Unusual map of the north there. Note that it includes a small chunk of the East Midland (far north of Derbyshire). Not saying this is wrong - in fact it fits my own personal definition quite neatly - but not a definition I've ever seen in an official context.
The border by the Humber looks to be the old south Humberside boundary.
Yes. High Peak counted as North in this, but I think otherwise sticking to the 3 Northern regions, including the Lincs unitaries..
So NIP is another Corbyn/Trot cult outfit? Or am I misunderstanding her appointment as candidate?
Trot loonies embarking on another madcap adventure. The North (however you define it) is not a colony in need of liberation. And even if it were the last thing on God's Earth it would need would be a Marxist uprising.
God alone knows what they're going to come up with next. The Popular Front for the Liberation of East Sussex? The mind boggles.
Unusual map of the north there. Note that it includes a small chunk of the East Midland (far north of Derbyshire). Not saying this is wrong - in fact it fits my own personal definition quite neatly - but not a definition I've ever seen in an official context.
The border by the Humber looks to be the old south Humberside boundary.
Yes. High Peak counted as North in this, but I think otherwise sticking to the 3 Northern regions, including the Lincs unitaries..
South Yorkshire seems to be missing?
If only it was.
Is their slogan really 'it's about bloody time'? Exceptional work.
This is a correct reading of what happened. It was mistakes by SAGE that indeed dictated our fate. I also agree -- and argued on pb.com at the time -- that it is wrong to punish individual scientists, but SAGE is an anachronism better suited to the 1960s. There were scientific blogs that picked out SAGE's mistakes weeks before SAGE did.
Jeremy Hunt appears to be the first politician to have deduced all this.
Rory Stewart was pointing out in real time last March the limitations of Sage and that while they gave good scientific analysis of what was going on it was up to the politicians to ask the right questions, understand properly the limitations of the answers and take decisive action based on the overall picture rather than hiding behind the 'scientific advice'.
But, I think SAGE did **not** give a good scientific analysis of what was going on. That is the problem.
Only other scientists could have detected the errors in what was the groupthink of SAGE in Spring last year.
I don't think it is fair to expect politicians -- without much or any scientific training -- to ask the right questions when presented with modelling/statistical analyses.
They were giving the answers backed up by the data available to them but unfortunately that data was very limited and still developing so their answers had large uncertainties on them.
Politicians don't need to understand the detail of statistical modelling however they should know the basics of how to analyse a problem and ask what the limitations of our understanding are and what the downsides of any gaps in knowledge could be.
In the end, some leaders were good at this and others weren't.
Any thoughts from anyone on this 3.7m for Ireland story?
I wouldn't be surprised if we did it quietly in June. I'd be surprised if we did it in April though, I think it would be pretty awful for the government to give doses away while 20m under 50s are waiting to be vaccinated.
I note that their biggest day was 20k vaccines so a rounding error for UK would make a difference.
So who fed the Times "Easter", which should coincide with the end of 1st jabs fro Groups 5-9?
I would see Wockhardt as Plan B in case the EU interfere in Spain.
I recommend the Sky TV docu "Through The Storm" - for a brutal reliving of the Peak UK Covid Crisis, Christmas-late January. They base themselves in the Royal Free in Hampstead. Grim grim grim
How quickly we forget how awful it was
A lot of brave NHS workers are gonna need PTSD care, comparable to soldiers after an appalling war
Unusual map of the north there. Note that it includes a small chunk of the East Midland (far north of Derbyshire). Not saying this is wrong - in fact it fits my own personal definition quite neatly - but not a definition I've ever seen in an official context.
The border by the Humber looks to be the old south Humberside boundary.
Yes. High Peak counted as North in this, but I think otherwise sticking to the 3 Northern regions, including the Lincs unitaries..
So NIP is another Corbyn/Trot cult outfit? Or am I misunderstanding her appointment as candidate?
Trot loonies embarking on another madcap adventure. The North (however you define it) is not a colony in need of liberation. And even if it were the last thing on God's Earth it would need would be a Marxist uprising.
God alone knows what they're going to come up with next. The Popular Front for the Liberation of East Sussex? The mind boggles.
The People's Soviet of Hartlepool has a ring to it.
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Unusual map of the north there. Note that it includes a small chunk of the East Midland (far north of Derbyshire). Not saying this is wrong - in fact it fits my own personal definition quite neatly - but not a definition I've ever seen in an official context.
The border by the Humber looks to be the old south Humberside boundary.
Yes. High Peak counted as North in this, but I think otherwise sticking to the 3 Northern regions, including the Lincs unitaries..
South Yorkshire seems to be missing?
If only it was.
Is their slogan really 'it's about bloody time'? Exceptional work.
Sorry, belay that. Thought it extended quite a bit south of the Humber.
Our case rates/deaths/hospitalisations are all super low which is great. Our vaccine programme is heading to the moon.
Meanwhile we point our fingers and laugh at the EU countries with their spiralling case rates and new lockdowns.
However. We have been locked down for three months. Nothing open. Nothing allowed. Virtually. I don't think this has been the case in most of Europe.
Vaccine efficacy is somewhere over 90%. That means that when we come out of lockdown, plenty of people will get this disease.
The two things that are giving me some degree of comfort are Israel and schools having been back without an explosion of cases.
A few points arise from this -
1. Most people of working age have continued to go to work. Leaving out the furloughed and unemployed only 30% (at the very most) of the working population work from home. 2. Schools went back 3 weeks ago. 3. Even the vaccinated will likely catch Covid at some point. Vaccination, longer term, defangs the disease, the virus won’t be eliminated. The flu virus that caused the 1918-20 pandemic and a number of other coronaviruses are still in circulation (see my earlier posts re the 1889 pandemic) all of which caused havoc when they first emerged. Vaccines are training the population’s immune systems to identify and deal with this novel threat without the pain and suffering of actually having to catch it. 4. Ireland’s lockdown is at least as harsh as ours, if not more so, but they are not having the success we are in keeping cases down without as good a vaccination drive.
I don't think Ireland has as good a Test & Trace system as ours either, People mock T&T but I do believe its having a significant impact now, the proportion of cases traced have been extremely high for months now.
That's not true. The Irish system actually tests all contacts of a case, identifying those which are themselves cases, and so might have contacts that also need to isolate.
That's at least one step better than the UK version.
Unusual map of the north there. Note that it includes a small chunk of the East Midland (far north of Derbyshire). Not saying this is wrong - in fact it fits my own personal definition quite neatly - but not a definition I've ever seen in an official context.
The border by the Humber looks to be the old south Humberside boundary.
Yes. High Peak counted as North in this, but I think otherwise sticking to the 3 Northern regions, including the Lincs unitaries..
So NIP is another Corbyn/Trot cult outfit? Or am I misunderstanding her appointment as candidate?
Trot loonies embarking on another madcap adventure. The North (however you define it) is not a colony in need of liberation. And even if it were the last thing on God's Earth it would need would be a Marxist uprising.
God alone knows what they're going to come up with next. The Popular Front for the Liberation of East Sussex? The mind boggles.
The People's Soviet of Hartlepool has a ring to it.
Quite what awful crimes the people of Hartlepool are meant to have committed to justify such a fate one hardly dare imagine.
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
And at what point are the government going to consult those in hospitality who have to implement this rubbish? Like, for instance, the unvaccinated staff?
Surely staff not yet vaccinated will be better protected if all their customers have to sow they have been vaccinated?
Anyway, I thought the idea is to introduce it once all adults have been offered a vaccine?
In which case, why do we need it?
Answer: we don't.
If you believe the vaccine passport/app/pseudo-id card will not be made permanent then I have a bridge to sell you.
Don't let them take us down this road on the "it's only temporary guv" line.
I don't. I think it is a very sinister development and will oppose it with everything I've got.
NFW am I having an ID care of any kind. The state does not give me permission to live. It is there to serve me not enslave me. So it can piss right off.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
So what is the new woke term we have to use to avoid being labelled as racist?
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
It is a fair point that labels for minority groups have a limited shelf life of acceptability and are changed a few times over our lifetimes, hardly a big issue though.
The Scots know, whether they admit it or not, that leaving the UK will at best make them poorer and at worst lead to ‘economic havoc.’
Just as the Irish did in 1922.
That on its own is not going to be enough to persuade them it is a bad idea to do it.
Either make a positive case for staying together, or accept Scotland will go Indie.
Good night.
Quite. In much the same way, Brexit Leave voters were not swayed by economic arguments.
The economic arguments in the two cases are different in one crucial respect. The UK was a substantial net contributor to the EU. Scotland is a substantial net beneficiary from the UK.
Boris Johnson's shiny red NHS bus trick won't work for the Scottish independence movement. They can't promise to spend the recovered contributions on shiny baubles - they have to convince the soft middle of public opinion either that they somehow won't be subject to serious tax rises and spending cuts, or that tax rises and spending cuts are a price worth paying.
It's still doable - British identity is in decline everywhere, elderly unionists are shuffling off all the time - but victory in a second referendum is not a foregone conclusion.
The problem is that the two sides don't agree whether Scotland is a substantial net beneficiary from the UK, or the other way around.
Unionists certainly believe that Scotland is a substantial recipient. Nationalists believe that Scotland is a net contributor.
Which is right? Does it matter? It isn't about what the truth is, its about what they believe and people will believe whichever they want to believe.
The truth will matter post-independence if that's voted for, but by then its too late.
We know what the majority of the electorate believes because of the outcome of the first vote. If the soft middle had thought they'd be better rather than worse off they would've stampeded for the exit.
Its close enough that the soft middle can be convinced if they want to be convinced, its not a deal-breaker.
If 7% want to be convinced that Scotland going Independent is for the best, going from 45/55 to the magic/cursed number, then they'll be open to the idea that Independence will make them better off.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
So what is the new woke term we have to use to avoid being labelled as racist?
They might go for "such-and-such of colour" for a while, as a holding position, but that phrase is also getting some flak in America, and is not long for this world. I notice the Guardian has recently adopted POC, comprehensively, even as it fades from fashion
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
Except I didn't. As you know. You probably thought you could say this with me ostensibly not being here. But you forget that I'm never truly not here.
Point is, I don't get hung up on this sort of thing. It's a distraction.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
Except I didn't. As you know. You probably thought you could say this with me ostensibly not being here. But you forget that I'm never truly not here.
Point is, I don't get hung up on this sort of thing. It's a distraction.
Unusual map of the north there. Note that it includes a small chunk of the East Midland (far north of Derbyshire). Not saying this is wrong - in fact it fits my own personal definition quite neatly - but not a definition I've ever seen in an official context.
The border by the Humber looks to be the old south Humberside boundary.
Yes. High Peak counted as North in this, but I think otherwise sticking to the 3 Northern regions, including the Lincs unitaries..
South Yorkshire seems to be missing?
No, I think it's there, checked against the LTLA map. It's just tucked in so it no longer bulges at the Snake Pass, but rather dips in towards the Sparrowpit.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
Except I didn't. As you know. You probably thought you could say this with me ostensibly not being here. But you forget that I'm never truly not here.
Point is, I don't get hung up on this sort of thing. It's a distraction.
Also the anti-wokistas or whatever they are might care to note this recommendation is from the appointees of Boris.
This is a correct reading of what happened. It was mistakes by SAGE that indeed dictated our fate. I also agree -- and argued on pb.com at the time -- that it is wrong to punish individual scientists, but SAGE is an anachronism better suited to the 1960s. There were scientific blogs that picked out SAGE's mistakes weeks before SAGE did.
Jeremy Hunt appears to be the first politician to have deduced all this.
Rory Stewart was pointing out in real time last March the limitations of Sage and that while they gave good scientific analysis of what was going on it was up to the politicians to ask the right questions, understand properly the limitations of the answers and take decisive action based on the overall picture rather than hiding behind the 'scientific advice'.
But, I think SAGE did **not** give a good scientific analysis of what was going on. That is the problem.
Only other scientists could have detected the errors in what was the groupthink of SAGE in Spring last year.
I don't think it is fair to expect politicians -- without much or any scientific training -- to ask the right questions when presented with modelling/statistical analyses.
They were giving the answers backed up by the data available to them but unfortunately that data was very limited and still developing so their answers had large uncertainties on them.
Politicians don't need to understand the detail of statistical modelling however they should know the basics of how to analyse a problem and ask what the limitations of our understanding are and what the downsides of any gaps in knowledge could be.
In the end, some leaders were good at this and others weren't.
No, it is not just a matter of understanding the uncertainty in the modelling. There were flaws, even mistakes, in the modelling presented by SAGE.
"Some leaders were good at this and others weren't."
The leaders who came out of the pandemic best did not listen to any scientists.
Ardern or Solberg just panicked and shut down their countries.
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
Even la Sturgeon has been implicated....
"As part of the deal Sturgeon’s Rural Economy minister, Fergus Ewing, guaranteed the smelter’s power purchases from the Lochaber hydro-plant owned by the company for the next 25 years.
"Over their 25-year lifespan of the deal the securities provided by the Scottish government could have a full value of about £575 million for the financiers.
"The Fort William deal was accompanied by lavish promises from Gupta to build a new aluminium wheel factory and create 2,000 jobs.
"But no new jobs materialised and the plan was abandoned and replaced with £94 million scheme for an aluminium recycling facility and a plant to package Highland water in recyclable aluminium cans."
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
It is a fair point that labels for minority groups have a limited shelf life of acceptability and are changed a few times over our lifetimes, hardly a big issue though.
It's a big issue for Leon. He is insanely interested in everything to do with race.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
It is a fair point that labels for minority groups have a limited shelf life of acceptability and are changed a few times over our lifetimes, hardly a big issue though.
It's a big issue for Leon. He is insanely interested in everything to do with race.
To be fair if he keeps on generating enough identities he could eventually have his own minority group in the stats.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
So what is the new woke term we have to use to avoid being labelled as racist?
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
Except I didn't. As you know. You probably thought you could say this with me ostensibly not being here. But you forget that I'm never truly not here.
Point is, I don't get hung up on this sort of thing. It's a distraction.
Also the anti-wokistas or whatever they are might care to note this recommendation is from the appointees of Boris.
The BBC, the Civil Service, academe, the :Lancet and even the slow-learner Guardian have turned against BAME. It is over, I'm afraid
Personally, I will not miss it. Patronising and ugly
Our case rates/deaths/hospitalisations are all super low which is great. Our vaccine programme is heading to the moon.
Meanwhile we point our fingers and laugh at the EU countries with their spiralling case rates and new lockdowns.
However. We have been locked down for three months. Nothing open. Nothing allowed. Virtually. I don't think this has been the case in most of Europe.
Vaccine efficacy is somewhere over 90%. That means that when we come out of lockdown, plenty of people will get this disease.
The two things that are giving me some degree of comfort are Israel and schools having been back without an explosion of cases.
A few points arise from this -
1. Most people of working age have continued to go to work. Leaving out the furloughed and unemployed only 30% (at the very most) of the working population work from home. 2. Schools went back 3 weeks ago. 3. Even the vaccinated will likely catch Covid at some point. Vaccination, longer term, defangs the disease, the virus won’t be eliminated. The flu virus that caused the 1918-20 pandemic and a number of other coronaviruses are still in circulation (see my earlier posts re the 1889 pandemic) all of which caused havoc when they first emerged. Vaccines are training the population’s immune systems to identify and deal with this novel threat without the pain and suffering of actually having to catch it. 4. Ireland’s lockdown is at least as harsh as ours, if not more so, but they are not having the success we are in keeping cases down without as good a vaccination drive.
I don't think Ireland has as good a Test & Trace system as ours either, People mock T&T but I do believe its having a significant impact now, the proportion of cases traced have been extremely high for months now.
That's not true. The Irish system actually tests all contacts of a case, identifying those which are themselves cases, and so might have contacts that also need to isolate.
That's at least one step better than the UK version.
Ireland's positivity rate surged out of control in January dramatically and while they've just come under 5%, they're still far, far higher than in the UK, even discounting for the UK's LFT testing of schools. There's no way Ireland are catching as high a proportion of its cases than the UK is in my humble opinion.
A nice bit of evening sunshine, in readiness for the heatwave to come, and even the wind has dropped a bit. Cant complain.
Leon is the sort of person who if given a million pounds in gold would complain it was too heavy.
I am equally over-enthusiastic and prone to ridiculous negativity, often at the same time
But it does feel like this spring is unusually cold and grey, so far. That may, however, be a product of the absurdly sunny and lovely spring we had last year. The sunniest on record, basically
Yes, it is. So far, it has been a perfectly normal spring. Last year was anything but normal due to the lack of emissions especially in China.
The other thing that might be fooling you is that January and February were quite cold and wet - not ridiculously so, but above average - as was the autumn. So it feels like we have been in a miserable climate situation ever since October.
Is there a proven correlation between the drop in emissions and our sensational spring in 2020?
That would surprise me
No, or at least, not so far as I know.
Next question - is it a linked that when emissions drop suddenly and substantially fewer clouds are seeded and therefore more solar rays reach the earth? Or, is it a coincidence that this happens on both the modern occasions there was a stoppage (the other being when air traffic was suspended in the US after 9/11 and the temperature spiked 2c).
Answer - it may be a coincidence, but it seems more likely to be a link.
I hope you are not suggesting that reducing modern traffic (especially planes) will exacerbate global warming.. that will get you cancelled
Really? I thought ecowarriors like Extinction Rebellion fully approved of long distance air travel. Certainly they use it often enough:
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
Except I didn't. As you know. You probably thought you could say this with me ostensibly not being here. But you forget that I'm never truly not here.
Point is, I don't get hung up on this sort of thing. It's a distraction.
Also the anti-wokistas or whatever they are might care to note this recommendation is from the appointees of Boris.
The BBC, the Civil Service, academe, the :Lancet and even the slow-learner Guardian have turned against BAME. It is over, I'm afraid
Personally, I will not miss it. Patronising and ugly
Apologies for coming over as a bit of an anorak on a site usually totally devoid of them but according to my weatherstation here in Dorset:
March 28 2020: Temperature: High: 11.1 C Low: 3.3 C Average: 6.7 C
March 28 2021: Temperature: High: 13.0 C Low: 8.8 C Average: 10.2 C
I have no idea whether March will turn out to be rubbish overall or not. It certainly doesn't seem much different from many other Marchs I have experienced.
But I would point out that a single days readings - particularly one that was forecast to be the warmest of the month so far - from a single location, doesn't really prove anything one way or another.
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
I know.There is more which could be speculated about but the man is dead. So... still, I would love to read the relevant emails. It is so similar to a case I investigated, even down to one of the key players having the same surname, it's uncanny.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
It is a fair point that labels for minority groups have a limited shelf life of acceptability and are changed a few times over our lifetimes, hardly a big issue though.
It's a big issue for Leon. He is insanely interested in everything to do with race.
To be fair if he keeps on generating enough identities he could eventually have his own minority group in the stats.
Yes, mounting up. But so long as it's only one at a time, it's ok. I'd get spooked if it went all Norman Bates and Mother.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
It is a fair point that labels for minority groups have a limited shelf life of acceptability and are changed a few times over our lifetimes, hardly a big issue though.
It is "quite a big issue" because careers have been ended when someone uses the "wrong" term - very often in total innocence, as they are unable to keep up with the malign, grievance-industry fuckwits who change the terminology, deliberately, every few years. Or weeks.
The Scots know, whether they admit it or not, that leaving the UK will at best make them poorer and at worst lead to ‘economic havoc.’
Just as the Irish did in 1922.
That on its own is not going to be enough to persuade them it is a bad idea to do it.
Either make a positive case for staying together, or accept Scotland will go Indie.
Good night.
Quite. In much the same way, Brexit Leave voters were not swayed by economic arguments.
The economic arguments in the two cases are different in one crucial respect. The UK was a substantial net contributor to the EU. Scotland is a substantial net beneficiary from the UK.
Boris Johnson's shiny red NHS bus trick won't work for the Scottish independence movement. They can't promise to spend the recovered contributions on shiny baubles - they have to convince the soft middle of public opinion either that they somehow won't be subject to serious tax rises and spending cuts, or that tax rises and spending cuts are a price worth paying.
It's still doable - British identity is in decline everywhere, elderly unionists are shuffling off all the time - but victory in a second referendum is not a foregone conclusion.
The problem is that the two sides don't agree whether Scotland is a substantial net beneficiary from the UK, or the other way around.
Unionists certainly believe that Scotland is a substantial recipient. Nationalists believe that Scotland is a net contributor.
Which is right? Does it matter? It isn't about what the truth is, its about what they believe and people will believe whichever they want to believe.
The truth will matter post-independence if that's voted for, but by then its too late.
We know what the majority of the electorate believes because of the outcome of the first vote. If the soft middle had thought they'd be better rather than worse off they would've stampeded for the exit.
Its close enough that the soft middle can be convinced if they want to be convinced, its not a deal-breaker.
If 7% want to be convinced that Scotland going Independent is for the best, going from 45/55 to the magic/cursed number, then they'll be open to the idea that Independence will make them better off.
Independence would certainly test to destruction the national stereotype of the "Canny Scot".
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
I know.There is more which could be speculated about but the man is dead. So... still, I would love to read the relevant emails. It is so similar to a case I investigated, even down to one of the key players having the same surname, it's uncanny.
I don't know who this "LadyG" character is but she seems very smart, and she was bang on about BAME. She gave it six months back in the summer of last year. Pretty much exactly right
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
Even la Sturgeon has been implicated....
"As part of the deal Sturgeon’s Rural Economy minister, Fergus Ewing, guaranteed the smelter’s power purchases from the Lochaber hydro-plant owned by the company for the next 25 years.
"Over their 25-year lifespan of the deal the securities provided by the Scottish government could have a full value of about £575 million for the financiers.
"The Fort William deal was accompanied by lavish promises from Gupta to build a new aluminium wheel factory and create 2,000 jobs.
"But no new jobs materialised and the plan was abandoned and replaced with £94 million scheme for an aluminium recycling facility and a plant to package Highland water in recyclable aluminium cans."
The whole thing was a scam designed to benefit only the scammers. Blindingly obvious, frankly. But people believe what they want to be true. Which is why scammers so often get away with it.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
It is a fair point that labels for minority groups have a limited shelf life of acceptability and are changed a few times over our lifetimes, hardly a big issue though.
It is "quite a big issue" because careers have been ended when someone uses the "wrong" term - very often in total innocence, as they are unable to keep up with the malign, grievance-industry fuckwits who change the terminology, deliberately, every few years. Or weeks.
I have been one of those who has been extremely cautious about this virus and contacting loved ones. Indeed as I mentioned to another poster the other day I have been far more cautious over the last year than the Government recommendations.
But for me that is now over. I realise there is still a small but very real risk but I refuse to continue to live my life indefinitely without close contact with my loved ones.
I will still avoid pubs for now and will gladly continue to work from home. I will happily wear masks in public and take tests whenever offered. But I am now planning on contact with family - Sunday lunches, dropping round for a chat and a hug. Many hugs.
I do this as an informed and I hope sensible adult. And like others if the Government ty to stop me they can go stick their rules where the sun don't shine.
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
I know.There is more which could be speculated about but the man is dead. So... still, I would love to read the relevant emails. It is so similar to a case I investigated, even down to one of the key players having the same surname, it's uncanny.
The government seems determined to kill any joy people might feel at any stage of unlocking. I wonder what annoying ‘guidance’ they have in store for 12 April? No peanut tossing? No crisp packet origami? No beer mat flipping?
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
Even la Sturgeon has been implicated....
"As part of the deal Sturgeon’s Rural Economy minister, Fergus Ewing, guaranteed the smelter’s power purchases from the Lochaber hydro-plant owned by the company for the next 25 years.
"Over their 25-year lifespan of the deal the securities provided by the Scottish government could have a full value of about £575 million for the financiers.
"The Fort William deal was accompanied by lavish promises from Gupta to build a new aluminium wheel factory and create 2,000 jobs.
"But no new jobs materialised and the plan was abandoned and replaced with £94 million scheme for an aluminium recycling facility and a plant to package Highland water in recyclable aluminium cans."
The whole thing was a scam designed to benefit only the scammers. Blindingly obvious, frankly. But people believe what they want to be true. Which is why scammers so often get away with it.
Fortunately we had a good head of FCA, Andre... oh wait.
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
So what is the new woke term we have to use to avoid being labelled as racist?
They might go for "such-and-such of colour" for a while, as a holding position, but that phrase is also getting some flak in America, and is not long for this world. I notice the Guardian has recently adopted POC, comprehensively, even as it fades from fashion
I don't know who this "LadyG" character is but she seems very smart, and she was bang on about BAME. She gave it six months back in the summer of last year. Pretty much exactly right
Not at all hyperbolic.....the Boris Johnson appointees, hardly the leaders of woke, want to move from BAME to allow better tracking of equalities for minorities. They dont say anything to suggest it is racist to use it, let alone that anyone should be sacked for using it.
I have been one of those who has been extremely cautious about this virus and contacting loved ones. Indeed as I mentioned to another poster the other day I have been far more cautious over the last year than the GIvernment recommendations.
But for me that is now over. I realise there is still a small but very real risk but I refuse to continue to live my life indefinitely without close contact with my loved ones.
I will still avoid pubs for now and will gladly continue to work from home. I will happily wear masks in public and take tests whenever offered. But I am now planning on contact with family - Sunday lunches, dropping round for a chat and a hug. Many hugs.
I do this as an informed and I hope sensible adult. And like others if the Government ty to stop me they can go stick their rules where the sun don't shine.
Its time to get on with life.
-1
I don’t do hugs. Maybe my wife. Otherwise it’s a firm handshake.
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
I know.There is more which could be speculated about but the man is dead. So... still, I would love to read the relevant emails. It is so similar to a case I investigated, even down to one of the key players having the same surname, it's uncanny.
The government seems determined to kill any joy people might feel at any stage of unlocking. I wonder what annoying ‘guidance’ they have in store for 12 April? No peanut tossing? No crisp packet origami? No beer mat flipping?
You can have a lager shandy and be home for bed by 9.30.
I don't know who this "LadyG" character is but she seems very smart, and she was bang on about BAME. She gave it six months back in the summer of last year. Pretty much exactly right
Not at all hyperbolic.....the Boris Johnson appointees, hardly the leaders of woke, want to move from BAME to allow better tracking of equalities for minorities. They dont say anything to suggest it is racist to use it, let alone that anyone should be sacked for using it.
Wait. It won't be long. It is a fashion thing, like skirt lengths. First there's a few influencers, daring to go mini, then a sudden flood of everyone half-aware, then the older and less connected folk get the trend, belatedly, and longer skirts are OVER
BAME will be largely gone by the end of the year. PREDICTION
Just thought of a left field thing for Sir Keir to do - call for leader debates to be scrapped in the Election campaign
Why on earth would he do that?
Starmer is quite good one-on-one, especially against Boris. A QC versus a blusterer. It shows. Boris often looks uncomfortable at PMQs, even if Starmer is not the best interrogator - and Starmer needs all the help he can get, electorally, as of now
I predicted exactly this on this site a few weeks ago (as did others). I believe I said it would happen within a year. It's come even sooner
Kinabalu denied it would happen and said BAME was an excellent term
I then predicted that Kinabalu will pivot seamlessly from using-BAME to never-using-BAME, and that he would instantly start tutting at those dinosaur bigots who employ such a vulgar term.
And so he will
Except I didn't. As you know. You probably thought you could say this with me ostensibly not being here. But you forget that I'm never truly not here.
Point is, I don't get hung up on this sort of thing. It's a distraction.
Also the anti-wokistas or whatever they are might care to note this recommendation is from the appointees of Boris.
The BBC, the Civil Service, academe, the :Lancet and even the slow-learner Guardian have turned against BAME. It is over, I'm afraid
Personally, I will not miss it. Patronising and ugly
Why are you afraid if you wont miss it? Surely the right word for you is delighted?
When I worked for a major oil company, every 6 months or so, there would be a re-organisation. Complete with slogans, branding and swag. There is a funny story about one desk ornament design I could tell...
It occurs to me that huge numbers of document, presentation etc will need reworking.
Am I alone in wondering about the colour of the people who will primarily benefit from the money that will be spent on this?
I don't know who this "LadyG" character is but she seems very smart, and she was bang on about BAME. She gave it six months back in the summer of last year. Pretty much exactly right
BAME just means non whites, I’m not surprised it is thought of as offensive, it reminds me of Apartheid
I’ve only just realised, when typing the word, that the ‘Apart’ bit of Apartheid meant ‘Apart’. What a dunce!
Sometimes the bluntness of a words meaning really hits me hard - ‘space’ to describe other place where stars and moons are, and ‘division’ to describe different parts of football leagues are two examples where I’ve used them all my life without thinking about why they were called what they were.
I have read the ST article on Greensill in detail. More than Cameron, the person it shows in a bad light - though we won't of course get his side of the story - is Jeremy Heywood.
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
Yes that’s the angle that interests me as well. Don’t forget that Jeremy met Greensill when they were both at MS
I know.There is more which could be speculated about but the man is dead. So... still, I would love to read the relevant emails. It is so similar to a case I investigated, even down to one of the key players having the same surname, it's uncanny.
The government seems determined to kill any joy people might feel at any stage of unlocking. I wonder what annoying ‘guidance’ they have in store for 12 April? No peanut tossing? No crisp packet origami? No beer mat flipping?
You can have a lager shandy and be home for bed by 9.30.
That's a bit lax - I was thinking a temperance beverage and home by 8.0pm.
As a part of a public information campaign a psychologist has offered advice on how to resist pressure to disobey the rules.
People are told to 'be firm with friends and relatives if they try to hug them and give gentle reminders about social distancing'
They are so out of touch you have to wonder if they are even sane
My old mum has had both Pfizers and I am testing myself 2-3 times a week as I am a teacher, so when I actually see her (probably about 6 weeks away) - I will be hugging her.
I have been one of those who has been extremely cautious about this virus and contacting loved ones. Indeed as I mentioned to another poster the other day I have been far more cautious over the last year than the GIvernment recommendations.
But for me that is now over. I realise there is still a small but very real risk but I refuse to continue to live my life indefinitely without close contact with my loved ones.
I will still avoid pubs for now and will gladly continue to work from home. I will happily wear masks in public and take tests whenever offered. But I am now planning on contact with family - Sunday lunches, dropping round for a chat and a hug. Many hugs.
I do this as an informed and I hope sensible adult. And like others if the Government ty to stop me they can go stick their rules where the sun don't shine.
Its time to get on with life.
-1
I don’t do hugs. Maybe my wife. Otherwise it’s a firm handshake.
Firm handshake sounds good, even with the wife...!!
Just thought of a left field thing for Sir Keir to do - call for leader debates to be scrapped in the Election campaign
Why on earth would he do that?
Starmer is quite good one-on-one, especially against Boris. A QC versus a blusterer. It shows. Boris often looks uncomfortable at PMQs, even if Starmer is not the best interrogator - and Starmer needs all the help he can get, electorally, as of now
Because the more people see him, the more boring, and unlikeable they find him. Watching him play fun sponge to likeable Boris will just annoy people. Plus he will have to give a monologue at some point which will make people’s toes curl so much they won’t be able to walk to the polling station even if they felt sorry for him
BAME just means non whites, I’m not surprised it is thought of as offensive, it reminds me of Apartheid
It also makes bo sense. It's part of the continuous changing of language to demonstrate that the speaker Knows The Current Words and is therefore Bettet Than You.
When and why was 'ethnic minority' deemed wrong and 'minority ethnic' correct? And surely Black AND Minority Ethnic is a tautology*.
When and why did 'coloured people' (which in my youth was for those to right-on to say 'black') become horribly offensive and the horribly clunky 'people of colour' become correct?
In the words of another postet on another subject, FUCK OFF.
*like 'Cheshire West and Chester'. Why the need for both halves? Either would have done.
Interesting discussion with my Mum this afternoon whilst we were ignoring Government advice about hugging.
We were talking about friends who had had a bad reaction to the vaccine - my Mum sailed through it without even a sore arm. She said that the only vaccine she ever had a real bad reaction to - so bad she thought she would die and didn't care - was the smallpox vaccine she had in 1964.
What was of interest was that she mentioned she had it prior to a holiday in Yugoslavia. And that she got a green certificate as a result without which she would not have been able to travel. It was apparently very common and the airline would not even let you fly if you didn't have the certificate.
Proof of vaccination before being allowed into countries is nothing new.
BAME just means non whites, I’m not surprised it is thought of as offensive, it reminds me of Apartheid
It also makes bo sense. It's part of the continuous changing of language to demonstrate that the speaker Knows The Current Words and is therefore Bettet Than You.
When and why was 'ethnic minority' deemed wrong and 'minority ethnic' correct? And surely Black AND Minority Ethnic is a tautology*.
When and why did 'coloured people' (which in my youth was for those to right-on to say 'black') become horribly offensive and the horribly clunky 'people of colour' become correct?
In the words of another postet on another subject, FUCK OFF.
*like 'Cheshire West and Chester'. Why the need for both halves? Either would have done.
“Until the colour of a mans skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes, everywhere is war!”
Interesting discussion with my Mum this afternoon whilst we were ignoring Government advice about hugging.
We were talking about friends who had had a bad reaction to the vaccine - my Mum sailed through it without even a sore arm. She said that the only vaccine she ever had a real bad reaction to - so bad she thought she would die and didn't care - was the smallpox vaccine she had in 1964.
What was of interest was that she mentioned she had it prior to a holiday in Yugoslavia. And that she got a green certificate as a result without which she would not have been able to travel. It was apparently very common and the airline would not even let you fly if you didn't have the certificate.
Proof of vaccination before being allowed into countries is nothing new.
Proof of vaccination to cross national boundaries makes a little sense at least to keep variants out of the country.
Proof of vaccination to go about normal life in a country with no significant antivax component makes less sense that the final series of lost
Our case rates/deaths/hospitalisations are all super low which is great. Our vaccine programme is heading to the moon.
Meanwhile we point our fingers and laugh at the EU countries with their spiralling case rates and new lockdowns.
However. We have been locked down for three months. Nothing open. Nothing allowed. Virtually. I don't think this has been the case in most of Europe.
Vaccine efficacy is somewhere over 90%. That means that when we come out of lockdown, plenty of people will get this disease.
The two things that are giving me some degree of comfort are Israel and schools having been back without an explosion of cases.
A few points arise from this -
1. Most people of working age have continued to go to work. Leaving out the furloughed and unemployed only 30% (at the very most) of the working population work from home. 2. Schools went back 3 weeks ago. 3. Even the vaccinated will likely catch Covid at some point. Vaccination, longer term, defangs the disease, the virus won’t be eliminated. The flu virus that caused the 1918-20 pandemic and a number of other coronaviruses are still in circulation (see my earlier posts re the 1889 pandemic) all of which caused havoc when they first emerged. Vaccines are training the population’s immune systems to identify and deal with this novel threat without the pain and suffering of actually having to catch it. 4. Ireland’s lockdown is at least as harsh as ours, if not more so, but they are not having the success we are in keeping cases down without as good a vaccination drive.
I don't think Ireland has as good a Test & Trace system as ours either, People mock T&T but I do believe its having a significant impact now, the proportion of cases traced have been extremely high for months now.
That's not true. The Irish system actually tests all contacts of a case, identifying those which are themselves cases, and so might have contacts that also need to isolate.
That's at least one step better than the UK version.
Ireland's positivity rate surged out of control in January dramatically and while they've just come under 5%, they're still far, far higher than in the UK, even discounting for the UK's LFT testing of schools. There's no way Ireland are catching as high a proportion of its cases than the UK is in my humble opinion.
That difference will be due to two factors. Firstly, the effect of vaccination has helped to decrease the infection rate in the UK, and secondly the UK is doing way more tests.
I don't dispute that the UK has the spread of the virus under better control, or that it is doing numerically a much higher number of tests - but your point was more specifically about the test and trace system. You cannot trace the spread of the infection if you are not testing contacts of a confirmed case - that is a very basic point.
Ireland does test contacts - the UK tests more indiscriminately.
Interesting discussion with my Mum this afternoon whilst we were ignoring Government advice about hugging.
We were talking about friends who had had a bad reaction to the vaccine - my Mum sailed through it without even a sore arm. She said that the only vaccine she ever had a real bad reaction to - so bad she thought she would die and didn't care - was the smallpox vaccine she had in 1964.
What was of interest was that she mentioned she had it prior to a holiday in Yugoslavia. And that she got a green certificate as a result without which she would not have been able to travel. It was apparently very common and the airline would not even let you fly if you didn't have the certificate.
Proof of vaccination before being allowed into countries is nothing new.
I forgot myself gave my mum a kiss goodbye yesterday and then apologised for breaking the rules!
Unusual map of the north there. Note that it includes a small chunk of the East Midland (far north of Derbyshire). Not saying this is wrong - in fact it fits my own personal definition quite neatly - but not a definition I've ever seen in an official context.
The border by the Humber looks to be the old south Humberside boundary.
Yes. High Peak counted as North in this, but I think otherwise sticking to the 3 Northern regions, including the Lincs unitaries..
So NIP is another Corbyn/Trot cult outfit? Or am I misunderstanding her appointment as candidate?
Trot loonies embarking on another madcap adventure. The North (however you define it) is not a colony in need of liberation. And even if it were the last thing on God's Earth it would need would be a Marxist uprising.
God alone knows what they're going to come up with next. The Popular Front for the Liberation of East Sussex? The mind boggles.
The People's Soviet of Hartlepool has a ring to it.
Quite what awful crimes the people of Hartlepool are meant to have committed to justify such a fate one hardly dare imagine.
Killing lower primates by cervical suspension, apparently.
I have been one of those who has been extremely cautious about this virus and contacting loved ones. Indeed as I mentioned to another poster the other day I have been far more cautious over the last year than the GIvernment recommendations.
But for me that is now over. I realise there is still a small but very real risk but I refuse to continue to live my life indefinitely without close contact with my loved ones.
I will still avoid pubs for now and will gladly continue to work from home. I will happily wear masks in public and take tests whenever offered. But I am now planning on contact with family - Sunday lunches, dropping round for a chat and a hug. Many hugs.
I do this as an informed and I hope sensible adult. And like others if the Government ty to stop me they can go stick their rules where the sun don't shine.
Its time to get on with life.
-1
I don’t do hugs. Maybe my wife. Otherwise it’s a firm handshake.
A lot of people are not 'touchy feely' in that way. I was never brought up to do that and find it rather contrived. No problem with others doing it - but do not like having it imposed on me. I am somewhat apprehensive of what I might face when pubs fully reopen. On Sunday evenings I met a group which included a lady of circa 70. She is not bright or academic - but kind and employed as a careworker. When leaving at 11pm - having had at least 4 double cognac drinks - she has always insisted on going to every male there and giving them a jolly good snog! I was always rather uncomfortable with it - but she continued to do this in the period leading up to the first Lockdown a year ago - and during the short periods we were able to gather lasr summer and autumn. I ended up having to be very firm with her- and made it clear that her behaviour was unacceptable. I fear I may have to do so again.
BAME just means non whites, I’m not surprised it is thought of as offensive, it reminds me of Apartheid
It also makes bo sense. It's part of the continuous changing of language to demonstrate that the speaker Knows The Current Words and is therefore Bettet Than You.
When and why was 'ethnic minority' deemed wrong and 'minority ethnic' correct? And surely Black AND Minority Ethnic is a tautology*.
When and why did 'coloured people' (which in my youth was for those to right-on to say 'black') become horribly offensive and the horribly clunky 'people of colour' become correct?
In the words of another postet on another subject, FUCK OFF.
*like 'Cheshire West and Chester'. Why the need for both halves? Either would have done.
"People of colour" is eerily reminiscent of "person of the Hebrew persuasion" and the slimy, antisemitic circumlocutions of ChesterBelloc and their inter-war contemporaries.
Interesting discussion with my Mum this afternoon whilst we were ignoring Government advice about hugging.
We were talking about friends who had had a bad reaction to the vaccine - my Mum sailed through it without even a sore arm. She said that the only vaccine she ever had a real bad reaction to - so bad she thought she would die and didn't care - was the smallpox vaccine she had in 1964.
What was of interest was that she mentioned she had it prior to a holiday in Yugoslavia. And that she got a green certificate as a result without which she would not have been able to travel. It was apparently very common and the airline would not even let you fly if you didn't have the certificate.
Proof of vaccination before being allowed into countries is nothing new.
Proof of vaccination to cross national boundaries makes a little sense at least to keep variants out of the country.
Proof of vaccination to go about normal life in a country with no significant antivax component makes less sense that the final series of lost
Oh I agree. I was merely referring to the inevitable requirement for international travel. Indeed I would happily see it brought in for people travelling to the UK.
Internally I oppose it. For all the many very articulate reasons laid out by other posters.
I don't know why the Gov't is pushing this, the only effect will be to encourage antivax nonsense
It's really REALLY bad PR and comms, if nothing else
STOP HUGGING PEOPLE is such a terrible message it will only stoke anger. It is Orwell's Anti Sex League.
They should be saying BE CAREFUL, if anything. The idea that HUGS are BAD is monstrous, at any time.
And, of course, this government on current form will soon be saying it's fine to go to Ibiza and "hug" as many drunks as you can in two weeks.
"Of course there is still virus about, so although restrictions are lifting we urge people to stick within the rules, and beyond that apply their own judgement.
I don't know who this "LadyG" character is but she seems very smart, and she was bang on about BAME. She gave it six months back in the summer of last year. Pretty much exactly right
"The EU is not a state," Guntram Wolff, director of the Brussel-based think tank Bruegel, told RTÉ’s News at One on Tuesday. "It doesn’t have full executive powers in the health policy area. The powers are really still at member state level. If you want to really fix this you would need a treaty change."
All together now, what we need is an ever closer union....
Interesting discussion with my Mum this afternoon whilst we were ignoring Government advice about hugging.
We were talking about friends who had had a bad reaction to the vaccine - my Mum sailed through it without even a sore arm. She said that the only vaccine she ever had a real bad reaction to - so bad she thought she would die and didn't care - was the smallpox vaccine she had in 1964.
What was of interest was that she mentioned she had it prior to a holiday in Yugoslavia. And that she got a green certificate as a result without which she would not have been able to travel. It was apparently very common and the airline would not even let you fly if you didn't have the certificate.
Proof of vaccination before being allowed into countries is nothing new.
I don't have a problem with paper certificates for vaccinations. Why are they less secure than apps on phones? You can give your phone to someone else.
I don't know why the Gov't is pushing this, the only effect will be to encourage antivax nonsense
It's really REALLY bad PR and comms, if nothing else
STOP HUGGING PEOPLE is such a terrible message it will only stoke anger. It is Orwell's Anti Sex League.
They should be saying BE CAREFUL, if anything. The idea that HUGS are BAD is monstrous, at any time.
And, of course, this government on current form will soon be saying it's fine to go to Ibiza and "hug" as many drunks as you can in two weeks.
"Of course there is still virus about, so although restrictions are lifting we urge people to stick within the rules, and beyond that apply their own judgement.
Of course the problem we get is it's either "Don't hug" or "Back to the office slackers" - just one extreme or the other with Boris and co quite honestly.
I have been one of those who has been extremely cautious about this virus and contacting loved ones. Indeed as I mentioned to another poster the other day I have been far more cautious over the last year than the GIvernment recommendations.
But for me that is now over. I realise there is still a small but very real risk but I refuse to continue to live my life indefinitely without close contact with my loved ones.
I will still avoid pubs for now and will gladly continue to work from home. I will happily wear masks in public and take tests whenever offered. But I am now planning on contact with family - Sunday lunches, dropping round for a chat and a hug. Many hugs.
I do this as an informed and I hope sensible adult. And like others if the Government ty to stop me they can go stick their rules where the sun don't shine.
Its time to get on with life.
-1
I don’t do hugs. Maybe my wife. Otherwise it’s a firm handshake.
Firm handshake sounds good, even with the wife...!!
I don't know who this "LadyG" character is but she seems very smart, and she was bang on about BAME. She gave it six months back in the summer of last year. Pretty much exactly right
"Minority Ethnic" doesn't make any sense in English!
I think they mean "Ethnic Minority".
Are white people not "ethnic"? Come to think of it, I'm not quite sure what ethnic means.
Over half a century of mass immigration, and everyone’s walking on egg shells over what to call non white people so as not to upset them; if you’d told the forefathers of multiculturalism this is how it would be they would have refused to believe you.
BAME just means non whites, I’m not surprised it is thought of as offensive, it reminds me of Apartheid
It also makes bo sense. It's part of the continuous changing of language to demonstrate that the speaker Knows The Current Words and is therefore Bettet Than You.
When and why was 'ethnic minority' deemed wrong and 'minority ethnic' correct? And surely Black AND Minority Ethnic is a tautology*.
When and why did 'coloured people' (which in my youth was for those to right-on to say 'black') become horribly offensive and the horribly clunky 'people of colour' become correct?
In the words of another postet on another subject, FUCK OFF.
*like 'Cheshire West and Chester'. Why the need for both halves? Either would have done.
"People of colour" is eerily reminiscent of "person of the Hebrew persuasion" and the slimy, antisemitic circumlocutions of ChesterBelloc and their inter-war contemporaries.
Likewise. I find "people of colour" quite detestable, probably worse than "BAME" - which is merely patronising, clumsy and unsightly
"People of colour" - to me - says you *are* your colour. Your skin colour. That is THE most important thing about you. It is just as offensive as "coloured people" which was discarded for exactly this reason: it reduced people to skin colour
We will only return to sanity when we go back to the idea of "not seeing colour at all". That should be our goal. It might never be perfect. It is probably utopian. But at least it aspires to something good and noble and better, and - more importantly - I see it happening all around me, for real. London at its best is a city which just does not see colour, young people hang out together in multi-racial groups, and it doesn't occur to them to think about the "shade of a person's skin" they are just a fellow human: a friend, a colleague, a spouse.
Eventually we will realise this, again, but the race relations industry will presumably go through multiple agonised contortions until we reach that point.
Just wondering, is it a function of our changed society, the declining importance of the dead tree press or jusr Boris, that the Mirror have clearly paid big bucks for the dirt on the PMs affair and it is basically getting about as much coverage as a similar story of a footballer been caught playing away?
I shouldn’t be surprised, it is one of the stranger symptoms of Boris Derangement Syndrome. The sufferer believes that banging on about things they consider bad news for Boris, even though it has been common knowledge for decades, will suddenly be thought of as so awful that everyone who voted for him to be Mayor of London twice, for Brexit, as Tory leader, and a PM with a massive majority, will suddenly repent. But no one cares
Looks like you've riled them up good and proper with that one, @isam...
BAME just means non whites, I’m not surprised it is thought of as offensive, it reminds me of Apartheid
It also makes bo sense. It's part of the continuous changing of language to demonstrate that the speaker Knows The Current Words and is therefore Bettet Than You.
When and why was 'ethnic minority' deemed wrong and 'minority ethnic' correct? And surely Black AND Minority Ethnic is a tautology*.
When and why did 'coloured people' (which in my youth was for those to right-on to say 'black') become horribly offensive and the horribly clunky 'people of colour' become correct?
In the words of another postet on another subject, FUCK OFF.
*like 'Cheshire West and Chester'. Why the need for both halves? Either would have done.
"People of colour" is eerily reminiscent of "person of the Hebrew persuasion" and the slimy, antisemitic circumlocutions of ChesterBelloc and their inter-war contemporaries.
Likewise. I find "people of colour" quite detestable, probably worse than "BAME" - which is merely patronising, clumsy and unsightly
"People of colour" - to me - says you *are* your colour. Your skin colour. That is THE most important thing about you. It is just as offensive as "coloured people" which was discarded for exactly this reason: it reduced people to skin colour
We will only return to sanity when we go back to the idea of "not seeing colour at all". That should be our goal. It might never be perfect. It is probably utopian. But at least it aspires to something good and noble and better, and - more importantly - I see it happening all around me, for real. London at its best is a city which just does not see colour, young people hang out together in multi-racial groups, and it doesn't occur to them to think about the "shade of a person's skin" they are just a fellow human: a friend, a colleague, a spouse.
Eventually we will realise this, again, but the race relations industry will presumably go through multiple agonised contortions until we reach that point.
Good money to be made out of never letting the matter come to a amiable conclusion. What you say rings true; a friend of mine said his teenage daughter never knew there was any difference between her and her black friends until BLM appeared last summer
I have been one of those who has been extremely cautious about this virus and contacting loved ones. Indeed as I mentioned to another poster the other day I have been far more cautious over the last year than the GIvernment recommendations.
But for me that is now over. I realise there is still a small but very real risk but I refuse to continue to live my life indefinitely without close contact with my loved ones.
I will still avoid pubs for now and will gladly continue to work from home. I will happily wear masks in public and take tests whenever offered. But I am now planning on contact with family - Sunday lunches, dropping round for a chat and a hug. Many hugs.
I do this as an informed and I hope sensible adult. And like others if the Government ty to stop me they can go stick their rules where the sun don't shine.
Its time to get on with life.
-1
I don’t do hugs. Maybe my wife. Otherwise it’s a firm handshake.
+3
I admire the stolid traditionalism of tbe firm handshake bunch. And if we could all agree on that particular approach Britain would be a slightly less awkward place.
But the bigger point is: Government - just fuck right off telling me who I can and cannot hug. Fuck off. I'm sick of my only purpose being, apparently, to protect the NHS. I'm sick of being patronised at my own expense. By the barest of margins, I am still in the Conservative camp, because the opposition parties' instincts have, if anything, been even more grindingly and joylessly authoritarian. But if they press this, then off they can fuck.
Scientifically speaking, there's no such thing as race. So why are people so desperate to keep the idea going? I'd be happy for it to disappear forever.
BAME is yesterday's term. The Labour Party has been using BAMER for a while now.
For those thinking 'eh?', the R stands for refugee.
A Bamer in a Beemer beeped a Boomer out in Braemar Said the boomer to the Bamer 'will your Bame babe bring us shame or 'But be silent' blazed the Bamer lest I break for California Blabbing Boomer blurts bout Bamers bye big broadcasts aired by Oprah.
Scientifically speaking, there's no such thing as race. So why are people so desperate to keep the idea going? I'd be happy for it to disappear forever.
BAME is yesterday's term. The Labour Party has been using BAMER for a while now.
For those thinking 'eh?', the R stands for refugee.
A Bamer in a Beemer beeped a Boomer out in Braemar Said the boomer to the Bamer 'will your Bame babe bring us shame or 'But be silent' blazed the Bamer lest I break for California Blabbing Boomer blurts bout Bamers bye big broadcasts aired by Oprah.
Comments
God alone knows what they're going to come up with next. The Popular Front for the Liberation of East Sussex? The mind boggles.
Is their slogan really 'it's about bloody time'? Exceptional work.
They were giving the answers backed up by the data available to them but unfortunately that data was very limited and still developing so their answers had large uncertainties on them.
Politicians don't need to understand the detail of statistical modelling however they should know the basics of how to analyse a problem and ask what the limitations of our understanding are and what the downsides of any gaps in knowledge could be.
In the end, some leaders were good at this and others weren't.
So who fed the Times "Easter", which should coincide with the end of 1st jabs fro Groups 5-9?
I would see Wockhardt as Plan B in case the EU interfere in Spain.
How quickly we forget how awful it was
A lot of brave NHS workers are gonna need PTSD care, comparable to soldiers after an appalling war
Very intelligent people can sometimes be remarkably naive about matters outside their knowledge and experience. I speculate only whether there was an element of that with Heywood and this apparent Morgan Stanley whizz-kid. And Cameron too.
Plus an ideological propensity to think that the private sector must necessarily be more efficient or good at its job, when any clear-sighted observer would know that the private sector - and investment banks in particular - are stuffed with quite as many chancers, crooks, bullshit merchants, incompetents and idiots as anywhere else.
It's a bad combination and one of the reasons behind much of the corrupt shenanigans and iffy behaviour described in today's Sunday Times lacerating leader as behaviour more usually found in a tin pot dictatorship.
Still, there are some elements in this story which, if true, are really quite smelly and have my investigator's nostrils twitching. We won't ever know, alas.
That's at least one step better than the UK version.
NFW am I having an ID care of any kind. The state does not give me permission to live. It is there to serve me not enslave me. So it can piss right off.
If 7% want to be convinced that Scotland going Independent is for the best, going from 45/55 to the magic/cursed number, then they'll be open to the idea that Independence will make them better off.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-activism/the-perils-of-people-of-color
It is a hilarious dance of lexical death. Any phrase used to describe XXXXXX ends up looking racist within a shorter and shorter timeframe.
Perhaps we will end up saying THEM or THOSE PEOPLE, or maybe there will be a subtle hand signal?
Point is, I don't get hung up on this sort of thing. It's a distraction.
"Some leaders were good at this and others weren't."
The leaders who came out of the pandemic best did not listen to any scientists.
Ardern or Solberg just panicked and shut down their countries.
That turned out to be the right approach.
"As part of the deal Sturgeon’s Rural Economy minister, Fergus Ewing, guaranteed the smelter’s power purchases from the Lochaber hydro-plant owned by the company for the next 25 years.
"Over their 25-year lifespan of the deal the securities provided by the Scottish government could have a full value of about £575 million for the financiers.
"The Fort William deal was accompanied by lavish promises from Gupta to build a new aluminium wheel factory and create 2,000 jobs.
"But no new jobs materialised and the plan was abandoned and replaced with £94 million scheme for an aluminium recycling facility and a plant to package Highland water in recyclable aluminium cans."
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-under-pressure-lochaber-23641047
Personally, I will not miss it. Patronising and ugly
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53194376
https://civilservice.blog.gov.uk/2019/07/08/please-dont-call-me-bame-or-bme/
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bame-black-lives-matter-protests-anti-racism-ethnic-minority-a9702831.html
https://blackbritishacademics.co.uk/about/racial-categorisation-and-terminology/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/25/the-term-bame-isnt-fit-for-use-we-need-a-new-political-language
Ireland's positivity rate surged out of control in January dramatically and while they've just come under 5%, they're still far, far higher than in the UK, even discounting for the UK's LFT testing of schools. There's no way Ireland are catching as high a proportion of its cases than the UK is in my humble opinion.
But I would point out that a single days readings - particularly one that was forecast to be the warmest of the month so far - from a single location, doesn't really prove anything one way or another.
Ah well .... The government can fuck right off.
https://twitter.com/lloyd_rm/status/1376261898547646472
For those thinking 'eh?', the R stands for refugee.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/8835/politicalbetting-com-blog-archive-in-betting-terms-the-moran-davey-battle-in-the-ld-race-looks-c/p4
"@LadyG
From the BBC Wokesite:
BAME people are going off the label "BAME". Some find it cold and patronising (and I can see their point)
In about six months "BAME" will be deemed as racist as "coloured", and it will be a sackable offence to use the term
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53194376"
STOP HUGGING PEOPLE is such a terrible message it will only stoke anger. It is Orwell's Anti Sex League.
They should be saying BE CAREFUL, if anything. The idea that HUGS are BAD is monstrous, at any time.
I have been one of those who has been extremely cautious about this virus and contacting loved ones. Indeed as I mentioned to another poster the other day I have been far more cautious over the last year than the Government recommendations.
But for me that is now over. I realise there is still a small but very real risk but I refuse to continue to live my life indefinitely without close contact with my loved ones.
I will still avoid pubs for now and will gladly continue to work from home. I will happily wear masks in public and take tests whenever offered. But I am now planning on contact with family - Sunday lunches, dropping round for a chat and a hug. Many hugs.
I do this as an informed and I hope sensible adult. And like others if the Government ty to stop me they can go stick their rules where the sun don't shine.
Its time to get on with life.
I don’t do hugs. Maybe my wife. Otherwise it’s a firm handshake.
As a part of a public information campaign a psychologist has offered advice on how to resist pressure to disobey the rules.
People are told to 'be firm with friends and relatives if they try to hug them and give gentle reminders about social distancing'
They are so out of touch you have to wonder if they are even sane
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/28/nine-police-officers-injured-anti-lockdown-protests-west-yorkshire/
BAME will be largely gone by the end of the year. PREDICTION
Starmer is quite good one-on-one, especially against Boris. A QC versus a blusterer. It shows. Boris often looks uncomfortable at PMQs, even if Starmer is not the best interrogator - and Starmer needs all the help he can get, electorally, as of now
It occurs to me that huge numbers of document, presentation etc will need reworking.
Am I alone in wondering about the colour of the people who will primarily benefit from the money that will be spent on this?
I think they mean "Ethnic Minority".
Sometimes the bluntness of a words meaning really hits me hard - ‘space’ to describe other place where stars and moons are, and ‘division’ to describe different parts of football leagues are two examples where I’ve used them all my life without thinking about why they were called what they were.
It's part of the continuous changing of language to demonstrate that the speaker Knows The Current Words and is therefore Bettet Than You.
When and why was 'ethnic minority' deemed wrong and 'minority ethnic' correct? And surely Black AND Minority Ethnic is a tautology*.
When and why did 'coloured people' (which in my youth was for those to right-on to say 'black') become horribly offensive and the horribly clunky 'people of colour' become correct?
In the words of another postet on another subject, FUCK OFF.
*like 'Cheshire West and Chester'. Why the need for both halves? Either would have done.
We were talking about friends who had had a bad reaction to the vaccine - my Mum sailed through it without even a sore arm. She said that the only vaccine she ever had a real bad reaction to - so bad she thought she would die and didn't care - was the smallpox vaccine she had in 1964.
What was of interest was that she mentioned she had it prior to a holiday in Yugoslavia. And that she got a green certificate as a result without which she would not have been able to travel. It was apparently very common and the airline would not even let you fly if you didn't have the certificate.
Proof of vaccination before being allowed into countries is nothing new.
Proof of vaccination to go about normal life in a country with no significant antivax component makes less sense that the final series of lost
I don't dispute that the UK has the spread of the virus under better control, or that it is doing numerically a much higher number of tests - but your point was more specifically about the test and trace system. You cannot trace the spread of the infection if you are not testing contacts of a confirmed case - that is a very basic point.
Ireland does test contacts - the UK tests more indiscriminately.
I am somewhat apprehensive of what I might face when pubs fully reopen. On Sunday evenings I met a group which included a lady of circa 70. She is not bright or academic - but kind and employed as a careworker. When leaving at 11pm - having had at least 4 double cognac drinks - she has always insisted on going to every male there and giving them a jolly good snog! I was always rather uncomfortable with it - but she continued to do this in the period leading up to the first Lockdown a year ago - and during the short periods we were able to gather lasr summer and autumn. I ended up having to be very firm with her- and made it clear that her behaviour was unacceptable. I fear I may have to do so again.
Internally I oppose it. For all the many very articulate reasons laid out by other posters.
Hmmm
Some fine old porkies in this one
All together now, what we need is an ever closer union....
Welcome to Yorkshire!
Its a good job Holi was totally cancelled this year....
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9409863/Indians-celebrate-Holi-festival-hurling-coloured-powder-despite-Covid-cases.html
"People of colour" - to me - says you *are* your colour. Your skin colour. That is THE most important thing about you. It is just as offensive as "coloured people" which was discarded for exactly this reason: it reduced people to skin colour
We will only return to sanity when we go back to the idea of "not seeing colour at all". That should be our goal. It might never be perfect. It is probably utopian. But at least it aspires to something good and noble and better, and - more importantly - I see it happening all around me, for real. London at its best is a city which just does not see colour, young people hang out together in multi-racial groups, and it doesn't occur to them to think about the "shade of a person's skin" they are just a fellow human: a friend, a colleague, a spouse.
Eventually we will realise this, again, but the race relations industry will presumably go through multiple agonised contortions until we reach that point.
I admire the stolid traditionalism of tbe firm handshake bunch. And if we could all agree on that particular approach Britain would be a slightly less awkward place.
But the bigger point is: Government - just fuck right off telling me who I can and cannot hug. Fuck off. I'm sick of my only purpose being, apparently, to protect the NHS. I'm sick of being patronised at my own expense. By the barest of margins, I am still in the Conservative camp, because the opposition parties' instincts have, if anything, been even more grindingly and joylessly authoritarian. But if they press this, then off they can fuck.
Said the boomer to the Bamer 'will your Bame babe bring us shame or
'But be silent' blazed the Bamer lest I break for California
Blabbing Boomer blurts bout Bamers bye big broadcasts aired by Oprah.
Got it!