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The government is right to junk Supplementary Vote – it’s the worst of all worlds – politicalbetting

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Comments

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,604
    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Blimey just noticed that the Army is likely to be reduced by 10,000 from the current 70,000. I note we're already between Ethiopia and Bangladesh in size of active forces.

    Now, more than ever, we need those on PB who have yearnings in that direction, indeed have displayed strategic aptitude in terms of likely campaigns, to sign up. We simply can't allow the country to be at such risk.

    You know who you are.

    I thought it was to 70,000?
    Ah yes. Soz. To 70,000. Still low.
    When I was a lad in Fallingbostel in the early 1970s we had over 50k troops in Germany alone and more than 20k in NI.

    As you will appreciate better than most our army is now too small to carry out any meaningful task for any extended period of time. We simply could not do what we did in Afghanistan for such an extended period for example. No doubt tech, specifically drones, will make absolute numbers less critical but there comes a point when what you have is a home defence force, not an army. I think that's where we are.
    Didn't the recent Armenian-Azeri war show that troops and tanks are virtually defenceless against well organised drones and missiles? That is the future. Large armies are finished. Analogue military in a world of digital wars.

    The same will soon be true of large aircraft carriers. Ooops
    We still need troops for UN peacekeeping and NATO operations and special forces in particular for counter terrorism operations.

    We need submarines to launch missiles and drones and aircraft carriers to launch airstrikes and also in the event, however unlikely, we needed to recapture the Falklands again. We also need to ensure we continue to have a larger army than Argentina on that basis too
    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted
    Terrorists will not do everything by robots and drones, nor indeed will most nations, certainly in the developing world.

    Taiwan is fiercely independent, it will not surrender to China because of a few missiles and its internet being jammed, it is also hi tech itself, indeed argubaly more tech savvy than China in some areas
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,673
    I had my AZ jab last week and was absolutely fine with it.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,421

    Yes the UK has done very well. Given our health structure I suspect we'd have done just as well if we'd still been in the EU.

    I've been wanting to type this for a while. As a big fan of alternative history, it's very hard to say. Trying to peer through the barrier between the two realities! (Well, only one, as we've no real idea if other timelines really exist)

    I suspect, had the UK stayed in the EU, and Coronavirus happened much the same (but butterflies - who knows?) then the UK would've come under sever pressure to join the EU wide vaccination and PPE procurement schemes. And I suspect, contrary to what some posters on here believe (we'd still go our own way) I think we'd have joined.

    Which would mean that many of the problems the EU states face we would face too. However, I suspect the UK would be a help, rather than a hinderance at pushing things forward. So instead of the current mess some countries find themselves in, we'd hopefully resolve some problems. Additionally, I'm completely convinced the only reason the AZN vaccine is so widely disliked in the EU is entirely because its got the word 'Oxford' in it and its entirely political. The EU can't stand that we've left, so anything produced in the UK (however true or otherwise) must be shit and therefore must be advised against using. That wouldn't be true in a 'UK stays in the EU situation'.

    So, my belief is, in this other universe, we'd have probably pulled up the really underperforming countries like France and Italy, whilst at the same time we'd be being dragged down by the EU bureacracy. Maybe instead of 55% vaccinated now, we'd be only in the high 20s or low 30s. Better than France, better than Italy; but not as good as where we are now.
    I like that post. Although none of us have a clue, as you say butterflies, it seems very reasonable.

    I was a very pro remainer and still would be, but I am realistic to know the EU cock things up and they seem to be doing a spectacular job of that currently. Still want to be in though, although that is after I have got my jab!
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,227
    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,421

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    I would tend to agree on b. But just to say there are few more annoying words on PB than ‘holibobs’. It tends to be used by those who think holidays unimportant. Yet holidays are very important things, even though they may be domestic only for a while.
    The problem with holidays is that people want a complete change of scene and for a lot of people that means being outside the UK.

    Equally trying to find anywhere in the UK looks like it's going to be hard work - we are going away but that's mainly because of friends giving us very first dibs on cancellations.
    I do wonder about capacity in the UK - if we all want a nice cottage in Devon/Cornwall/the Lakes etc. Might be time to explore those lesser visited places.
    H*rtl*p**l?
    Co. Durham certainly, especially parts of the coast, and in the west of the County Palatine.

    When I was a student lodging in Sunderland my landlady used to let our rooms in the summer to Scots who came South for their holidays.
    Whitley Bay used to be one of the biggest summer holiday destinations for Scots.

    Of course that was before they realised it was sh*t and that the Costa del Sol was much better.
    Um that was before the days the Costa del Sol was an option.

    And there is nowt wrong with a day at Cullercoats or South Shields if you have small children. Just remember that you need wind breaks protecting you in all directions...
    I know that. I was making a funny wasn't I
    You missed the fact - I said a day. What are you going to do for the rest of the week when its peeing down?

    Not on the East coast it won't be. Freezing, maybe.
    I live there - it rains more than you think especially if you are only there for x days.
    It's along time since I spent three years there; don't remember more rain than someone from Essex was used to. Maybe that's memory!

    Went I went to live in Manchester it was after visiting my girl-friend there several times, and never experiencing rain. When I went to work there it rained at least some part of every day for a month. And that was summer!
    OK so I'm less than 2 months into living in North East Scotland, but it has been remarkably dry so far. Compared to the endless grey drizzle that Teesside used to suffer its wonderful.
    Try the North West.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Blimey just noticed that the Army is likely to be reduced by 10,000 from the current 70,000. I note we're already between Ethiopia and Bangladesh in size of active forces.

    Now, more than ever, we need those on PB who have yearnings in that direction, indeed have displayed strategic aptitude in terms of likely campaigns, to sign up. We simply can't allow the country to be at such risk.

    You know who you are.

    I thought it was to 70,000?
    Ah yes. Soz. To 70,000. Still low.
    When I was a lad in Fallingbostel in the early 1970s we had over 50k troops in Germany alone and more than 20k in NI.

    As you will appreciate better than most our army is now too small to carry out any meaningful task for any extended period of time. We simply could not do what we did in Afghanistan for such an extended period for example. No doubt tech, specifically drones, will make absolute numbers less critical but there comes a point when what you have is a home defence force, not an army. I think that's where we are.
    Didn't the recent Armenian-Azeri war show that troops and tanks are virtually defenceless against well organised drones and missiles? That is the future. Large armies are finished. Analogue military in a world of digital wars.

    The same will soon be true of large aircraft carriers. Ooops
    We still need troops for UN peacekeeping and NATO operations and special forces in particular for counter terrorism operations.

    We need submarines to launch missiles and drones and aircraft carriers to launch airstrikes and also in the event, however unlikely, we needed to recapture the Falklands again. We also need to ensure we continue to have a larger army than Argentina on that basis too
    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted
    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    Normalcy bias

    Warfare is like science, it doesn't change for ages, and then, suddenly, there is a massive paradigm shift and everything changes very quickly

    https://twitter.com/eha_news/status/1372298354760224771?s=20

    https://twitter.com/mrtrsyns/status/1371579158556516355?s=20
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,697
    The People of the Cherry not enjoying the ‘Salmond was always a wrong ‘un’ turn of events. I hope that they’re noting that it’s the people with whom they’d previously allied themselves that are running with this.

    https://twitter.com/albannach87/status/1373808146414768132?s=21

    Is there a recipe for salmon with cherries I idly wonder.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,337
    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Blimey just noticed that the Army is likely to be reduced by 10,000 from the current 70,000. I note we're already between Ethiopia and Bangladesh in size of active forces.

    Now, more than ever, we need those on PB who have yearnings in that direction, indeed have displayed strategic aptitude in terms of likely campaigns, to sign up. We simply can't allow the country to be at such risk.

    You know who you are.

    I thought it was to 70,000?
    Ah yes. Soz. To 70,000. Still low.
    When I was a lad in Fallingbostel in the early 1970s we had over 50k troops in Germany alone and more than 20k in NI.

    As you will appreciate better than most our army is now too small to carry out any meaningful task for any extended period of time. We simply could not do what we did in Afghanistan for such an extended period for example. No doubt tech, specifically drones, will make absolute numbers less critical but there comes a point when what you have is a home defence force, not an army. I think that's where we are.
    Didn't the recent Armenian-Azeri war show that troops and tanks are virtually defenceless against well organised drones and missiles? That is the future. Large armies are finished. Analogue military in a world of digital wars.

    The same will soon be true of large aircraft carriers. Ooops
    We still need troops for UN peacekeeping and NATO operations and special forces in particular for counter terrorism operations.

    We need submarines to launch missiles and drones and aircraft carriers to launch airstrikes and also in the event, however unlikely, we needed to recapture the Falklands again. We also need to ensure we continue to have a larger army than Argentina on that basis too
    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted
    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    Normalcy bias

    Warfare is like science, it doesn't change for ages, and then, suddenly, there is a massive paradigm shift and everything changes very quickly

    https://twitter.com/eha_news/status/1372298354760224771?s=20

    https://twitter.com/mrtrsyns/status/1371579158556516355?s=20
    It's worth remembering that this kind of thing has actually been around for quite a while

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-97_Sensor_Fuzed_Weapon

    IIRC they were used to wipe out the vehicles of most of am Iraqi division in a a minute or 2.
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1373902263966695427

    And more ....

    Yet they complain they not getting their fair share of something they don't want and have publicly trashed

    So - is this about Brexit, a need to stop us disappearing into the distance in terms of vaccines delivered - or a combination of both?
  • MattW said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    I would tend to agree on b. But just to say there are few more annoying words on PB than ‘holibobs’. It tends to be used by those who think holidays unimportant. Yet holidays are very important things, even though they may be domestic only for a while.
    The problem with holidays is that people want a complete change of scene and for a lot of people that means being outside the UK.

    Equally trying to find anywhere in the UK looks like it's going to be hard work - we are going away but that's mainly because of friends giving us very first dibs on cancellations.
    I do wonder about capacity in the UK - if we all want a nice cottage in Devon/Cornwall/the Lakes etc. Might be time to explore those lesser visited places.
    H*rtl*p**l?
    Co. Durham certainly, especially parts of the coast, and in the west of the County Palatine.

    When I was a student lodging in Sunderland my landlady used to let our rooms in the summer to Scots who came South for their holidays.
    Whitley Bay used to be one of the biggest summer holiday destinations for Scots.

    Of course that was before they realised it was sh*t and that the Costa del Sol was much better.
    Um that was before the days the Costa del Sol was an option.

    And there is nowt wrong with a day at Cullercoats or South Shields if you have small children. Just remember that you need wind breaks protecting you in all directions...
    I know that. I was making a funny wasn't I
    You missed the fact - I said a day. What are you going to do for the rest of the week when its peeing down?

    Not on the East coast it won't be. Freezing, maybe.
    I live there - it rains more than you think especially if you are only there for x days.
    It's along time since I spent three years there; don't remember more rain than someone from Essex was used to. Maybe that's memory!

    Went I went to live in Manchester it was after visiting my girl-friend there several times, and never experiencing rain. When I went to work there it rained at least some part of every day for a month. And that was summer!
    OK so I'm less than 2 months into living in North East Scotland, but it has been remarkably dry so far. Compared to the endless grey drizzle that Teesside used to suffer its wonderful.
    That's your decade's quota gone, then.
    Naah, we're in the rain shadow of the Grampians so we're a lot drier than the west (about 1/3rd the rainfall of Lochaber) and high enough up from the coast to avoid coastal dreich. Living at 145m makes a big difference to my previous 15m!

    Having spent my childhood in the western foothills of a particularly sharp Pennine ridge and then a decade and a half in esturial flatlands it makes a real difference to be somewhere this dry!
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,604
    edited March 2021

    HYUFD said:
    Story in The Herald this morning deconstructing that poll. Points out that the SNP may "squeak" a majority which is a gain from their current position. It will be interesting to see how the perceived momentum away from the SNP proceeds - I suspect that the final independent report will provoke "is that it" responses and switch the focus back onto the integrity of the Tory leakers who tried to game it for electoral purposes.
    It has a 1 seat majority, the latest Survation meanwhile has no SNP majority and the SNP even losing seats on 2016.
    https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1373625695474180096?s=20

    Either way this UK Tory government will of course refuse a legal indyref2 and respect the once in a generation 2014 vote, the lack of an SNP majority and the loss of SNP seats would just make it easier when they do
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,605
    I agree that SV has the unusual distinction of being the only voting system worse than FPTP.

    SV is even worse than the article describes. Consider the choice for a minor party voter. They may favour the Labour candidate over the Tory, but the Labour candidate might otherwise be their last choice. If, somehow, another candidate beats the Tory to reach the runoff, then it's possible they will have cast a second-preference vote for Labour (against the Tory) which will end up being counted contrary to their preference in the contest between the final two.

    AV avoids such guesswork and pitfalls - but it's for those defects, and the benefits that accrue to the largest anti-Tory party, that SV was chosen.

    Here we see again another example of Blair's toxic legacy. Instead of a genuine desire to improve the voting system for the benefit of the public, we see over and over choices made in an attempt to favour the Labour Party.

    It was a mistake for people like myself to tacitly support it at the time on the basis of it being a step in the right direction, when it was nothing of the sort.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259
    "AstraZeneca's vaccine is '100% effective' against severe Covid: US trial of jab saw NO deaths or hospitalisations and found it works just as well in over-65s and does not cause blood clots

    Latest trial of the AstraZeneca jab was done on 22,000 people in US, Chile and Peru and adds to success
    Nobody who received the real vaccine developed severe Covd-19 or died of it, making it 100% protective
    No severe side effects nor increased risk of blood clots in people in the study
    Research was carried out because US wanted US-based trial before approving it for use on its own citizens"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9388099/AstraZeneca-vaccine-100-effective-against-severe-Covid-study-finds.html
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    There's nothing stopping younger types from enjoying a domestic holiday this year.

    If it means that the younger types can live as normal again, go clubbing at weekends, enjoy hook ups, live life, get jobs, go to uni, or anything else every other day of the year then a weekend at Ibiza can wait until next year.
    The same cohort that has given up so much for everyone else for 4-5% of their lives will be asked to wait another 4-5% of it? To protect the oldies who live in lovely houses in the West Country. And have all been vaccinated.

    I have been following the news fairly carefully but missed the transition from what I believed was the AZN jab giving protection against serious illness and death from the SA variant, and now no one being so sure.

    I know you are past the days you describe, but hundreds of thousands aren't. It's a big ask.
    No, lockdown is a big ask. Enjoying a weekend in the UK instead of Ibiza is not a big ask.

    The point is we need to ensure there are no more lockdowns, no more restrictions. If restrictions can be lifted in this country then we are 99% back to normal.

    If we allow weekends away but then end up having to go back into lockdown then is that worth it to you? Is that worth the young sacrificing another few months or a year?
    So at what point are we going to "live with it"? There will always be new variants. Just one more push, etc. I thought the SA variant was here and I also thought that "scientists" said that AZN was effective against it.

    We absolutely do need to ensure there are no more lockdowns but at some point - and now we have the Covid Act extended until October, oh just for furloughs, of course - we have to move on.
    Domestically we have to move on. By June we should be learning to live with it.

    Internationally? Once the rest of Europe has caught up with us. The rest of Europe is in various stages of lockdown, they've got no effective vaccine rollout worth its name and case rates are extremely high. It would be absolute insanity to throw away what we've done in the UK until the rest of Europe is more like us.

    By Christmas it might be plausible to have foreign holidays, I hope so as Europe is in for a torrid time if they've not vaccinated by next winter, but for now? Just enjoy yourselves in the UK - there's plenty to do in this country to enjoy yourself, you don't need to stay at home.

    No restrictions domestically though. That's the goal, that's the key. Throwing that away is madness.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259
    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    Why is there an assumption that younger people can't or don't want to go on holidays within the UK?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,932
    Has there been any retraction or apology for that story?
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,605

    MattW said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    I would tend to agree on b. But just to say there are few more annoying words on PB than ‘holibobs’. It tends to be used by those who think holidays unimportant. Yet holidays are very important things, even though they may be domestic only for a while.
    The problem with holidays is that people want a complete change of scene and for a lot of people that means being outside the UK.

    Equally trying to find anywhere in the UK looks like it's going to be hard work - we are going away but that's mainly because of friends giving us very first dibs on cancellations.
    I do wonder about capacity in the UK - if we all want a nice cottage in Devon/Cornwall/the Lakes etc. Might be time to explore those lesser visited places.
    H*rtl*p**l?
    Co. Durham certainly, especially parts of the coast, and in the west of the County Palatine.

    When I was a student lodging in Sunderland my landlady used to let our rooms in the summer to Scots who came South for their holidays.
    Whitley Bay used to be one of the biggest summer holiday destinations for Scots.

    Of course that was before they realised it was sh*t and that the Costa del Sol was much better.
    Um that was before the days the Costa del Sol was an option.

    And there is nowt wrong with a day at Cullercoats or South Shields if you have small children. Just remember that you need wind breaks protecting you in all directions...
    I know that. I was making a funny wasn't I
    You missed the fact - I said a day. What are you going to do for the rest of the week when its peeing down?

    Not on the East coast it won't be. Freezing, maybe.
    I live there - it rains more than you think especially if you are only there for x days.
    It's along time since I spent three years there; don't remember more rain than someone from Essex was used to. Maybe that's memory!

    Went I went to live in Manchester it was after visiting my girl-friend there several times, and never experiencing rain. When I went to work there it rained at least some part of every day for a month. And that was summer!
    OK so I'm less than 2 months into living in North East Scotland, but it has been remarkably dry so far. Compared to the endless grey drizzle that Teesside used to suffer its wonderful.
    That's your decade's quota gone, then.
    Naah, we're in the rain shadow of the Grampians so we're a lot drier than the west (about 1/3rd the rainfall of Lochaber) and high enough up from the coast to avoid coastal dreich. Living at 145m makes a big difference to my previous 15m!

    Having spent my childhood in the western foothills of a particularly sharp Pennine ridge and then a decade and a half in esturial flatlands it makes a real difference to be somewhere this dry!
    Yes, the East-West contrast in rainfall is generally much greater than the North-South contrast that receives so much attention from Londoners and those in the South-East.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    RobD said:

    Has there been any retraction or apology for that story?
    No. They have quietly backpedalled, and progressively amended and edited the original story so it doesn't look so bad. All the journalists are still in their jobs, the "senior person in the health ministry" has never been identified.

    That squalid little episode, in itself, has probably killed a few dozen people out of anti-vaxxery. The 8% stat went round the world. Disgraceful
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,244
    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:


    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted

    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    I agree with Sean F - yes, you can win a war remotely, but how do you hold the place afterwards? Say China did conquer Taiwan as suggested, acquiring Hong Kong unrest on steroids. In what way would that be good for China?

    What will I think become more common is autocracies making life very uncomfortable for non-pliant neighbouring countries - internet raids, odd explosions, energy supply issues, etc. "Just vote with us in the UN and buy our stuff more" will be quite alluring. So perhaps British interests are best served by becoming ever-better at helping other countries counter this sort of modern blackmail.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited March 2021
    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005

    MattW said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    I would tend to agree on b. But just to say there are few more annoying words on PB than ‘holibobs’. It tends to be used by those who think holidays unimportant. Yet holidays are very important things, even though they may be domestic only for a while.
    The problem with holidays is that people want a complete change of scene and for a lot of people that means being outside the UK.

    Equally trying to find anywhere in the UK looks like it's going to be hard work - we are going away but that's mainly because of friends giving us very first dibs on cancellations.
    I do wonder about capacity in the UK - if we all want a nice cottage in Devon/Cornwall/the Lakes etc. Might be time to explore those lesser visited places.
    H*rtl*p**l?
    Co. Durham certainly, especially parts of the coast, and in the west of the County Palatine.

    When I was a student lodging in Sunderland my landlady used to let our rooms in the summer to Scots who came South for their holidays.
    Whitley Bay used to be one of the biggest summer holiday destinations for Scots.

    Of course that was before they realised it was sh*t and that the Costa del Sol was much better.
    Um that was before the days the Costa del Sol was an option.

    And there is nowt wrong with a day at Cullercoats or South Shields if you have small children. Just remember that you need wind breaks protecting you in all directions...
    I know that. I was making a funny wasn't I
    You missed the fact - I said a day. What are you going to do for the rest of the week when its peeing down?

    Not on the East coast it won't be. Freezing, maybe.
    I live there - it rains more than you think especially if you are only there for x days.
    It's along time since I spent three years there; don't remember more rain than someone from Essex was used to. Maybe that's memory!

    Went I went to live in Manchester it was after visiting my girl-friend there several times, and never experiencing rain. When I went to work there it rained at least some part of every day for a month. And that was summer!
    OK so I'm less than 2 months into living in North East Scotland, but it has been remarkably dry so far. Compared to the endless grey drizzle that Teesside used to suffer its wonderful.
    That's your decade's quota gone, then.
    Naah, we're in the rain shadow of the Grampians so we're a lot drier than the west (about 1/3rd the rainfall of Lochaber) and high enough up from the coast to avoid coastal dreich. Living at 145m makes a big difference to my previous 15m!

    Having spent my childhood in the western foothills of a particularly sharp Pennine ridge and then a decade and a half in esturial flatlands it makes a real difference to be somewhere this dry!
    Yes, the East-West contrast in rainfall is generally much greater than the North-South contrast that receives so much attention from Londoners and those in the South-East.
    The Fohn effect also means NE Scotland can sometimes be unusually warm
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005

    MattW said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    I would tend to agree on b. But just to say there are few more annoying words on PB than ‘holibobs’. It tends to be used by those who think holidays unimportant. Yet holidays are very important things, even though they may be domestic only for a while.
    The problem with holidays is that people want a complete change of scene and for a lot of people that means being outside the UK.

    Equally trying to find anywhere in the UK looks like it's going to be hard work - we are going away but that's mainly because of friends giving us very first dibs on cancellations.
    I do wonder about capacity in the UK - if we all want a nice cottage in Devon/Cornwall/the Lakes etc. Might be time to explore those lesser visited places.
    H*rtl*p**l?
    Co. Durham certainly, especially parts of the coast, and in the west of the County Palatine.

    When I was a student lodging in Sunderland my landlady used to let our rooms in the summer to Scots who came South for their holidays.
    Whitley Bay used to be one of the biggest summer holiday destinations for Scots.

    Of course that was before they realised it was sh*t and that the Costa del Sol was much better.
    Um that was before the days the Costa del Sol was an option.

    And there is nowt wrong with a day at Cullercoats or South Shields if you have small children. Just remember that you need wind breaks protecting you in all directions...
    I know that. I was making a funny wasn't I
    You missed the fact - I said a day. What are you going to do for the rest of the week when its peeing down?

    Not on the East coast it won't be. Freezing, maybe.
    I live there - it rains more than you think especially if you are only there for x days.
    It's along time since I spent three years there; don't remember more rain than someone from Essex was used to. Maybe that's memory!

    Went I went to live in Manchester it was after visiting my girl-friend there several times, and never experiencing rain. When I went to work there it rained at least some part of every day for a month. And that was summer!
    OK so I'm less than 2 months into living in North East Scotland, but it has been remarkably dry so far. Compared to the endless grey drizzle that Teesside used to suffer its wonderful.
    That's your decade's quota gone, then.
    Naah, we're in the rain shadow of the Grampians so we're a lot drier than the west (about 1/3rd the rainfall of Lochaber) and high enough up from the coast to avoid coastal dreich. Living at 145m makes a big difference to my previous 15m!

    Having spent my childhood in the western foothills of a particularly sharp Pennine ridge and then a decade and a half in esturial flatlands it makes a real difference to be somewhere this dry!
    Yes, the East-West contrast in rainfall is generally much greater than the North-South contrast that receives so much attention from Londoners and those in the South-East.
    The Fohn effect also means NE Scotland can sometimes be unusually warm
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,227
    edited March 2021
    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    I wonder if that's one of those irregular verbs: we encourage tactical voting; they rigg the election.

    People decide for themselves whom to vote for. Minor third parties are only so because the voters have decided it.

    BTW I don't think there are wasted votes, but that is a position based on a communitarian political philosophy; it can neither be proved nor disproved. But if there are wasted votes I am delighted if the votes cast for fascists, authoritarians, totalitarians, Marxists, conspiracy theorists and racists are wasted. Isn't everyone?

  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,886
    Andy_JS said:

    "AstraZeneca's vaccine is '100% effective' against severe Covid: US trial of jab saw NO deaths or hospitalisations and found it works just as well in over-65s and does not cause blood clots

    Latest trial of the AstraZeneca jab was done on 22,000 people in US, Chile and Peru and adds to success
    Nobody who received the real vaccine developed severe Covd-19 or died of it, making it 100% protective
    No severe side effects nor increased risk of blood clots in people in the study
    Research was carried out because US wanted US-based trial before approving it for use on its own citizens"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9388099/AstraZeneca-vaccine-100-effective-against-severe-Covid-study-finds.html

    That's about as big a "fuck you, EU" as science can muster.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    There's nothing stopping younger types from enjoying a domestic holiday this year.

    If it means that the younger types can live as normal again, go clubbing at weekends, enjoy hook ups, live life, get jobs, go to uni, or anything else every other day of the year then a weekend at Ibiza can wait until next year.
    The same cohort that has given up so much for everyone else for 4-5% of their lives will be asked to wait another 4-5% of it? To protect the oldies who live in lovely houses in the West Country. And have all been vaccinated.

    I have been following the news fairly carefully but missed the transition from what I believed was the AZN jab giving protection against serious illness and death from the SA variant, and now no one being so sure.

    I know you are past the days you describe, but hundreds of thousands aren't. It's a big ask.
    No, lockdown is a big ask. Enjoying a weekend in the UK instead of Ibiza is not a big ask.

    The point is we need to ensure there are no more lockdowns, no more restrictions. If restrictions can be lifted in this country then we are 99% back to normal.

    If we allow weekends away but then end up having to go back into lockdown then is that worth it to you? Is that worth the young sacrificing another few months or a year?
    So at what point are we going to "live with it"? There will always be new variants. Just one more push, etc. I thought the SA variant was here and I also thought that "scientists" said that AZN was effective against it.

    We absolutely do need to ensure there are no more lockdowns but at some point - and now we have the Covid Act extended until October, oh just for furloughs, of course - we have to move on.
    Domestically we have to move on. By June we should be learning to live with it.

    Internationally? Once the rest of Europe has caught up with us. The rest of Europe is in various stages of lockdown, they've got no effective vaccine rollout worth its name and case rates are extremely high. It would be absolute insanity to throw away what we've done in the UK until the rest of Europe is more like us.

    By Christmas it might be plausible to have foreign holidays, I hope so as Europe is in for a torrid time if they've not vaccinated by next winter, but for now? Just enjoy yourselves in the UK - there's plenty to do in this country to enjoy yourself, you don't need to stay at home.

    No restrictions domestically though. That's the goal, that's the key. Throwing that away is madness.
    This is why the early "its our vaccine you can't have any" arguments were silly - until we all have it none of us are safe. We WILL still be allowed to go on holiday though - we were last summer so considering that we now have the vaccine why wouldn't we be allowed this summer?

    Its the *Tories*. Its not remotely only about health. Its about the economy and making clown trousers look popular. Down on Teesside, Ben Houchen International Airport has holiday sun flights lines up (for excruciating prices) - they aren't going to be able to resist enjoying the political plaudits of letting people jet off to Marbelloh or wherever.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,886

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Blimey just noticed that the Army is likely to be reduced by 10,000 from the current 70,000. I note we're already between Ethiopia and Bangladesh in size of active forces.

    Now, more than ever, we need those on PB who have yearnings in that direction, indeed have displayed strategic aptitude in terms of likely campaigns, to sign up. We simply can't allow the country to be at such risk.

    You know who you are.

    I thought it was to 70,000?
    Ah yes. Soz. To 70,000. Still low.
    When I was a lad in Fallingbostel in the early 1970s we had over 50k troops in Germany alone and more than 20k in NI.

    As you will appreciate better than most our army is now too small to carry out any meaningful task for any extended period of time. We simply could not do what we did in Afghanistan for such an extended period for example. No doubt tech, specifically drones, will make absolute numbers less critical but there comes a point when what you have is a home defence force, not an army. I think that's where we are.
    Didn't the recent Armenian-Azeri war show that troops and tanks are virtually defenceless against well organised drones and missiles? That is the future. Large armies are finished. Analogue military in a world of digital wars.

    The same will soon be true of large aircraft carriers. Ooops
    We still need troops for UN peacekeeping and NATO operations and special forces in particular for counter terrorism operations.

    We need submarines to launch missiles and drones and aircraft carriers to launch airstrikes and also in the event, however unlikely, we needed to recapture the Falklands again. We also need to ensure we continue to have a larger army than Argentina on that basis too
    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted
    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    Normalcy bias

    Warfare is like science, it doesn't change for ages, and then, suddenly, there is a massive paradigm shift and everything changes very quickly

    https://twitter.com/eha_news/status/1372298354760224771?s=20

    https://twitter.com/mrtrsyns/status/1371579158556516355?s=20
    It's worth remembering that this kind of thing has actually been around for quite a while

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-97_Sensor_Fuzed_Weapon

    IIRC they were used to wipe out the vehicles of most of am Iraqi division in a a minute or 2.
    Here's some classified footage from Afghan on the latest technology and its applications.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mymTX-psg5c
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,337

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:


    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted

    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    I agree with Sean F - yes, you can win a war remotely, but how do you hold the place afterwards? Say China did conquer Taiwan as suggested, acquiring Hong Kong unrest on steroids. In what way would that be good for China?

    What will I think become more common is autocracies making life very uncomfortable for non-pliant neighbouring countries - internet raids, odd explosions, energy supply issues, etc. "Just vote with us in the UN and buy our stuff more" will be quite alluring. So perhaps British interests are best served by becoming ever-better at helping other countries counter this sort of modern blackmail.
    The next generation of robots would be quite interesting in this respect.

    Imagine a spider like, robot - say the size of a small dog. All it does it find people in a designated area, and grab hold of them. So you'd end up handcuffed to 50Kg+ of steel and batteries. once it has grabbed hold of one limb, it grabs another and another. just immobilises people. Sticks the equivalent of a finger down any gun barrels.... Variants swarms over military vehicles, gumming up the works...

    Flood an area with a few 100K of them.....

  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,335
    The froth coming off No, it always looked fleeting and was born of The Sturge being on the telly interrogated day after day about an issue nobody understands.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:


    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted

    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    I agree with Sean F - yes, you can win a war remotely, but how do you hold the place afterwards? Say China did conquer Taiwan as suggested, acquiring Hong Kong unrest on steroids. In what way would that be good for China?

    What will I think become more common is autocracies making life very uncomfortable for non-pliant neighbouring countries - internet raids, odd explosions, energy supply issues, etc. "Just vote with us in the UN and buy our stuff more" will be quite alluring. So perhaps British interests are best served by becoming ever-better at helping other countries counter this sort of modern blackmail.
    You don't have to hold it, not any more. You can control it with the threat of further drone/missile strikes plus a total grip on their internet.

    Of course, if the locals are happy to revert to a stone age existence, living in caves and making the odd terror strike, like the Taliban, they can "resist" you, but how many modern societies would accept that?

    Look how China has retaken Hong Kong with barely a bullet fired. Just overwhelming power and the threat of force is enough, these days. People submit, for a quiet but prosperous life with decent wifi

    The only way to resist this is probably the possession of nukes. A pretty good argument for Trident
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,744

    MattW said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    I would tend to agree on b. But just to say there are few more annoying words on PB than ‘holibobs’. It tends to be used by those who think holidays unimportant. Yet holidays are very important things, even though they may be domestic only for a while.
    The problem with holidays is that people want a complete change of scene and for a lot of people that means being outside the UK.

    Equally trying to find anywhere in the UK looks like it's going to be hard work - we are going away but that's mainly because of friends giving us very first dibs on cancellations.
    I do wonder about capacity in the UK - if we all want a nice cottage in Devon/Cornwall/the Lakes etc. Might be time to explore those lesser visited places.
    H*rtl*p**l?
    Co. Durham certainly, especially parts of the coast, and in the west of the County Palatine.

    When I was a student lodging in Sunderland my landlady used to let our rooms in the summer to Scots who came South for their holidays.
    Whitley Bay used to be one of the biggest summer holiday destinations for Scots.

    Of course that was before they realised it was sh*t and that the Costa del Sol was much better.
    Um that was before the days the Costa del Sol was an option.

    And there is nowt wrong with a day at Cullercoats or South Shields if you have small children. Just remember that you need wind breaks protecting you in all directions...
    I know that. I was making a funny wasn't I
    You missed the fact - I said a day. What are you going to do for the rest of the week when its peeing down?

    Not on the East coast it won't be. Freezing, maybe.
    I live there - it rains more than you think especially if you are only there for x days.
    It's along time since I spent three years there; don't remember more rain than someone from Essex was used to. Maybe that's memory!

    Went I went to live in Manchester it was after visiting my girl-friend there several times, and never experiencing rain. When I went to work there it rained at least some part of every day for a month. And that was summer!
    OK so I'm less than 2 months into living in North East Scotland, but it has been remarkably dry so far. Compared to the endless grey drizzle that Teesside used to suffer its wonderful.
    That's your decade's quota gone, then.
    Naah, we're in the rain shadow of the Grampians so we're a lot drier than the west (about 1/3rd the rainfall of Lochaber) and high enough up from the coast to avoid coastal dreich. Living at 145m makes a big difference to my previous 15m!

    Having spent my childhood in the western foothills of a particularly sharp Pennine ridge and then a decade and a half in esturial flatlands it makes a real difference to be somewhere this dry!
    The hottest place in the UK the other day was Aberdeen. I bet that's as rare an event as Halley's comet.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,335

    Bright sunshine, Chiffchaff singing near the window - winter is now but a faded memory.

    Snow is forecast for Friday apparently
    Maybe on the top of Snowdon.
    BBC forecast was cold weather towards the end of the week with risk of snow, but they did not mention Snowdon
    Mentioned even dartmoor (above 200m). Snow at Easter is more common than at Christmas.
    Indeed snow highly unlikely for 95% of the population. Perhaps some on the very high ground where almost nobody lives.

    The Easter snow thing is a myth, by the way.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,932

    The froth coming off No, it always looked fleeting and was born of The Sturge being on the telly interrogated day after day about an issue nobody understands.
    There are no changes since this pollster apparently hasn't asked this question previously, so the direction is unclear.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,227

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    If you are a radical individualist then every vote is wasted except in any election where the top two are divided by one vote. Which only goes to show that elections are a communal not an individual enterprise.

    A system which allows the people peacefully to chuck out a government and install another will do for me. All it needs generally to keep government in reasonable bounds is that possibility. The UK since universal suffrage (1928) has never elected an extreme government.

  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,744

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,755
    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Blimey just noticed that the Army is likely to be reduced by 10,000 from the current 70,000. I note we're already between Ethiopia and Bangladesh in size of active forces.

    Now, more than ever, we need those on PB who have yearnings in that direction, indeed have displayed strategic aptitude in terms of likely campaigns, to sign up. We simply can't allow the country to be at such risk.

    You know who you are.

    I thought it was to 70,000?
    Ah yes. Soz. To 70,000. Still low.
    When I was a lad in Fallingbostel in the early 1970s we had over 50k troops in Germany alone and more than 20k in NI.

    As you will appreciate better than most our army is now too small to carry out any meaningful task for any extended period of time. We simply could not do what we did in Afghanistan for such an extended period for example. No doubt tech, specifically drones, will make absolute numbers less critical but there comes a point when what you have is a home defence force, not an army. I think that's where we are.
    Didn't the recent Armenian-Azeri war show that troops and tanks are virtually defenceless against well organised drones and missiles? That is the future. Large armies are finished. Analogue military in a world of digital wars.

    The same will soon be true of large aircraft carriers. Ooops
    We still need troops for UN peacekeeping and NATO operations and special forces in particular for counter terrorism operations.

    We need submarines to launch missiles and drones and aircraft carriers to launch airstrikes and also in the event, however unlikely, we needed to recapture the Falklands again. We also need to ensure we continue to have a larger army than Argentina on that basis too
    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted
    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    Normalcy bias

    Warfare is like science, it doesn't change for ages, and then, suddenly, there is a massive paradigm shift and everything changes very quickly

    https://twitter.com/eha_news/status/1372298354760224771?s=20

    https://twitter.com/mrtrsyns/status/1371579158556516355?s=20
    Bombardment from the air was supposed to hand victory to the French, and subsequently, the USA, in Indochina. It turned out differently.

    There are many people in the world who have no intention of just giving in for a quiet life.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,227

    The froth coming off No, it always looked fleeting and was born of The Sturge being on the telly interrogated day after day about an issue nobody understands.
    There is something about a 52/48 that rings a bell. Whatever can it be? I wonder if the SNP can remember what it is, and how keen they were on positively engaging with that outcome.

  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,812

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    There's nothing stopping younger types from enjoying a domestic holiday this year.

    If it means that the younger types can live as normal again, go clubbing at weekends, enjoy hook ups, live life, get jobs, go to uni, or anything else every other day of the year then a weekend at Ibiza can wait until next year.
    The same cohort that has given up so much for everyone else for 4-5% of their lives will be asked to wait another 4-5% of it? To protect the oldies who live in lovely houses in the West Country. And have all been vaccinated.

    I have been following the news fairly carefully but missed the transition from what I believed was the AZN jab giving protection against serious illness and death from the SA variant, and now no one being so sure.

    I know you are past the days you describe, but hundreds of thousands aren't. It's a big ask.
    No, lockdown is a big ask. Enjoying a weekend in the UK instead of Ibiza is not a big ask.

    The point is we need to ensure there are no more lockdowns, no more restrictions. If restrictions can be lifted in this country then we are 99% back to normal.

    If we allow weekends away but then end up having to go back into lockdown then is that worth it to you? Is that worth the young sacrificing another few months or a year?
    So at what point are we going to "live with it"? There will always be new variants. Just one more push, etc. I thought the SA variant was here and I also thought that "scientists" said that AZN was effective against it.

    We absolutely do need to ensure there are no more lockdowns but at some point - and now we have the Covid Act extended until October, oh just for furloughs, of course - we have to move on.
    Domestically we have to move on. By June we should be learning to live with it.

    Internationally? Once the rest of Europe has caught up with us. The rest of Europe is in various stages of lockdown, they've got no effective vaccine rollout worth its name and case rates are extremely high. It would be absolute insanity to throw away what we've done in the UK until the rest of Europe is more like us.

    By Christmas it might be plausible to have foreign holidays, I hope so as Europe is in for a torrid time if they've not vaccinated by next winter, but for now? Just enjoy yourselves in the UK - there's plenty to do in this country to enjoy yourself, you don't need to stay at home.

    No restrictions domestically though. That's the goal, that's the key. Throwing that away is madness.
    This is why the early "its our vaccine you can't have any" arguments were silly - until we all have it none of us are safe. We WILL still be allowed to go on holiday though - we were last summer so considering that we now have the vaccine why wouldn't we be allowed this summer?

    Its the *Tories*. Its not remotely only about health. Its about the economy and making clown trousers look popular. Down on Teesside, Ben Houchen International Airport has holiday sun flights lines up (for excruciating prices) - they aren't going to be able to resist enjoying the political plaudits of letting people jet off to Marbelloh or wherever.
    I thought the whole point was not that we would not be allowed by our own Government to go on holiday but that the vast majority of holiday destinations in Europe will not be open or that, if they are, the Government will insist on isolation for anyone coming back from those areas. That seems eminently sensible to me. There is not, nor ever will be a human right to take a foreign holiday.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:


    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted

    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    I agree with Sean F - yes, you can win a war remotely, but how do you hold the place afterwards? Say China did conquer Taiwan as suggested, acquiring Hong Kong unrest on steroids. In what way would that be good for China?

    What will I think become more common is autocracies making life very uncomfortable for non-pliant neighbouring countries - internet raids, odd explosions, energy supply issues, etc. "Just vote with us in the UN and buy our stuff more" will be quite alluring. So perhaps British interests are best served by becoming ever-better at helping other countries counter this sort of modern blackmail.
    The next generation of robots would be quite interesting in this respect.

    Imagine a spider like, robot - say the size of a small dog. All it does it find people in a designated area, and grab hold of them. So you'd end up handcuffed to 50Kg+ of steel and batteries. once it has grabbed hold of one limb, it grabs another and another. just immobilises people. Sticks the equivalent of a finger down any gun barrels.... Variants swarms over military vehicles, gumming up the works...

    Flood an area with a few 100K of them.....

    The paradigm shift to weaponised robots is ALREADY happening, people just haven't noticed

    https://twitter.com/DailyMail/status/1364321650691432448?s=20

    https://twitter.com/DarNevakaras/status/1364498780167557121?s=20
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259
    Foreign holidays may still be possible between countries that haven't had or don't have any cases of the South African variant.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,886
    edited March 2021

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    There's nothing stopping younger types from enjoying a domestic holiday this year.

    If it means that the younger types can live as normal again, go clubbing at weekends, enjoy hook ups, live life, get jobs, go to uni, or anything else every other day of the year then a weekend at Ibiza can wait until next year.
    The same cohort that has given up so much for everyone else for 4-5% of their lives will be asked to wait another 4-5% of it? To protect the oldies who live in lovely houses in the West Country. And have all been vaccinated.

    I have been following the news fairly carefully but missed the transition from what I believed was the AZN jab giving protection against serious illness and death from the SA variant, and now no one being so sure.

    I know you are past the days you describe, but hundreds of thousands aren't. It's a big ask.
    No, lockdown is a big ask. Enjoying a weekend in the UK instead of Ibiza is not a big ask.

    The point is we need to ensure there are no more lockdowns, no more restrictions. If restrictions can be lifted in this country then we are 99% back to normal.

    If we allow weekends away but then end up having to go back into lockdown then is that worth it to you? Is that worth the young sacrificing another few months or a year?
    So at what point are we going to "live with it"? There will always be new variants. Just one more push, etc. I thought the SA variant was here and I also thought that "scientists" said that AZN was effective against it.

    We absolutely do need to ensure there are no more lockdowns but at some point - and now we have the Covid Act extended until October, oh just for furloughs, of course - we have to move on.
    Domestically we have to move on. By June we should be learning to live with it.

    Internationally? Once the rest of Europe has caught up with us. The rest of Europe is in various stages of lockdown, they've got no effective vaccine rollout worth its name and case rates are extremely high. It would be absolute insanity to throw away what we've done in the UK until the rest of Europe is more like us.

    By Christmas it might be plausible to have foreign holidays, I hope so as Europe is in for a torrid time if they've not vaccinated by next winter, but for now? Just enjoy yourselves in the UK - there's plenty to do in this country to enjoy yourself, you don't need to stay at home.

    No restrictions domestically though. That's the goal, that's the key. Throwing that away is madness.
    This is why the early "its our vaccine you can't have any" arguments were silly - until we all have it none of us are safe. We WILL still be allowed to go on holiday though - we were last summer so considering that we now have the vaccine why wouldn't we be allowed this summer?

    Its the *Tories*. Its not remotely only about health. Its about the economy and making clown trousers look popular. Down on Teesside, Ben Houchen International Airport has holiday sun flights lines up (for excruciating prices) - they aren't going to be able to resist enjoying the political plaudits of letting people jet off to Marbelloh or wherever.
    I thought the whole point was not that we would not be allowed by our own Government to go on holiday but that the vast majority of holiday destinations in Europe will not be open or that, if they are, the Government will insist on isolation for anyone coming back from those areas. That seems eminently sensible to me. There is not, nor ever will be a human right to take a foreign holiday.
    Article 13 of the UN's UDHR disagrees with you.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    .

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    There's nothing stopping younger types from enjoying a domestic holiday this year.

    If it means that the younger types can live as normal again, go clubbing at weekends, enjoy hook ups, live life, get jobs, go to uni, or anything else every other day of the year then a weekend at Ibiza can wait until next year.
    The same cohort that has given up so much for everyone else for 4-5% of their lives will be asked to wait another 4-5% of it? To protect the oldies who live in lovely houses in the West Country. And have all been vaccinated.

    I have been following the news fairly carefully but missed the transition from what I believed was the AZN jab giving protection against serious illness and death from the SA variant, and now no one being so sure.

    I know you are past the days you describe, but hundreds of thousands aren't. It's a big ask.
    No, lockdown is a big ask. Enjoying a weekend in the UK instead of Ibiza is not a big ask.

    The point is we need to ensure there are no more lockdowns, no more restrictions. If restrictions can be lifted in this country then we are 99% back to normal.

    If we allow weekends away but then end up having to go back into lockdown then is that worth it to you? Is that worth the young sacrificing another few months or a year?
    So at what point are we going to "live with it"? There will always be new variants. Just one more push, etc. I thought the SA variant was here and I also thought that "scientists" said that AZN was effective against it.

    We absolutely do need to ensure there are no more lockdowns but at some point - and now we have the Covid Act extended until October, oh just for furloughs, of course - we have to move on.
    Domestically we have to move on. By June we should be learning to live with it.

    Internationally? Once the rest of Europe has caught up with us. The rest of Europe is in various stages of lockdown, they've got no effective vaccine rollout worth its name and case rates are extremely high. It would be absolute insanity to throw away what we've done in the UK until the rest of Europe is more like us.

    By Christmas it might be plausible to have foreign holidays, I hope so as Europe is in for a torrid time if they've not vaccinated by next winter, but for now? Just enjoy yourselves in the UK - there's plenty to do in this country to enjoy yourself, you don't need to stay at home.

    No restrictions domestically though. That's the goal, that's the key. Throwing that away is madness.
    This is why the early "its our vaccine you can't have any" arguments were silly - until we all have it none of us are safe. We WILL still be allowed to go on holiday though - we were last summer so considering that we now have the vaccine why wouldn't we be allowed this summer?

    Its the *Tories*. Its not remotely only about health. Its about the economy and making clown trousers look popular. Down on Teesside, Ben Houchen International Airport has holiday sun flights lines up (for excruciating prices) - they aren't going to be able to resist enjoying the political plaudits of letting people jet off to Marbelloh or wherever.
    True to form you have things backwards, especially the first paragraph. We are safer having used the vaccines, than if we'd exported them - and considering the UK paid more to get vaccine development built up than the entire EU put together its hardly rocket science why we now have more vaccines than they do. Yes eventually everyone needs to get the vaccine, but first things first. Vaccinate ourselves first, get back to normal domestically, then help the world.

    As for the economy, lockdown damages the economy far, far more than cancelling overseas holidays for one summer season. As for what last summer, well last summer the mistaken logic was that there was "no difference between cases in the UK and in the EU so why not go abroad?" The same won't be able to be said this summer.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Blimey just noticed that the Army is likely to be reduced by 10,000 from the current 70,000. I note we're already between Ethiopia and Bangladesh in size of active forces.

    Now, more than ever, we need those on PB who have yearnings in that direction, indeed have displayed strategic aptitude in terms of likely campaigns, to sign up. We simply can't allow the country to be at such risk.

    You know who you are.

    I thought it was to 70,000?
    Ah yes. Soz. To 70,000. Still low.
    When I was a lad in Fallingbostel in the early 1970s we had over 50k troops in Germany alone and more than 20k in NI.

    As you will appreciate better than most our army is now too small to carry out any meaningful task for any extended period of time. We simply could not do what we did in Afghanistan for such an extended period for example. No doubt tech, specifically drones, will make absolute numbers less critical but there comes a point when what you have is a home defence force, not an army. I think that's where we are.
    Didn't the recent Armenian-Azeri war show that troops and tanks are virtually defenceless against well organised drones and missiles? That is the future. Large armies are finished. Analogue military in a world of digital wars.

    The same will soon be true of large aircraft carriers. Ooops
    We still need troops for UN peacekeeping and NATO operations and special forces in particular for counter terrorism operations.

    We need submarines to launch missiles and drones and aircraft carriers to launch airstrikes and also in the event, however unlikely, we needed to recapture the Falklands again. We also need to ensure we continue to have a larger army than Argentina on that basis too
    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted
    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    Normalcy bias

    Warfare is like science, it doesn't change for ages, and then, suddenly, there is a massive paradigm shift and everything changes very quickly

    https://twitter.com/eha_news/status/1372298354760224771?s=20

    https://twitter.com/mrtrsyns/status/1371579158556516355?s=20
    Bombardment from the air was supposed to hand victory to the French, and subsequently, the USA, in Indochina. It turned out differently.

    There are many people in the world who have no intention of just giving in for a quiet life.
    But the (North) Vietnamese were prepared to live in the jungle and eat maggots for ten years to achieve freedom, they also had a large standing French and then American army to attack, causing doubts and then dismay in the invader

    A modern smart enemy wouldn't even send troops in (in any numbers). Why offer a human target? Just continuously rain down drones and missiles, deprive the foe of internet, and then send in the weaponised robo-dogs - see below

    This is the future, most people just don't get it yet
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,744
    Andy_JS said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    Why is there an assumption that younger people can't or don't want to go on holidays within the UK?
    It's a good question and I'm not sure of the answer. It is true, though, I think. I went to Yarmouth in summer 19 and the age profile of the holibobsmakers was skewed quite high. Although there was also a fair amount of 3G going on, grandparents, parents, kids all on holibobs together. The other thing I noticed was lots of mobility scooters.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259
    Breaking news:

    Welsh supermarket shoppers can now buy Barbara Cartland novels.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,604
    RobD said:

    The froth coming off No, it always looked fleeting and was born of The Sturge being on the telly interrogated day after day about an issue nobody understands.
    There are no changes since this pollster apparently hasn't asked this question previously, so the direction is unclear.
    Indeed, and all polls show Yes far below the near 60% excluding don't knows it was a few months ago with most having No ahead and of course there is not going to be an indyref2 allowed by this UK Tory government anyway
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    Andy_JS said:
    Meyer has said nothing pro-Orban. he's pointing out the EU has reduced itself to Orban's level. Rachman showing a touch of Strasbourg Syndrome there
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,337
    Andy_JS said:
    Interesting how the second guy misses the point - perhaps deliberately.

    Orban and Co. have another line of defence now - "National Emergency".
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,459

    I personally think the London voting system is a lot better than FPTP.

    I will be voting for Khan again, motivated ever more by the Tories continuing to fuck up London with their decisions

    I'm shocked that you are voting Labour I tell ya... shocked!
    I've voted Tory in the past.

    And Lib Dem.

    How's that for shocking?
    Tory? You're off my Christmas card list!
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    I think there are plenty of reasons to support FPTP but it does it a disservice when its supporters use half-truths to justify it.

    The fact is that the main benefits of FPTP are the singular local MP and the tendency to produce "strong" government.

    It all comes down to whether you believe those benefits outweigh the democratic costs.

    If you do, fair enough.

    But to pretend there's no downsides to FPTP at all? Come on.

    I don’t believe there is a democratic cost. After all this is a community selecting a representative not trying to reflect the percentage score someone got in an opinion poll
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    Cornwall, Devon and Bournemouth beach are going to be a nightmare this year if foreign holidays are out.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,071
    Andy_JS said:

    Breaking news:

    Welsh supermarket shoppers can now buy Barbara Cartland novels.

    What about SK Tremayne novels?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,543
    Floater said:
    Awaits the headline that “Concerns about the AZ vaccine have NEARLY DOUBLED in GB”.
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    Andy_JS said:

    Breaking news:

    Welsh supermarket shoppers can now buy Barbara Cartland novels.

    A nation rejoices .... or not
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    No, democracy is about winners and losers. The winners become the representatives, the losers don't.

    You can have other means of picking representatives. Like party apparatchiks picking people who are sound and putting them into the legislature, like China does, but that's not democracy.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    There's nothing stopping younger types from enjoying a domestic holiday this year.

    If it means that the younger types can live as normal again, go clubbing at weekends, enjoy hook ups, live life, get jobs, go to uni, or anything else every other day of the year then a weekend at Ibiza can wait until next year.
    The same cohort that has given up so much for everyone else for 4-5% of their lives will be asked to wait another 4-5% of it? To protect the oldies who live in lovely houses in the West Country. And have all been vaccinated.

    I have been following the news fairly carefully but missed the transition from what I believed was the AZN jab giving protection against serious illness and death from the SA variant, and now no one being so sure.

    I know you are past the days you describe, but hundreds of thousands aren't. It's a big ask.
    No, lockdown is a big ask. Enjoying a weekend in the UK instead of Ibiza is not a big ask.

    The point is we need to ensure there are no more lockdowns, no more restrictions. If restrictions can be lifted in this country then we are 99% back to normal.

    If we allow weekends away but then end up having to go back into lockdown then is that worth it to you? Is that worth the young sacrificing another few months or a year?
    So at what point are we going to "live with it"? There will always be new variants. Just one more push, etc. I thought the SA variant was here and I also thought that "scientists" said that AZN was effective against it.

    We absolutely do need to ensure there are no more lockdowns but at some point - and now we have the Covid Act extended until October, oh just for furloughs, of course - we have to move on.
    Domestically we have to move on. By June we should be learning to live with it.

    Internationally? Once the rest of Europe has caught up with us. The rest of Europe is in various stages of lockdown, they've got no effective vaccine rollout worth its name and case rates are extremely high. It would be absolute insanity to throw away what we've done in the UK until the rest of Europe is more like us.

    By Christmas it might be plausible to have foreign holidays, I hope so as Europe is in for a torrid time if they've not vaccinated by next winter, but for now? Just enjoy yourselves in the UK - there's plenty to do in this country to enjoy yourself, you don't need to stay at home.

    No restrictions domestically though. That's the goal, that's the key. Throwing that away is madness.
    This is why the early "its our vaccine you can't have any" arguments were silly - until we all have it none of us are safe. We WILL still be allowed to go on holiday though - we were last summer so considering that we now have the vaccine why wouldn't we be allowed this summer?

    Its the *Tories*. Its not remotely only about health. Its about the economy and making clown trousers look popular. Down on Teesside, Ben Houchen International Airport has holiday sun flights lines up (for excruciating prices) - they aren't going to be able to resist enjoying the political plaudits of letting people jet off to Marbelloh or wherever.
    I thought the whole point was not that we would not be allowed by our own Government to go on holiday but that the vast majority of holiday destinations in Europe will not be open or that, if they are, the Government will insist on isolation for anyone coming back from those areas. That seems eminently sensible to me. There is not, nor ever will be a human right to take a foreign holiday.
    Human right? Of course not. Political necessity? Absolutely. By the summer most of the UK population will be vaccinated so no political argument to even do quarantine on our return from Benidorm.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,932
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    There's nothing stopping younger types from enjoying a domestic holiday this year.

    If it means that the younger types can live as normal again, go clubbing at weekends, enjoy hook ups, live life, get jobs, go to uni, or anything else every other day of the year then a weekend at Ibiza can wait until next year.
    The same cohort that has given up so much for everyone else for 4-5% of their lives will be asked to wait another 4-5% of it? To protect the oldies who live in lovely houses in the West Country. And have all been vaccinated.

    I have been following the news fairly carefully but missed the transition from what I believed was the AZN jab giving protection against serious illness and death from the SA variant, and now no one being so sure.

    I know you are past the days you describe, but hundreds of thousands aren't. It's a big ask.
    No, lockdown is a big ask. Enjoying a weekend in the UK instead of Ibiza is not a big ask.

    The point is we need to ensure there are no more lockdowns, no more restrictions. If restrictions can be lifted in this country then we are 99% back to normal.

    If we allow weekends away but then end up having to go back into lockdown then is that worth it to you? Is that worth the young sacrificing another few months or a year?
    So at what point are we going to "live with it"? There will always be new variants. Just one more push, etc. I thought the SA variant was here and I also thought that "scientists" said that AZN was effective against it.

    We absolutely do need to ensure there are no more lockdowns but at some point - and now we have the Covid Act extended until October, oh just for furloughs, of course - we have to move on.
    Domestically we have to move on. By June we should be learning to live with it.

    Internationally? Once the rest of Europe has caught up with us. The rest of Europe is in various stages of lockdown, they've got no effective vaccine rollout worth its name and case rates are extremely high. It would be absolute insanity to throw away what we've done in the UK until the rest of Europe is more like us.

    By Christmas it might be plausible to have foreign holidays, I hope so as Europe is in for a torrid time if they've not vaccinated by next winter, but for now? Just enjoy yourselves in the UK - there's plenty to do in this country to enjoy yourself, you don't need to stay at home.

    No restrictions domestically though. That's the goal, that's the key. Throwing that away is madness.
    This is why the early "its our vaccine you can't have any" arguments were silly - until we all have it none of us are safe. We WILL still be allowed to go on holiday though - we were last summer so considering that we now have the vaccine why wouldn't we be allowed this summer?

    Its the *Tories*. Its not remotely only about health. Its about the economy and making clown trousers look popular. Down on Teesside, Ben Houchen International Airport has holiday sun flights lines up (for excruciating prices) - they aren't going to be able to resist enjoying the political plaudits of letting people jet off to Marbelloh or wherever.
    I thought the whole point was not that we would not be allowed by our own Government to go on holiday but that the vast majority of holiday destinations in Europe will not be open or that, if they are, the Government will insist on isolation for anyone coming back from those areas. That seems eminently sensible to me. There is not, nor ever will be a human right to take a foreign holiday.
    Article 13 of the UN's UDHR disagrees with you.
    I don't think the drafters (lol) had holidays in mind. Anyway,

    https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23916&LangID=E

    Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) guarantees freedom of movement. You should be able to travel around your own country and choose where you live.

    This right is not absolute. Countries can limit the freedom of people on their territory, such as confining them to their village during an Ebola outbreak, or compel them to leave their homes if, for example, they are threatened by a typhoon or other natural disaster. But there has to be an overriding public interest: it’s unlawful for a dictator to expel people from their homes to build a golf course. And evacuation of civilians during a war cannot be cover for ethnic cleansing.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,650
    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:
    Meyer has said nothing pro-Orban. he's pointing out the EU has reduced itself to Orban's level. Rachman showing a touch of Strasbourg Syndrome there
    Mary Riddell has a worse case.
    https://twitter.com/maryriddell/status/1373914075692929025?s=21
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,071

    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    No, democracy is about winners and losers. The winners become the representatives, the losers don't.

    You can have other means of picking representatives. Like party apparatchiks picking people who are sound and putting them into the legislature, like China does, but that's not democracy.
    I really dislike how you approach this subject. You completely disregard any valid criticism of FPTP and instead revert to ridiculous comparisons with China and other totalitarian regimes.

    Your interpretation of what democracy is not necessary the same as other people's. That doesn't mean they are wrong.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,952
    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    This is the difference between political philosophy and how people actually think in a nutshell, and why the former rarely survives contact with reality: most people don't actually derive any satisfaction from having voted for a party to spend five years in pointless opposition. All they know is they lost, and it'll be years before they have another chance to vote for a party that will have a chance of enacting an agenda they care about.
  • Time_to_LeaveTime_to_Leave Posts: 2,547
    Basically, if you support a large standing army in 2021, you’re more interested in parades than military effectiveness. This review looks eminently sensible to me.

    Will we be able to hold and contest ground against insurgents as in Iraq or Afghanistan? No. Do we want to? Also no.

    Our interests are served by being able to strike hard and fast against threats, not hold ground in someone else’s country and try to westernise it.

    Afghanistan is a good example actually - in retrospect we’d have been far better off with a simple mission of denying a safe space to terrorists via death from above and SF, but leaving the governance of Afghanistan to the Afghans.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,071
    Endillion said:

    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    This is the difference between political philosophy and how people actually think in a nutshell, and why the former rarely survives contact with reality: most people don't actually derive any satisfaction from having voted for a party to spend five years in pointless opposition. All they know is they lost, and it'll be years before they have another chance to vote for a party that will have a chance of enacting an agenda they care about.
    That's a function of our system and is what people are used to.

    A voter in a country with coalitions may not necessary think the same.
  • Floater said:
    Hardly a surprise that Labour's regional Scottish branch wants to talk up the EU in the run-up to the election.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,337

    Andy_JS said:

    Breaking news:

    Welsh supermarket shoppers can now buy Barbara Cartland novels.

    What about SK Tremayne novels?
    What about airport thrillers? Asking for several million... acquaintances on PB.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,543

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:


    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted

    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    I agree with Sean F - yes, you can win a war remotely, but how do you hold the place afterwards? Say China did conquer Taiwan as suggested, acquiring Hong Kong unrest on steroids. In what way would that be good for China?

    What will I think become more common is autocracies making life very uncomfortable for non-pliant neighbouring countries - internet raids, odd explosions, energy supply issues, etc. "Just vote with us in the UN and buy our stuff more" will be quite alluring. So perhaps British interests are best served by becoming ever-better at helping other countries counter this sort of modern blackmail.
    The next generation of robots would be quite interesting in this respect.

    Imagine a spider like, robot - say the size of a small dog. All it does it find people in a designated area, and grab hold of them. So you'd end up handcuffed to 50Kg+ of steel and batteries. once it has grabbed hold of one limb, it grabs another and another. just immobilises people. Sticks the equivalent of a finger down any gun barrels.... Variants swarms over military vehicles, gumming up the works...

    Flood an area with a few 100K of them.....
    https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot
    Pretty much already exists. Definitely not being delevoped out of a DARPA project, and definitely not a pile of military research cash behind it...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    edited March 2021

    Basically, if you support a large standing army in 2021, you’re more interested in parades than military effectiveness. This review looks eminently sensible to me.

    Will we be able to hold and contest ground against insurgents as in Iraq or Afghanistan? No. Do we want to? Also no.

    Our interests are served by being able to strike hard and fast against threats, not hold ground in someone else’s country and try to westernise it.

    Afghanistan is a good example actually - in retrospect we’d have been far better off with a simple mission of denying a safe space to terrorists via death from above and SF, but leaving the governance of Afghanistan to the Afghans.

    Yes, exactly. An Afghanistan-style war will never happen again

    Pour the resources saved from laying off troops and scrapping analogue tanks into cyber-warfare, internet deprival and control, nanobots and shrieking drones and GPT3-equipped digidogs with lethal laser-snouts. Seriously.

    And social media sock puppets with multiple identities. Crucial
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,744
    edited March 2021

    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    No, democracy is about winners and losers. The winners become the representatives, the losers don't.
    The parties can win or lose but not the voters. The voters get representation. If you vote for a party that gets the most votes, you have not "won". And if the party you vote for doesn't get the most votes, you have not "lost". This is key.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    Sandpit said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:


    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted

    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    I agree with Sean F - yes, you can win a war remotely, but how do you hold the place afterwards? Say China did conquer Taiwan as suggested, acquiring Hong Kong unrest on steroids. In what way would that be good for China?

    What will I think become more common is autocracies making life very uncomfortable for non-pliant neighbouring countries - internet raids, odd explosions, energy supply issues, etc. "Just vote with us in the UN and buy our stuff more" will be quite alluring. So perhaps British interests are best served by becoming ever-better at helping other countries counter this sort of modern blackmail.
    The next generation of robots would be quite interesting in this respect.

    Imagine a spider like, robot - say the size of a small dog. All it does it find people in a designated area, and grab hold of them. So you'd end up handcuffed to 50Kg+ of steel and batteries. once it has grabbed hold of one limb, it grabs another and another. just immobilises people. Sticks the equivalent of a finger down any gun barrels.... Variants swarms over military vehicles, gumming up the works...

    Flood an area with a few 100K of them.....
    https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot
    Pretty much already exists. Definitely not being delevoped out of a DARPA project, and definitely not a pile of military research cash behind it...
    https://twitter.com/DarNevakaras/status/1364498780167557121?s=20
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    No, democracy is about winners and losers. The winners become the representatives, the losers don't.

    You can have other means of picking representatives. Like party apparatchiks picking people who are sound and putting them into the legislature, like China does, but that's not democracy.
    I really dislike how you approach this subject. You completely disregard any valid criticism of FPTP and instead revert to ridiculous comparisons with China and other totalitarian regimes.

    Your interpretation of what democracy is not necessary the same as other people's. That doesn't mean they are wrong.
    I wasn't responding to "any valid criticism" though, I was responding to the absurd and ridiculous notion that it is "not about winners and losers".

    Every single voting system in the world is about winners and losers. The concept of winners and losers is a fundamental part of democracy. How you determine who the winner is varies depending upon the system, but the concept of winners and losers is not unique to FPTP it is a fundamental part of democracy itself.

    If the critics of FPTP actually used any "valid criticism" and didn't leap to absurd arguments then it wouldn't be necessary to show why the absurd is absurd.
  • FossFoss Posts: 694
    Sandpit said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:


    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted

    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    I agree with Sean F - yes, you can win a war remotely, but how do you hold the place afterwards? Say China did conquer Taiwan as suggested, acquiring Hong Kong unrest on steroids. In what way would that be good for China?

    What will I think become more common is autocracies making life very uncomfortable for non-pliant neighbouring countries - internet raids, odd explosions, energy supply issues, etc. "Just vote with us in the UN and buy our stuff more" will be quite alluring. So perhaps British interests are best served by becoming ever-better at helping other countries counter this sort of modern blackmail.
    The next generation of robots would be quite interesting in this respect.

    Imagine a spider like, robot - say the size of a small dog. All it does it find people in a designated area, and grab hold of them. So you'd end up handcuffed to 50Kg+ of steel and batteries. once it has grabbed hold of one limb, it grabs another and another. just immobilises people. Sticks the equivalent of a finger down any gun barrels.... Variants swarms over military vehicles, gumming up the works...

    Flood an area with a few 100K of them.....
    https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot
    Pretty much already exists. Definitely not being delevoped out of a DARPA project, and definitely not a pile of military research cash behind it...
    The world might have been a very different place if 5,000 of those had walked into Tora Bora in December 2001.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,744
    Floater said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Breaking news:

    Welsh supermarket shoppers can now buy Barbara Cartland novels.

    A nation rejoices .... or not
    Heard Drakeford speaking the other day. Very impressed with his nuanced and intelligent use of language.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,744

    I personally think the London voting system is a lot better than FPTP.

    I will be voting for Khan again, motivated ever more by the Tories continuing to fuck up London with their decisions

    I'm shocked that you are voting Labour I tell ya... shocked!
    I've voted Tory in the past.

    And Lib Dem.

    How's that for shocking?
    Tory? You're off my Christmas card list!
    Yes, I was a bit shaken up to read that. I think he's kidding.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Barnesian said:

    IanB2 said:

    An unusually silly lead from Herdson. Yes, the way SV limits second preferences is flawed, but having a second preference is better than none, and ensures both that fewer votes are wasted and that the winner has the support of at least half of the voters, which FPTnP doesn’t do. His suggestions that votes aren’t wasted under our current system is absurd. Indeed every flaw he seeks to call out under SV is worse when there is no second choice at all.

    Agreed. More votes are wasted in FPTP. So a nonsensical argument.
    But I also agree with David that this is a distraction from more important issues.
    People who aren’t the first choice prefer a system that gives them another chance
    Of course in FPTP the “winner” is usually the first choice of only a minority.
    Sure. The chosen representative of the local community. Not the lowest common denominator
    Tactical voting says hello
    Which is, in my view, a betrayal of your neighbours rights to select the representative that the community wants. I think it is disgraceful and have said so multiple tones before (usually when OGH gloats about how he is going to help elect lots of LibDem MPs by trading his sacred duty).
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Barnesian said:

    IanB2 said:

    An unusually silly lead from Herdson. Yes, the way SV limits second preferences is flawed, but having a second preference is better than none, and ensures both that fewer votes are wasted and that the winner has the support of at least half of the voters, which FPTnP doesn’t do. His suggestions that votes aren’t wasted under our current system is absurd. Indeed every flaw he seeks to call out under SV is worse when there is no second choice at all.

    Agreed. More votes are wasted in FPTP. So a nonsensical argument.
    But I also agree with David that this is a distraction from more important issues.
    People who aren’t the first choice prefer a system that gives them another chance
    Of course in FPTP the “winner” is usually the first choice of only a minority.
    Sure. The chosen representative of the local community. Not the lowest common denominator
    Tactical voting says hello
    Which is, in my view, a betrayal of your neighbours rights to select the representative that the community wants. I think it is disgraceful and have said so multiple tones before (usually when OGH gloats about how he is going to help elect lots of LibDem MPs by trading his sacred duty).
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    No, democracy is about winners and losers. The winners become the representatives, the losers don't.
    The parties can win or lose but not the voters. The voters get representation. If you vote for a party that gets the most votes, you have not "won". And if the party you vote for doesn't get the most votes, you have not "lost". This is key.
    Every single person in this country has a representative. Give me a postcode and you can lookup that person's representative.

    In each constituency the winner is the candidate with the most votes. The loser is every other candidate. The winner is elected, the losers are not, but the representative represents all constituents not just those who voted for them.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,699
    edited March 2021

    Basically, if you support a large standing army in 2021, you’re more interested in parades than military effectiveness. This review looks eminently sensible to me.

    Will we be able to hold and contest ground against insurgents as in Iraq or Afghanistan? No. Do we want to? Also no.

    Our interests are served by being able to strike hard and fast against threats, not hold ground in someone else’s country and try to westernise it.

    Afghanistan is a good example actually - in retrospect we’d have been far better off with a simple mission of denying a safe space to terrorists via death from above and SF, but leaving the governance of Afghanistan to the Afghans.

    In which case we are returning to a world where if your prays are answered "God" (or another far distant power) will come and smite your enemies / oppressors with drones from the air.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    Foss said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:


    We're not far from the moment when all the fighting will be done by robots and drones, remotely operated or self drive tanks, everything. It makes obvious sense, why risk a human life when a computer in a robot can do the job, and do it better?

    Unless civilisation collapses and the technology disappears it is likely there will never again be a large army sent to conquer a foreign land, by a major power. Except maybe China retaking Taiwan, but even there I wonder if they would bother with troops and landing ships and all that antiquated malarkey. A few hypersonic missiles, jam Taiwan's internet, retake the place without a boot on the ground. Sorted

    Yet, I'm sceptical how effective any of that would be against insurgents who are willing to take any level of casualties in order to win. A belief that superior equipment can - on its own - win wars, has not proved well-founded.
    I agree with Sean F - yes, you can win a war remotely, but how do you hold the place afterwards? Say China did conquer Taiwan as suggested, acquiring Hong Kong unrest on steroids. In what way would that be good for China?

    What will I think become more common is autocracies making life very uncomfortable for non-pliant neighbouring countries - internet raids, odd explosions, energy supply issues, etc. "Just vote with us in the UN and buy our stuff more" will be quite alluring. So perhaps British interests are best served by becoming ever-better at helping other countries counter this sort of modern blackmail.
    The next generation of robots would be quite interesting in this respect.

    Imagine a spider like, robot - say the size of a small dog. All it does it find people in a designated area, and grab hold of them. So you'd end up handcuffed to 50Kg+ of steel and batteries. once it has grabbed hold of one limb, it grabs another and another. just immobilises people. Sticks the equivalent of a finger down any gun barrels.... Variants swarms over military vehicles, gumming up the works...

    Flood an area with a few 100K of them.....
    https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot
    Pretty much already exists. Definitely not being delevoped out of a DARPA project, and definitely not a pile of military research cash behind it...
    The world might have been a very different place if 5,000 of those had walked into Tora Bora in December 2001.
    These robots will change warfare more than the tank in 1917. It is perhaps more akin to the invention of manned flight, in its military potential
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,604

    Basically, if you support a large standing army in 2021, you’re more interested in parades than military effectiveness. This review looks eminently sensible to me.

    Will we be able to hold and contest ground against insurgents as in Iraq or Afghanistan? No. Do we want to? Also no.

    Our interests are served by being able to strike hard and fast against threats, not hold ground in someone else’s country and try to westernise it.

    Afghanistan is a good example actually - in retrospect we’d have been far better off with a simple mission of denying a safe space to terrorists via death from above and SF, but leaving the governance of Afghanistan to the Afghans.

    It was only by invading Afghanistan we were able to force Al Qaeda from the country into Pakistan where US special forces were able to kill Bin Laden, it was not drones that killed him.

    The governance of Afghanistan is now made up of democratically elected Afghans
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,697

    Andy_JS said:

    Breaking news:

    Welsh supermarket shoppers can now buy Barbara Cartland novels.

    What about SK Tremayne novels?
    Occasional Penarth resident S K Tremayne no less..

    Does Wales do blue plaques?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,886
    RobD said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    There's nothing stopping younger types from enjoying a domestic holiday this year.

    If it means that the younger types can live as normal again, go clubbing at weekends, enjoy hook ups, live life, get jobs, go to uni, or anything else every other day of the year then a weekend at Ibiza can wait until next year.
    The same cohort that has given up so much for everyone else for 4-5% of their lives will be asked to wait another 4-5% of it? To protect the oldies who live in lovely houses in the West Country. And have all been vaccinated.

    I have been following the news fairly carefully but missed the transition from what I believed was the AZN jab giving protection against serious illness and death from the SA variant, and now no one being so sure.

    I know you are past the days you describe, but hundreds of thousands aren't. It's a big ask.
    No, lockdown is a big ask. Enjoying a weekend in the UK instead of Ibiza is not a big ask.

    The point is we need to ensure there are no more lockdowns, no more restrictions. If restrictions can be lifted in this country then we are 99% back to normal.

    If we allow weekends away but then end up having to go back into lockdown then is that worth it to you? Is that worth the young sacrificing another few months or a year?
    So at what point are we going to "live with it"? There will always be new variants. Just one more push, etc. I thought the SA variant was here and I also thought that "scientists" said that AZN was effective against it.

    We absolutely do need to ensure there are no more lockdowns but at some point - and now we have the Covid Act extended until October, oh just for furloughs, of course - we have to move on.
    Domestically we have to move on. By June we should be learning to live with it.

    Internationally? Once the rest of Europe has caught up with us. The rest of Europe is in various stages of lockdown, they've got no effective vaccine rollout worth its name and case rates are extremely high. It would be absolute insanity to throw away what we've done in the UK until the rest of Europe is more like us.

    By Christmas it might be plausible to have foreign holidays, I hope so as Europe is in for a torrid time if they've not vaccinated by next winter, but for now? Just enjoy yourselves in the UK - there's plenty to do in this country to enjoy yourself, you don't need to stay at home.

    No restrictions domestically though. That's the goal, that's the key. Throwing that away is madness.
    This is why the early "its our vaccine you can't have any" arguments were silly - until we all have it none of us are safe. We WILL still be allowed to go on holiday though - we were last summer so considering that we now have the vaccine why wouldn't we be allowed this summer?

    Its the *Tories*. Its not remotely only about health. Its about the economy and making clown trousers look popular. Down on Teesside, Ben Houchen International Airport has holiday sun flights lines up (for excruciating prices) - they aren't going to be able to resist enjoying the political plaudits of letting people jet off to Marbelloh or wherever.
    I thought the whole point was not that we would not be allowed by our own Government to go on holiday but that the vast majority of holiday destinations in Europe will not be open or that, if they are, the Government will insist on isolation for anyone coming back from those areas. That seems eminently sensible to me. There is not, nor ever will be a human right to take a foreign holiday.
    Article 13 of the UN's UDHR disagrees with you.
    I don't think the drafters (lol) had holidays in mind. Anyway,

    https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23916&LangID=E

    Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) guarantees freedom of movement. You should be able to travel around your own country and choose where you live.

    This right is not absolute. Countries can limit the freedom of people on their territory, such as confining them to their village during an Ebola outbreak, or compel them to leave their homes if, for example, they are threatened by a typhoon or other natural disaster. But there has to be an overriding public interest: it’s unlawful for a dictator to expel people from their homes to build a golf course. And evacuation of civilians during a war cannot be cover for ethnic cleansing.
    The point is it is a human right to leave your country.

    How that is interpreted and what exemptions each country decided to impose is secondary.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,697
    Leon said:



    And social media sock puppets with multiple identities. Crucial

    What did you do in the cyber war, daddy?
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,227

    Endillion said:

    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    This is the difference between political philosophy and how people actually think in a nutshell, and why the former rarely survives contact with reality: most people don't actually derive any satisfaction from having voted for a party to spend five years in pointless opposition. All they know is they lost, and it'll be years before they have another chance to vote for a party that will have a chance of enacting an agenda they care about.
    That's a function of our system and is what people are used to.

    A voter in a country with coalitions may not necessary think the same.
    It must be great living in North Korea when everyone you vote for wins.

  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,144
    Andy_JS said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    Cornwall, Devon and Bournemouth beach are going to be a nightmare this year if foreign holidays are out.
    I went to Cornwall last August. It was busy, but not THAT much busier than previous Augusts. In any given August it is pretty much full anyway - there's not that much opportunity for more tourists than normal. There'll be day trippers, but most of Cornwall is beyond the day-trip reach of most of the country.

  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,932
    TOPPING said:

    RobD said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    This is a risk we should take. With tests at the airport and a few days later it is manageable. There will always be some danger of infection, but we can't put normal life on hold forever.
    Pop Quiz: do you prefer:

    a) UK life largely back to normal for 2021, very limited risk of more lockdowns, social life back to having no limitations, pubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants all open, freedom to holiday anywhere in the UK - just not foreign holibobs until 2022;

    or

    b) foreign holibobs for Brits allowed from June 2021, but that comes with a material risk that a new variant comes into the UK to which our vaccines are far less effective. Consequent risk of lockdowns and closures.

    I know where I stand.
    So do we.

    A well-off old bloke who has seen the world and now lives in a very comfortable pad in a charming area with an unbroken view of the wonderful British countryside.

    Other, younger types not so much.
    There's nothing stopping younger types from enjoying a domestic holiday this year.

    If it means that the younger types can live as normal again, go clubbing at weekends, enjoy hook ups, live life, get jobs, go to uni, or anything else every other day of the year then a weekend at Ibiza can wait until next year.
    The same cohort that has given up so much for everyone else for 4-5% of their lives will be asked to wait another 4-5% of it? To protect the oldies who live in lovely houses in the West Country. And have all been vaccinated.

    I have been following the news fairly carefully but missed the transition from what I believed was the AZN jab giving protection against serious illness and death from the SA variant, and now no one being so sure.

    I know you are past the days you describe, but hundreds of thousands aren't. It's a big ask.
    No, lockdown is a big ask. Enjoying a weekend in the UK instead of Ibiza is not a big ask.

    The point is we need to ensure there are no more lockdowns, no more restrictions. If restrictions can be lifted in this country then we are 99% back to normal.

    If we allow weekends away but then end up having to go back into lockdown then is that worth it to you? Is that worth the young sacrificing another few months or a year?
    So at what point are we going to "live with it"? There will always be new variants. Just one more push, etc. I thought the SA variant was here and I also thought that "scientists" said that AZN was effective against it.

    We absolutely do need to ensure there are no more lockdowns but at some point - and now we have the Covid Act extended until October, oh just for furloughs, of course - we have to move on.
    Domestically we have to move on. By June we should be learning to live with it.

    Internationally? Once the rest of Europe has caught up with us. The rest of Europe is in various stages of lockdown, they've got no effective vaccine rollout worth its name and case rates are extremely high. It would be absolute insanity to throw away what we've done in the UK until the rest of Europe is more like us.

    By Christmas it might be plausible to have foreign holidays, I hope so as Europe is in for a torrid time if they've not vaccinated by next winter, but for now? Just enjoy yourselves in the UK - there's plenty to do in this country to enjoy yourself, you don't need to stay at home.

    No restrictions domestically though. That's the goal, that's the key. Throwing that away is madness.
    This is why the early "its our vaccine you can't have any" arguments were silly - until we all have it none of us are safe. We WILL still be allowed to go on holiday though - we were last summer so considering that we now have the vaccine why wouldn't we be allowed this summer?

    Its the *Tories*. Its not remotely only about health. Its about the economy and making clown trousers look popular. Down on Teesside, Ben Houchen International Airport has holiday sun flights lines up (for excruciating prices) - they aren't going to be able to resist enjoying the political plaudits of letting people jet off to Marbelloh or wherever.
    I thought the whole point was not that we would not be allowed by our own Government to go on holiday but that the vast majority of holiday destinations in Europe will not be open or that, if they are, the Government will insist on isolation for anyone coming back from those areas. That seems eminently sensible to me. There is not, nor ever will be a human right to take a foreign holiday.
    Article 13 of the UN's UDHR disagrees with you.
    I don't think the drafters (lol) had holidays in mind. Anyway,

    https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23916&LangID=E

    Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) guarantees freedom of movement. You should be able to travel around your own country and choose where you live.

    This right is not absolute. Countries can limit the freedom of people on their territory, such as confining them to their village during an Ebola outbreak, or compel them to leave their homes if, for example, they are threatened by a typhoon or other natural disaster. But there has to be an overriding public interest: it’s unlawful for a dictator to expel people from their homes to build a golf course. And evacuation of civilians during a war cannot be cover for ethnic cleansing.
    The point is it is a human right to leave your country.

    How that is interpreted and what exemptions each country decided to impose is secondary.
    The UN themselves are saying here it's not an absolute right, otherwise the first one in that article would imply I could freely walk into your property.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,886
    Andy_JS said:

    Foreign holidays may still be possible between countries that haven't had or don't have any cases of the South African variant.

    Not the UK then.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,071
    edited March 2021

    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    No, democracy is about winners and losers. The winners become the representatives, the losers don't.

    You can have other means of picking representatives. Like party apparatchiks picking people who are sound and putting them into the legislature, like China does, but that's not democracy.
    I really dislike how you approach this subject. You completely disregard any valid criticism of FPTP and instead revert to ridiculous comparisons with China and other totalitarian regimes.

    Your interpretation of what democracy is not necessary the same as other people's. That doesn't mean they are wrong.
    I wasn't responding to "any valid criticism" though, I was responding to the absurd and ridiculous notion that it is "not about winners and losers".

    Every single voting system in the world is about winners and losers. The concept of winners and losers is a fundamental part of democracy. How you determine who the winner is varies depending upon the system, but the concept of winners and losers is not unique to FPTP it is a fundamental part of democracy itself.

    If the critics of FPTP actually used any "valid criticism" and didn't leap to absurd arguments then it wouldn't be necessary to show why the absurd is absurd.
    But you always miss the point, deliberately might I add.

    Let's take Israel.

    In Israel my vote directly influences the amount of seats a party gets in their parliament regardless of whether my party "wins" or "loses".

    It's not about "winners" and "losers". It's about the amount of representation.

    You view a General Election as being about one thing only - who the government is. If you view a GE like that, then FPTP is a pretty good system and the degree of representation is immaterial.

    However if you view a General Election about being representation in a legislature, it is hard to justify that a 30% vote share can result in a majority. It's hard to justify how a party who receives a 30% vote share can be seen as a "winner".

    Like I said, there's plenty of factors in favour of FPTP but there are obvious downsides that must be acknowledged.
  • HYUFD said:

    Basically, if you support a large standing army in 2021, you’re more interested in parades than military effectiveness. This review looks eminently sensible to me.

    Will we be able to hold and contest ground against insurgents as in Iraq or Afghanistan? No. Do we want to? Also no.

    Our interests are served by being able to strike hard and fast against threats, not hold ground in someone else’s country and try to westernise it.

    Afghanistan is a good example actually - in retrospect we’d have been far better off with a simple mission of denying a safe space to terrorists via death from above and SF, but leaving the governance of Afghanistan to the Afghans.

    It was only by invading Afghanistan we were able to force Al Qaeda from the country into Pakistan where US special forces were able to kill Bin Laden, it was not drones that killed him.

    The governance of Afghanistan is now made up of democratically elected Afghans
    Massive fraud corrupted their last election.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    HYUFD said:

    Basically, if you support a large standing army in 2021, you’re more interested in parades than military effectiveness. This review looks eminently sensible to me.

    Will we be able to hold and contest ground against insurgents as in Iraq or Afghanistan? No. Do we want to? Also no.

    Our interests are served by being able to strike hard and fast against threats, not hold ground in someone else’s country and try to westernise it.

    Afghanistan is a good example actually - in retrospect we’d have been far better off with a simple mission of denying a safe space to terrorists via death from above and SF, but leaving the governance of Afghanistan to the Afghans.

    It was only by invading Afghanistan we were able to force Al Qaeda from the country into Pakistan where US special forces were able to kill Bin Laden, it was not drones that killed him.

    The governance of Afghanistan is now made up of democratically elected Afghans
    Yes but now - or very soon, in five or ten years - we will be able to send in robots and drones to do a BETTER job than soldiers on the ground. A soldier is absurdly vulnerable, to capture, torture, injury, death - and weariness, sadness, anomie, human error - and if you lose too many men the public at home want the war to end

    The public won't care if you lose 10,000 weaponised digidogs a day (which you won't). That means a war can be fought relentlessly and endlessly, the only limit is money and industrial capacity
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259
    edited March 2021
    Cookie said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Just say no.

    Johnson's cabinet need to hold the line on this. No bloody foreign holidays this summer. Having such a holiday is very nice but it is a First World thing. People can live without it.
    Cornwall, Devon and Bournemouth beach are going to be a nightmare this year if foreign holidays are out.
    I went to Cornwall last August. It was busy, but not THAT much busier than previous Augusts. In any given August it is pretty much full anyway - there's not that much opportunity for more tourists than normal. There'll be day trippers, but most of Cornwall is beyond the day-trip reach of most of the country.

    Yes but even last year foreign trips weren't completely out of the question. A member of my family went to Iceland for two weeks in August, for instance. It may have to be a case of holidaying in Stoke on Trent or Rotherham this year, to avoid the crowds.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 57,974
    "they are prepared to sacrifice the lives of EU citizens for the sake of this ridiculous political squabble."

    "I'm surprised there isn't more of a popular backlash in the EU"

    https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1373948110188253188
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,071
    algarkirk said:

    Endillion said:

    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    This is the difference between political philosophy and how people actually think in a nutshell, and why the former rarely survives contact with reality: most people don't actually derive any satisfaction from having voted for a party to spend five years in pointless opposition. All they know is they lost, and it'll be years before they have another chance to vote for a party that will have a chance of enacting an agenda they care about.
    That's a function of our system and is what people are used to.

    A voter in a country with coalitions may not necessary think the same.
    It must be great living in North Korea when everyone you vote for wins.

    You completely missed the point. Well done.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,952

    kinabalu said:

    IanB2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Really not sure I get this argument. Why is a vote "wasted" if I don't choose one of those who get through to the final round but not "wasted" when I vote for someone that loses in FPTP?

    We certainly have more important things to worry about, on that I agree.

    Because your vote is not counted. Literally. You wanted to register a second preference, the system allowed you to do so, and yet it was not counted at all; your voice is missing from the result, not as a consequence of abstention but because of the vaguary and chance of the mechanism and combined vote.

    At least, when you vote for a losing candidate under FPTP, your choice for them (and implicitly, against the winner), is recorded and acts as political mandate for or against the winner, and helps frame actions within the politicians term and future elections.
    Your arguments are getting more and more pitiful.
    Yours are getting more and more evidence-free. You simply make an assertion, mix in some abuse and assume that the natural virtue will shine though.
    To see a Tory try to claim there are no wasted votes when we know the Tories will be round telling voters not to waste their votes on third parties is a level of hypocrisy which I didn't expect from you.
    Voting system and the rhetoric of campaigning are two different subjects. BTW if you assume that voting is a community activity not an individual one the concept of a wasted vote doesn't really mean anything.

    Yes but the Tories know that the system effectively ensures most third party votes are wasted (ex where very geographically concentrated) and explicitly uses that to push voters toward a choice between itself and its favourite opponent.

    To have Herdson sink as low as claiming there are no wasted votes and resorting to specious argument like suggesting those votes somehow influence the mandate, is sickening.

    I can only guess that a lead with such little integrity has been written because its author needs or wants to ingratiate with someone in his party
    Third votes aren't wasted in the UK: They lost.

    There's a difference.
    Try and get football off your brain. Democracy is about representation not winners and losers.
    No, democracy is about winners and losers. The winners become the representatives, the losers don't.

    You can have other means of picking representatives. Like party apparatchiks picking people who are sound and putting them into the legislature, like China does, but that's not democracy.
    I really dislike how you approach this subject. You completely disregard any valid criticism of FPTP and instead revert to ridiculous comparisons with China and other totalitarian regimes.

    Your interpretation of what democracy is not necessary the same as other people's. That doesn't mean they are wrong.
    I wasn't responding to "any valid criticism" though, I was responding to the absurd and ridiculous notion that it is "not about winners and losers".

    Every single voting system in the world is about winners and losers. The concept of winners and losers is a fundamental part of democracy. How you determine who the winner is varies depending upon the system, but the concept of winners and losers is not unique to FPTP it is a fundamental part of democracy itself.

    If the critics of FPTP actually used any "valid criticism" and didn't leap to absurd arguments then it wouldn't be necessary to show why the absurd is absurd.
    But you always miss the point, deliberately might I add.

    Let's take Israel.

    In Israel my vote directly influences the amount of seats a party gets in their parliament regardless of whether my party "wins" or "loses".

    It's not about "winners" and "losers". It's about the amount of representation.

    You view a General Election as being about one thing only - who the government is. If you view a GE like that, then FPTP is a pretty good system and the degree of representation is immaterial.

    However if you view a General Election about being representation in a legislature, it is hard to justify that a 30% vote share can result in a majority. It's hard to justify how a party who receives a 30% vote share can be seen as a "winner".

    Like I said, there's plenty of factors in favour of FPTP but there are obvious downsides that must be acknowledged.
    I don't think you can fairly say that sentence I've bolded above, and then argue for PR, which will typically, almost at random, create "winners" and "losers" among parties with much smaller vote shares than 30%, based solely on which numbers happen to add up to 50.1%+.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:
    Meyer has said nothing pro-Orban. he's pointing out the EU has reduced itself to Orban's level. Rachman showing a touch of Strasbourg Syndrome there
    Mary Riddell has a worse case.
    https://twitter.com/maryriddell/status/1373914075692929025?s=21
    There is a real danger here for hardcore Remoaners - ie the 5-10% who are still "backing" the EU over Britain, blaming us not Brussels, hoping our grannies die to save the career of President Macron, and so forth.

    At some point the outraged public will turn on THEM, if they keep this up. Someone like Riddell should just STFU
This discussion has been closed.