?"
And, finally, my favourite because the AI seemingly does humour:
"Prince Harry and Meghan, sick of their exploitation by the media and papparazzi, are taking back control over THEIR life. Fuelled by fury at the way they have been treated for the last year, Meghan and Harry have launched a new reality show."
The problem was the German tanks were too sophisticated and tricky to manufacture, and prone to breakdowns, like hi-tech racing cars. The Soviet T34 was no supertank, but it was easy to make in huge numbers, and that's how the USSR overwhelmed the Nazis. With numbers
Same story with the Kalashnikov, of course.
You are wise to say that we will not settle this, tonight, on pb, but it’s a fascinating subject.
But this is because SE Asia was a deeply poor, rural society, with few big cities to hammer, and a reduction to peasant life was far easier to endure, as most of it was down there already. Reducing Germans and Japanese in 1945 to living in fields was a very different matter
And it could have happened
When people speculate on what America might have done with Japan, absent nukes, and regarding the potential costs of the invasion (so many American troops dead and so on) I wonder if America would even have invaded. With total air supremacy, the Yanks could have conventionally reduced every single Japanese city to rubble, a la Tokyo, and done it again and again, even without invading. An endless obliteration. Just a few American lives lost. Millions of Japanese dead
Japan would surely have surrendered anyway, within weeks
The latter is not completely stupid. There is an excellent case that the people you should be vaccinating are those most likely to spread the disease, rather than those most susceptible to it. A small number of people who meet lots of other people are likely to be reponsible for a lot of the virus jumping from one group of people to the next. Still, I suspect that's not the strategy the government is taking.
Everything.
An elderly couple, friends of my mum, both sadly died within a week of each other in February and were buried today. The lady died in hospital with pneumonia and suspected Covid, her husband for whom she was the carer died at home a week later (despite others stepping to provide care).
My mum found out today that they have both been recorded as having died of Covid because according to a family member 'the alternative would be for them to require post mortems and no one wanted that'.
IANAE, so I don't know whether it's true that putting Covid on the death certificate avoids a post mortem but if it does, and if this anecdote is not unique, I can see why the reported Covid deaths might be higher than actual.
And even the excess death figures will be gamed by countries but it's harder to hide than other methods.
Besides, there's no classism. Anyone can rise to the top, they just need to get enough money to send their sprogs to Eton.
Edit: Classism, not classicism. That you do get at Eton I imagine.
Prior to that it was largely political (showing it could strike back prior to D-Day and demonstrating to the Russians we were doing something) but it had little effect on German war production, which increased all the way to summer 1944. That's because it stuck to city area bombing for far too long, rather than factory, war, industry and oil production targeting. Harris was a nihilist who just wanted to target the population and level cities.
It diverted a fair bit of Nazi manpower and resources, including fighters, into anti-air defence but then the allied air offensive was very costly in resources too.
It's really counter-intuitive, because it means jabbing young healthy people, rather than old (potentially sick) ones.
In a country like Spain or Italy (with multigenerational households) it would be a case of getting the same degree of protection from deaths and hospitalisations by jabbing the 22 year old grandson, rather than three 75 year old grandparents.
Of course, it might be a tough sell politically.
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I had to go in the bathroom because I couldn't stop snorting, and my wife was getting annoyed.
Heck, maybe some even do.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccination-programme/primary-care-guidance/
A key quote for me from the 'Vaccination plans for PCN vaccination sites for 8 to 29 March' letter:
"The Government now expects vaccine supply for new first doses to increase substantially over the weeks of 15, 22 and 29 March. Every site should expect to be able to receive, and use swiftly in each of these weeks, around twice the level of vaccine supply previously available with precise details to be confirmed shortly on a site-by-site level. We are expecting that much of the vaccine supplied to the programme and allocated to sites in the weeks of 15 and 22 March will need to be used by the end of the month."
Look at Portugal, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Croatia, Hungary, Netherlands, Austria, Slovakia. Some by 20-50%, some much much more.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUF4afxMpQk
https://twitter.com/laurnorman/status/1369401867550220292
We are advocating a change to UK legislation relating to SeanT’s use of the term ‘Tory Boy’.
You probably think you've heard of everything, but this is a level of hypocrisy that has to be seen to be believed.
We represent the SeanT community in our fight for fairness.
SeanT's presence here has been ever-increasingly in poor taste. As his desperation to make a point has increased his bile levels too. Clearly SeanT would not be content with his own site, of which he does not share his password (yes that was checked) and be content with users who are not concerned with politicalbetting.com members' comments. Also it seems the site is no longer called 'politicalbetting.com', but 'politicalbetting.org'. This was pointed out in August in an editorial on this site, but SeanT clearly missed it and continued to use the incorrect title for another seven months while telling everyone he was being "censored".