I remember when people said "based on the LibDems victory in Eastbourne, here are the 250 seats that... oh... will stay safely Tory come the next General Election"
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Agree, it is unlikely and I am with @Leon that this seems like an accidental leak. However, given the Chinese are not exactly being cooperative and sharing the information, Governments may decide they need to act on the side of caution.
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
You are ignoring the fact when the county council seats up this year were last up in 2017 the Tories had an 11% lead, most current polls have the Tories lead on less than that so Labour should actually make gains, at least at county level.
Given Corbyn survived losing 382 Labour county councillors and control of 7 county councils in 2017 Starmer will certainly survive making Labour gains at county level.
Given too Labour only got 27% in the 2017 counties and 31% in the 2016 district elections which were when the local seats up this year were last up, even the 34% Yougov has Labour now on would be an improvement (other pollsters have Labour on 36%).
In fact given the LDs 15% in 2016 and 18% in 2017 and are now polling under 10% they may face the biggest losses, on paper at least, though they tend to do better locally than nationally
When he wears his Jekyll hat, he is data driven and really very sensible and worth following. When he wears his HYde hat, he just lets rip with his fantasies. He's still worth following for the entertainment value.
The other admirable thing about @HYUFD is that, unlike a lot of right-of-centre posters here, he doesn't assume that 2023/4 and (probably) 2028/9 are in the bag for BoJo and the Conservatives.
One of the differences between past or current practitioners and keyboard warriors, I suspect. Knowing to fear the power of trivial events (dear boy).
Yes it is dangerous for Tories to be complacent, there is no great love for Starmer but he does not repel swing voters like Corbyn did either, so if things go bad economically before 2024 we would have a problem
That could have summed up Cameron pre-2010 and the circumstances surrounding the Labour Government in its dying days. Cameron squeaked home at the first attempt and then with his feet under the table became more popular.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
Another day and right on cue we have another scientist talking about need for another lockdowns if there is a variant problem:
"Rapid spread of coronavirus variants could necessitate the reimposition of lockdown measures, a scientist advising the Government said.
Professor Peter Openshaw said his fellow scientists were "very concerned" after a cluster of cases of the South African coronavirus variant were found in London."
Telegraph blog.
Once again no doubt talking in a "personal capacity".
I know from my own extended family that these public utterances are just causing undue worry amongst older folk who have been vaccinated.
Stop it.
The problem is that "panic" garners clicks and shares and discussion like this.
Last week there were two stories:
(1) Pfizer announced that, based on long term trial data, it's vaccine was 90+% effective against the SA variant. (As in there was a 10- or 20-1 ratio between the number of people in the placebo and the trial group that ended up with a case of SA Covid.) This is, I think you will agree, excellent news.
(2) An Israeli study noted that of the - extremely small number of people in hospital with Covid - more of them had SA variant CV19 than other variants. The study basically said this suggested that vaccine was less effective against the variant. Two words from this report ("break through") were then taken to suggest Pfizer was somehow innefective against SA variant Covid.
The second - panic filled and largely inaccurate - story got all the headlines, while the first was basically ignored.
Indeed one interpretation of the latter is that the sa variant is the main one in circulation. Don’t know if true, but certainly possible. What worries me more is the drift away from avoiding hospitalisation and death, to a more zero Covid approach. If the vaccines meant no one needed hospital (and ignoring long Covid for the sake of brevity) then I wouldn’t care if we all caught Covid in any given year. And there would be no need for any other measures. Yet I sense some would now to head for elimination by the back door.
The variants stories look very like the classic "Cancer scare" stories that are used to generate fear as part of a bottom feeding media strategy by news outlets.
You missed the ruction yesterday? Boris telling Sky that he wasn't pursuing a zero COVID strategy? That is, that unlocking would increase cases, hospitalisations and possibly deaths.
The variant stories are not complete bollocks, however. There is some cause for agitation, if not alarm
The second wave in India is insane, even by the insane standards of exponentiality
Look at the curve of their latest spike. Right at the recent end it becomes near vertical
First. Not sure if there’s any polling on this, but I doubt it’s registering to be honest. At most I suspect it’s damaging Cameron’s already damaged reputation.
There’s obviously an ongoing issue around lobbying. Part of the problem, of course, is that the questionable relationships only reveal themselves as obviously dubious at a later date.
Yes, the sleaze and kleptocracy of the Tory chums with their hands in the taxpayers pockets is not going to impact this election. It is though possible that it will do so by 2024. The corrosion of public life is a real achillies heel of this government, not least because there is no way for Johnson to sort it out. Dishonesty is so intrinsic to his character that he cannot recognise integrity. May, for all her many faults, has some integrity, and is perhaps worth watching for a Howe type takedown.
Wasn't it May who praised Sir Jeremy Heywood as one of the finest civil servants ever etc.... ?
I know he's dead and therefore can't answer questions. But with that caveat in mind, his actions bear very close examination and I am not at all sure that he comes out of this well - based on what we know so far.
If May tries to take down Johnson over this it could rebound on her. After all, what did she do during her time in office when Greensill was still all over government like a bad rash?
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
Either that or they are very good at creating viruses, but absolutely bloody terrible at the much easier job of making vaccines for them...
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Agree, it is unlikely and I am with @Leon that this seems like an accidental leak. However, given the Chinese are not exactly being cooperative and sharing the information, Governments may decide they need to act on the side of caution.
The Chinese government is being unco-operative because that is their nature. They are lying, sneaking, corrupt, mass-murdering, greedy, incompetent and stupid crooks who make Boris Johnson look like a model of integrity and probity. They assume everyone else is out to get them and therefore will always seek to protect themselves. I was amused to see that they are even editing Wikipedia to pretend everyone accepts their laughably inaccurate mortality figures.
The fact that a bunch of stupid paranoid tossers are behaving like a bunch of stupid paranoid tossers is not a reason to fear there’s a conspiracy going on.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Agree, it is unlikely and I am with @Leon that this seems like an accidental leak. However, given the Chinese are not exactly being cooperative and sharing the information, Governments may decide they need to act on the side of caution.
Leak?
Science, neither Chinese nor US nor British, has any ability to manufacture or design viruses. We just don't know enough about them yet. So while it's possible that it was a virus being studied at a lab that escaped, it has to be at least as likely that it made it across the the animal-human gap the old fashioned way... you know, the way that SARS and MERS all made it.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
Interesting they have 2017 as 39% when the BBC figure is 38%
So barring general election turnout in 1992, the last time a governing party got 40% was back in 1982.
Fake news, the 1992 locals did NOT take place on the same day as the 1992 general election.
Here’s a question though, thinking of how that was a month after the general.
Does the campaigning for a general election in itself drive up turnout for the local elections? The first intimation I had that there were elections round here (other than PB, obviously) was when I got my polling card yesterday. Otherwise, everywhere is dead silent. No posters, no TV broadcasts, no leaflets - OK, so no canvassers anyway at the moment, but still, nothing at all is a bit limp.
Yes, I live in a safe Labour ward and therefore am probably assumed to be not worth canvassing. But you can understand when they’re this low key why people don’t bother to or even realise they could/should turn out.
Edit - and I note @Gallowgate hasn’t been contacted by the challengers in his ward either.
I think what impacted the 1992 locals was a very super happy Tory party and an utterly demoralised Labour party.
When your bases are like that then through sheer effort one side makes biggish the gain, the other side biggish losses, the energy is only one way.
Kinnock was on the way out and John Major was front and centre in this campaign.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
Again, they always get jumpy around independent journalists. That’s because of the way they operate. It’s not in itself a sign of anything sinister going on.
Another day and right on cue we have another scientist talking about need for another lockdowns if there is a variant problem:
"Rapid spread of coronavirus variants could necessitate the reimposition of lockdown measures, a scientist advising the Government said.
Professor Peter Openshaw said his fellow scientists were "very concerned" after a cluster of cases of the South African coronavirus variant were found in London."
Telegraph blog.
Once again no doubt talking in a "personal capacity".
I know from my own extended family that these public utterances are just causing undue worry amongst older folk who have been vaccinated.
Stop it.
The problem is that "panic" garners clicks and shares and discussion like this.
Last week there were two stories:
(1) Pfizer announced that, based on long term trial data, it's vaccine was 90+% effective against the SA variant. (As in there was a 10- or 20-1 ratio between the number of people in the placebo and the trial group that ended up with a case of SA Covid.) This is, I think you will agree, excellent news.
(2) An Israeli study noted that of the - extremely small number of people in hospital with Covid - more of them had SA variant CV19 than other variants. The study basically said this suggested that vaccine was less effective against the variant. Two words from this report ("break through") were then taken to suggest Pfizer was somehow innefective against SA variant Covid.
The second - panic filled and largely inaccurate - story got all the headlines, while the first was basically ignored.
Indeed one interpretation of the latter is that the sa variant is the main one in circulation. Don’t know if true, but certainly possible. What worries me more is the drift away from avoiding hospitalisation and death, to a more zero Covid approach. If the vaccines meant no one needed hospital (and ignoring long Covid for the sake of brevity) then I wouldn’t care if we all caught Covid in any given year. And there would be no need for any other measures. Yet I sense some would now to head for elimination by the back door.
The variants stories look very like the classic "Cancer scare" stories that are used to generate fear as part of a bottom feeding media strategy by news outlets.
You missed the ruction yesterday? Boris telling Sky that he wasn't pursuing a zero COVID strategy? That is, that unlocking would increase cases, hospitalisations and possibly deaths.
The variant stories are not complete bollocks, however. There is some cause for agitation, if not alarm
The second wave in India is insane, even by the insane standards of exponentiality
Look at the curve of their latest spike. Right at the recent end it becomes near vertical
@kateferguson4: Tory MPs are being whipped to vote against Labour’s motion to have a full-blown parliamentary inquiry into lobbying, Rachel Reeves says
You are either naive or just silly to be honest
Of course they will be whipped
There is an independent enquiry and labour playing politics requires an equal response
Labour playing politics? They are the Opposition. We have seen precious little opposition from them since 2016, and you are by implication whining that they should behave and leave your boys alone
Although Cameron's name is to the fore there would appear to be the fingerprints of several serving Cabinet Ministers all over this unseemly mess.
But then, Boris will be Boris, and his friends can be a bit lairy too. Besides which the voters love them all anyway, and just want to go to the pub. So why the fuss?.
Personally I think there is a scandal in the operation of Greensill and what they were doing. I am not in finance but the explanation sounded a lot like CDOs. That to me sounds like poor government. Cameron phoning or texting friends - but being able to influence them seems second order although I think current rules should be followed. Some on here appear to obsessed with laying every small issue on Boris without considering the wider picture.
My ultimate test is would you be so worked up if it were Gordon Brown ex-pm stepping in to call darling and balls if they were back in government. My personal answer is no and I suspect most labour supporters and MPs would agree and wouldn't be proposing an independent inquiry
@kateferguson4: Tory MPs are being whipped to vote against Labour’s motion to have a full-blown parliamentary inquiry into lobbying, Rachel Reeves says
You are either naive or just silly to be honest
Of course they will be whipped
There is an independent enquiry and labour playing politics requires an equal response
Labour playing politics? They are the Opposition. We have seen precious little opposition from them since 2016, and you are by implication whining that they should behave and leave your boys alone
Although Cameron's name is to the fore there would appear to be the fingerprints of several serving Cabinet Ministers all over this unseemly mess.
But then, Boris will be Boris, and his friends can be a bit lairy too. Besides which the voters love them all anyway, and just want to go to the pub. So why the fuss?.
Personally I think there is a scandal in the operation of Greensill and what they were doing. I am not in finance but the explanation sounded a lot like CDOs. That to me sounds like poor government. Cameron phoning or texting friends - but being able to influence them seems second order although I think current rules should be followed. Some on here appear to obsessed with laying every small issue on Boris without considering the wider picture.
My ultimate test is would you be so worked up if it were Gordon Brown ex-pm stepping in to call darling and balls if they were back in government. My personal answer is no and I suspect most labour supporters and MPs would agree and wouldn't be proposing an independent inquiry
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Agree, it is unlikely and I am with @Leon that this seems like an accidental leak. However, given the Chinese are not exactly being cooperative and sharing the information, Governments may decide they need to act on the side of caution.
Leak?
Science, neither Chinese nor US nor British, has any ability to manufacture or design viruses. We just don't know enough about them yet. So while it's possible that it was a virus being studied at a lab that escaped, it has to be at least as likely that it made it across the the animal-human gap the old fashioned way... you know, the way that SARS and MERS all made it.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Agree, it is unlikely and I am with @Leon that this seems like an accidental leak. However, given the Chinese are not exactly being cooperative and sharing the information, Governments may decide they need to act on the side of caution.
Leak?
Science, neither Chinese nor US nor British, has any ability to manufacture or design viruses. We just don't know enough about them yet. So while it's possible that it was a virus being studied at a lab that escaped, it has to be at least as likely that it made it across the the animal-human gap the old fashioned way... you know, the way that SARS and MERS all made it.
This novel bat coronavirus just happened to make this jump from bat to human in the centre of the same city that has, nearby, a globally unique level 4 Institute of Virology that is studying, unlike anywhere else in the world, the same novel bat coronavirus
Interesting they have 2017 as 39% when the BBC figure is 38%
So barring general election turnout in 1992, the last time a governing party got 40% was back in 1982.
Fake news, the 1992 locals did NOT take place on the same day as the 1992 general election.
Here’s a question though, thinking of how that was a month after the general.
Does the campaigning for a general election in itself drive up turnout for the local elections? The first intimation I had that there were elections round here (other than PB, obviously) was when I got my polling card yesterday. Otherwise, everywhere is dead silent. No posters, no TV broadcasts, no leaflets - OK, so no canvassers anyway at the moment, but still, nothing at all is a bit limp.
Yes, I live in a safe Labour ward and therefore am probably assumed to be not worth canvassing. But you can understand when they’re this low key why people don’t bother to or even realise they could/should turn out.
Edit - and I note @Gallowgate hasn’t been contacted by the challengers in his ward either.
The Lib Dems are actually the incumbents in my ward. Labour are the challengers and I've heard from them but nobody else.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
It is true that there is a research lab in Wuhan that studies bat viruses (among other things). So, when you say "it is widely accepted they studied this virus" you're actually saying:
because this virus evolved in bats, and because there was a lab that studied bat viruses, then we know they were studying this virus
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
It is true that there is a research lab in Wuhan that studies bat viruses (among other things). So, when you say "it is widely accepted they studied this virus" you're actually saying:
because this virus evolved in bats, and because there was a lab that studied bat viruses, then we know they were studying this virus
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
It is true that there is a research lab in Wuhan that studies bat viruses (among other things). So, when you say "it is widely accepted they studied this virus" you're actually saying:
because this virus evolved in bats, and because there was a lab that studied bat viruses, then we know they were studying this virus
That's a leap.
You have to read around quite widely to get a sense of what China probably did. This is a decent summary, but imperfect
Four years after leaving office a former PM was trying to influence some of the current cabinet but failed. Am I summing up this 'scandal' correctly? Is this it?
I am totally against bribery and corruption if there is any but the fact that lobbying is supposed to be regulated means that it is accepted and legal. I presume when such rules were introduced it could have been banned!
There is significant corruption around the world that probably would affect and election - vaccine corruption where politicians, their friends or people they want get vaccinated first.
No. You have not summed up this "scandal" correctly.
What we saw yesterday was an emergency briefing by Nicola that moved a few deckchairs around fairly pointlessly but got her back dominating the news and a variety of "good news" announcements by Boris. The coincidence of this and the issuing of postal votes that Mike notes...isn't. Those in government both north and south of the border are playing fast and loose with any concept of purdah on government announcements and are using Covid as the excuse. It will probably do them good and oppositions are struggling to be heard.
As for Greensill I doubt 1% will understand it although it does revive the traditional Tory sleaze meme. I very much doubt it is going to have a material impact despite some pretty shabby behaviour by Cameron at least.
It isn't a "scandal" because the shabby behaviour looks to be limited to Cameron and his regime - and not to have any tie into Boris's current regime who "did the right thing". Those who still really, really like Cameron and still vote Conservative are a very small sub-set of the electorate.
No it isn't limited to Cameron. It impacts Sunak and Hancock.
Also see Eddie Lister and his current multiple roles.
What is at the heart of this scandal - and many others, both in politics and elsewhere - is conflicts of interest not lobbying.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
There are two possibilities here.
1. The vaccines (including any variant boosters) still work well enough to prevent hospitalization that the numbers in hospital with super-variant Covid never reach the levels that lead to Johnson pushing the big red lockdown button.
2. The vaccines do not work well enough (or the variant boosters are too late) to prevent hospitalization, and we end up with the NHS on the brink of collapse again. No way around it, if the NHS is genuinely on the brink of collapse in the face of an infectious disease, the lockdown button will be pressed.
I'm sadly entirely discounting the hypothetical possibility that effective border control would keep any super-variant out. The politicians are entirely unwilling.
I've seen no evidence that (2) will happen, but it is a low probability possibility - perhaps about as likely as an entirely new virus making the jump between species and causing a new pandemic.
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
You are ignoring the fact when the county council seats up this year were last up in 2017 the Tories had an 11% lead, most current polls have the Tories lead on less than that so Labour should actually make gains, at least at county level.
Given Corbyn survived losing 382 Labour county councillors and control of 7 county councils in 2017 Starmer will certainly survive making Labour gains at county level.
Given too Labour only got 27% in the 2017 counties and 31% in the 2016 district elections which were when the local seats up this year were last up, even the 34% Yougov has Labour now on would be an improvement (other pollsters have Labour on 36%).
In fact given the LDs 15% in 2016 and 18% in 2017 and are now polling under 10% they may face the biggest losses, on paper at least, though they tend to do better locally than nationally
When he wears his Jekyll hat, he is data driven and really very sensible and worth following. When he wears his HYde hat, he just lets rip with his fantasies. He's still worth following for the entertainment value.
The other admirable thing about @HYUFD is that, unlike a lot of right-of-centre posters here, he doesn't assume that 2023/4 and (probably) 2028/9 are in the bag for BoJo and the Conservatives.
One of the differences between past or current practitioners and keyboard warriors, I suspect. Knowing to fear the power of trivial events (dear boy).
Yes it is dangerous for Tories to be complacent, there is no great love for Starmer but he does not repel swing voters like Corbyn did either, so if things go bad economically before 2024 we would have a problem
That could have summed up Cameron pre-2010 and the circumstances surrounding the Labour Government in its dying days. Cameron squeaked home at the first attempt and then with his feet under the table became more popular.
Cameron's Tories also got 36% in 2010, the latest poll from Redfield and Wilton has Labour on....36%
@kateferguson4: Tory MPs are being whipped to vote against Labour’s motion to have a full-blown parliamentary inquiry into lobbying, Rachel Reeves says
You are either naive or just silly to be honest
Of course they will be whipped
There is an independent enquiry and labour playing politics requires an equal response
Labour playing politics? They are the Opposition. We have seen precious little opposition from them since 2016, and you are by implication whining that they should behave and leave your boys alone
Although Cameron's name is to the fore there would appear to be the fingerprints of several serving Cabinet Ministers all over this unseemly mess.
But then, Boris will be Boris, and his friends can be a bit lairy too. Besides which the voters love them all anyway, and just want to go to the pub. So why the fuss?.
Personally I think there is a scandal in the operation of Greensill and what they were doing. I am not in finance but the explanation sounded a lot like CDOs. That to me sounds like poor government. Cameron phoning or texting friends - but being able to influence them seems second order although I think current rules should be followed. Some on here appear to obsessed with laying every small issue on Boris without considering the wider picture.
My ultimate test is would you be so worked up if it were Gordon Brown ex-pm stepping in to call darling and balls if they were back in government. My personal answer is no and I suspect most labour supporters and MPs would agree and wouldn't be proposing an independent inquiry
It depends what in that hypothetical scenario, what Mr Brown was asking for.
If he was asking then to consider, say, the foreign policy implications of an action/event that had no personal connection to himself, then that would be no problem.
If he was asking for financial assistance for a company he had shares in, then that would be a real issue.
Dominic Cummings was right - the senior Civil Service is rotten and needs a total clearout.
I always worry when a private company gets its hooks into the civil service, and you end up with a revolving door between a few companies and the state. It rather discourages critical thinking when civil servants know there is good money in helping a particular company out.
Indeed. The question is how would you enforce lobbying rules on civil servants who are obviously free to leave one employment and start another? Would something like a five-year rule even be enforceable on members of staff, as opposed to elected representatives?
Clearly, the Civil Servant who's managed to somehow end up working for Greensill while still employed by the government is an almighty screwup, the rules should explicitly prohibit freelancing for another company whilst taking the Queen's shilling.
How to sort out this sort of issue in the future is going to be a nightmare if we treat people as people. There will always be a company making it clear there's a future 'opportunity' to those they speak to in government departments - and those with a habit of following through will quickly command attention within gov departments.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Agree, it is unlikely and I am with @Leon that this seems like an accidental leak. However, given the Chinese are not exactly being cooperative and sharing the information, Governments may decide they need to act on the side of caution.
Leak?
Science, neither Chinese nor US nor British, has any ability to manufacture or design viruses. We just don't know enough about them yet. So while it's possible that it was a virus being studied at a lab that escaped, it has to be at least as likely that it made it across the the animal-human gap the old fashioned way... you know, the way that SARS and MERS all made it.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Agree, it is unlikely and I am with @Leon that this seems like an accidental leak. However, given the Chinese are not exactly being cooperative and sharing the information, Governments may decide they need to act on the side of caution.
Leak?
Science, neither Chinese nor US nor British, has any ability to manufacture or design viruses. We just don't know enough about them yet. So while it's possible that it was a virus being studied at a lab that escaped, it has to be at least as likely that it made it across the the animal-human gap the old fashioned way... you know, the way that SARS and MERS all made it.
This novel bat coronavirus just happened to make this jump from bat to human in the centre of the same city that has, nearby, a globally unique level 4 Institute of Virology that is studying, unlike anywhere else in the world, the same novel bat coronavirus
That’s some major bad luck, right there
If the Wuhan variant of CV19 was the oldest, then you'd have a point.
But the Cambridge studies are pretty conclusive that it is not. CV19 did not originate in Wuhan. I.e., the genetic parent of all the CV19 variants out there appeared elsewhere in China.
Now, last time you suggested (and this is perfectly possible, albeit in total contradiction to your current hangover addled argument) that this was because the disease might have been first found in Ghangzhou, but then taken to Wuhan for study and then escaped.
Which is perfectly possible.
But it's also perfectly possible that the disease just jumped the animal-human barrier in the same way that SARS and MERS (and for that matter Ebola or AIDS) did.
Another day and right on cue we have another scientist talking about need for another lockdowns if there is a variant problem:
"Rapid spread of coronavirus variants could necessitate the reimposition of lockdown measures, a scientist advising the Government said.
Professor Peter Openshaw said his fellow scientists were "very concerned" after a cluster of cases of the South African coronavirus variant were found in London."
Telegraph blog.
Once again no doubt talking in a "personal capacity".
I know from my own extended family that these public utterances are just causing undue worry amongst older folk who have been vaccinated.
Stop it.
The problem is that "panic" garners clicks and shares and discussion like this.
Last week there were two stories:
(1) Pfizer announced that, based on long term trial data, it's vaccine was 90+% effective against the SA variant. (As in there was a 10- or 20-1 ratio between the number of people in the placebo and the trial group that ended up with a case of SA Covid.) This is, I think you will agree, excellent news.
(2) An Israeli study noted that of the - extremely small number of people in hospital with Covid - more of them had SA variant CV19 than other variants. The study basically said this suggested that vaccine was less effective against the variant. Two words from this report ("break through") were then taken to suggest Pfizer was somehow innefective against SA variant Covid.
The second - panic filled and largely inaccurate - story got all the headlines, while the first was basically ignored.
Indeed one interpretation of the latter is that the sa variant is the main one in circulation. Don’t know if true, but certainly possible. What worries me more is the drift away from avoiding hospitalisation and death, to a more zero Covid approach. If the vaccines meant no one needed hospital (and ignoring long Covid for the sake of brevity) then I wouldn’t care if we all caught Covid in any given year. And there would be no need for any other measures. Yet I sense some would now to head for elimination by the back door.
The variants stories look very like the classic "Cancer scare" stories that are used to generate fear as part of a bottom feeding media strategy by news outlets.
You missed the ruction yesterday? Boris telling Sky that he wasn't pursuing a zero COVID strategy? That is, that unlocking would increase cases, hospitalisations and possibly deaths.
Yeah - I saw that. I actually don't think the government is pursuing a zero covid approach, but the gutter press (i.e. almost all the media) will not stop jumping on snippets of data to suggest 'its all going wrong'. The BBC still occasionally compares daily figures to the previous day, so Tuesday will see an increase, and notably failed to handle the idea that Easter might have played havoc with all the figures (testing, admissions, vaccination etc). This does generate pressure on the government, I also think some scientists don't help by behaving as scientists. We are trained to use caveats when talking about data, and also to consider different scenarios. Unfortunately this does not work when talking to the media or often to the public. I have examples from my own public engagement, including one which really scared me, and ended up with me on the Breakfast news, that should never have gone that far. I really think that the scientists who talk to the media should consider how someone acting in bad faith could use their words. For instance saying that the worst case scenario could see 50,000 deaths this summer, but there is only a 1 in 1000 chance of that happening is great for a scientist, but the stupid (or deliberately mendacious) journalist will report that as X predicts up to 50,000 deaths this summer.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
Areas like Barnsley, Hull and Doncaster have little Tory representation at a local level though, unlike Hartlepool which is run by Tory/Brexit coalition and also has a Tory mayor.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Agree, it is unlikely and I am with @Leon that this seems like an accidental leak. However, given the Chinese are not exactly being cooperative and sharing the information, Governments may decide they need to act on the side of caution.
Leak?
Science, neither Chinese nor US nor British, has any ability to manufacture or design viruses. We just don't know enough about them yet. So while it's possible that it was a virus being studied at a lab that escaped, it has to be at least as likely that it made it across the the animal-human gap the old fashioned way... you know, the way that SARS and MERS all made it.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Agree, it is unlikely and I am with @Leon that this seems like an accidental leak. However, given the Chinese are not exactly being cooperative and sharing the information, Governments may decide they need to act on the side of caution.
Leak?
Science, neither Chinese nor US nor British, has any ability to manufacture or design viruses. We just don't know enough about them yet. So while it's possible that it was a virus being studied at a lab that escaped, it has to be at least as likely that it made it across the the animal-human gap the old fashioned way... you know, the way that SARS and MERS all made it.
This novel bat coronavirus just happened to make this jump from bat to human in the centre of the same city that has, nearby, a globally unique level 4 Institute of Virology that is studying, unlike anywhere else in the world, the same novel bat coronavirus
That’s some major bad luck, right there
If the Wuhan variant of CV19 was the oldest, then you'd have a point.
But the Cambridge studies are pretty conclusive that it is not. CV19 did not originate in Wuhan. I.e., the genetic parent of all the CV19 variants out there appeared elsewhere in China.
Now, last time you suggested (and this is perfectly possible, albeit in total contradiction to your current hangover addled argument) that this was because the disease might have been first found in Ghangzhou, but then taken to Wuhan for study and then escaped.
Which is perfectly possible.
But it's also perfectly possible that the disease just jumped the animal-human barrier in the same way that SARS and MERS (and for that matter Ebola or AIDS) did.
As I’ve just said, and repeatedly said, it came from Yunnan. Not Guangzhou. What the fuck are you on about?
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
It is true that there is a research lab in Wuhan that studies bat viruses (among other things). So, when you say "it is widely accepted they studied this virus" you're actually saying:
because this virus evolved in bats, and because there was a lab that studied bat viruses, then we know they were studying this virus
That's a leap.
You have to read around quite widely to get a sense of what China probably did. This is a decent summary, but imperfect
Another day and right on cue we have another scientist talking about need for another lockdowns if there is a variant problem:
"Rapid spread of coronavirus variants could necessitate the reimposition of lockdown measures, a scientist advising the Government said.
Professor Peter Openshaw said his fellow scientists were "very concerned" after a cluster of cases of the South African coronavirus variant were found in London."
Telegraph blog.
Once again no doubt talking in a "personal capacity".
I know from my own extended family that these public utterances are just causing undue worry amongst older folk who have been vaccinated.
Stop it.
The problem is that "panic" garners clicks and shares and discussion like this.
Last week there were two stories:
(1) Pfizer announced that, based on long term trial data, it's vaccine was 90+% effective against the SA variant. (As in there was a 10- or 20-1 ratio between the number of people in the placebo and the trial group that ended up with a case of SA Covid.) This is, I think you will agree, excellent news.
(2) An Israeli study noted that of the - extremely small number of people in hospital with Covid - more of them had SA variant CV19 than other variants. The study basically said this suggested that vaccine was less effective against the variant. Two words from this report ("break through") were then taken to suggest Pfizer was somehow innefective against SA variant Covid.
The second - panic filled and largely inaccurate - story got all the headlines, while the first was basically ignored.
Indeed one interpretation of the latter is that the sa variant is the main one in circulation. Don’t know if true, but certainly possible. What worries me more is the drift away from avoiding hospitalisation and death, to a more zero Covid approach. If the vaccines meant no one needed hospital (and ignoring long Covid for the sake of brevity) then I wouldn’t care if we all caught Covid in any given year. And there would be no need for any other measures. Yet I sense some would now to head for elimination by the back door.
The variants stories look very like the classic "Cancer scare" stories that are used to generate fear as part of a bottom feeding media strategy by news outlets.
You missed the ruction yesterday? Boris telling Sky that he wasn't pursuing a zero COVID strategy? That is, that unlocking would increase cases, hospitalisations and possibly deaths.
The variant stories are not complete bollocks, however. There is some cause for agitation, if not alarm
The second wave in India is insane, even by the insane standards of exponentiality
Look at the curve of their latest spike. Right at the recent end it becomes near vertical
But also consider that two weeks ago they had 60000 spectators at the cricket, with still fairly low vaccination numbers. I sense that like so many other nations before, they thought they had beaten Covid well before they really had.
Another day and right on cue we have another scientist talking about need for another lockdowns if there is a variant problem:
"Rapid spread of coronavirus variants could necessitate the reimposition of lockdown measures, a scientist advising the Government said.
Professor Peter Openshaw said his fellow scientists were "very concerned" after a cluster of cases of the South African coronavirus variant were found in London."
Telegraph blog.
Once again no doubt talking in a "personal capacity".
I know from my own extended family that these public utterances are just causing undue worry amongst older folk who have been vaccinated.
Stop it.
The problem is that "panic" garners clicks and shares and discussion like this.
Last week there were two stories:
(1) Pfizer announced that, based on long term trial data, it's vaccine was 90+% effective against the SA variant. (As in there was a 10- or 20-1 ratio between the number of people in the placebo and the trial group that ended up with a case of SA Covid.) This is, I think you will agree, excellent news.
(2) An Israeli study noted that of the - extremely small number of people in hospital with Covid - more of them had SA variant CV19 than other variants. The study basically said this suggested that vaccine was less effective against the variant. Two words from this report ("break through") were then taken to suggest Pfizer was somehow innefective against SA variant Covid.
The second - panic filled and largely inaccurate - story got all the headlines, while the first was basically ignored.
Indeed one interpretation of the latter is that the sa variant is the main one in circulation. Don’t know if true, but certainly possible. What worries me more is the drift away from avoiding hospitalisation and death, to a more zero Covid approach. If the vaccines meant no one needed hospital (and ignoring long Covid for the sake of brevity) then I wouldn’t care if we all caught Covid in any given year. And there would be no need for any other measures. Yet I sense some would now to head for elimination by the back door.
The variants stories look very like the classic "Cancer scare" stories that are used to generate fear as part of a bottom feeding media strategy by news outlets.
You missed the ruction yesterday? Boris telling Sky that he wasn't pursuing a zero COVID strategy? That is, that unlocking would increase cases, hospitalisations and possibly deaths.
The variant stories are not complete bollocks, however. There is some cause for agitation, if not alarm
The second wave in India is insane, even by the insane standards of exponentiality
Look at the curve of their latest spike. Right at the recent end it becomes near vertical
But also consider that two weeks ago they had 60000 spectators at the cricket, with still fairly low vaccination numbers. I sense that like so many other nations before, they thought they had beaten Covid well before they really had.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
First. Not sure if there’s any polling on this, but I doubt it’s registering to be honest. At most I suspect it’s damaging Cameron’s already damaged reputation.
There’s obviously an ongoing issue around lobbying. Part of the problem, of course, is that the questionable relationships only reveal themselves as obviously dubious at a later date.
Yes, the sleaze and kleptocracy of the Tory chums with their hands in the taxpayers pockets is not going to impact this election. It is though possible that it will do so by 2024. The corrosion of public life is a real achillies heel of this government, not least because there is no way for Johnson to sort it out. Dishonesty is so intrinsic to his character that he cannot recognise integrity. May, for all her many faults, has some integrity, and is perhaps worth watching for a Howe type takedown.
Wasn't it May who praised Sir Jeremy Heywood as one of the finest civil servants ever etc.... ?
I know he's dead and therefore can't answer questions. But with that caveat in mind, his actions bear very close examination and I am not at all sure that he comes out of this well - based on what we know so far.
If May tries to take down Johnson over this it could rebound on her. After all, what did she do during her time in office when Greensill was still all over government like a bad rash?
Boris's Govt. has been wise in not taking Greensill's calls, when it seems to have been on the speed-dial of his predecessors. But "current Govt. doing a good job" doesn't sell papers or give the Opposition anything to bitch about.
Anyway, beautiful day, leaflets to deliver in the sunshine - and somewhere in between, a haircut.
Areas like Barnsley, Hull and Doncaster have little Tory representation at a local level though, unlike Hartlepool which is run by Tory/Brexit coalition and also has a Tory mayor.
Yes, Barnsley East and Doncaster North don't have a Tees Mayoralty factor. Hartlepool is almost uniquely super vulnerable for Labour of the seats it holds.
On the retail level, Tory sleaze is one of the foundations of SKS's strategy so far, which is that he can win if, and perhaps only if, the Tories enable him to. His party and his leadership does not look enough to win by its own merit.
On the reality level for a moment, there are several things to distinguish:
Lobbying, advertising, position maximising, service providing, mutual back scratching, bribery, theft, getting a job matching your past experience, risk taking, lying, making big profits, networking are all things. They vary from public service to stuff you should get 20 years for; they can look remarkably similar. At the moment Labour's job is to make them all look the same. When in government their job is make them all look different.
Our job is to enjoy the show and back the winner. (Labour for Hartlepool for example).
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
Interesting they have 2017 as 39% when the BBC figure is 38%
So barring general election turnout in 1992, the last time a governing party got 40% was back in 1982.
Fake news, the 1992 locals did NOT take place on the same day as the 1992 general election.
Here’s a question though, thinking of how that was a month after the general.
Does the campaigning for a general election in itself drive up turnout for the local elections? The first intimation I had that there were elections round here (other than PB, obviously) was when I got my polling card yesterday. Otherwise, everywhere is dead silent. No posters, no TV broadcasts, no leaflets - OK, so no canvassers anyway at the moment, but still, nothing at all is a bit limp.
Yes, I live in a safe Labour ward and therefore am probably assumed to be not worth canvassing. But you can understand when they’re this low key why people don’t bother to or even realise they could/should turn out.
Edit - and I note @Gallowgate hasn’t been contacted by the challengers in his ward either.
Turnout in most local elections is 35% or less, compared to say the turnout of 67% there was at the 2019 general election.
However campaigning in a general election constituency safe seat is actually less than in a council ward marginal, eg at the last general election in Epping Forest we put one leaflet out and spent the rest of the time delivering and canvassing in Chingford and Woodford Green, our nearest marginal seat.
In this year's locals in marginal wards we have already put out several newsletters before the election address and have resumed canvassing there too
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
If they change the rules for retiring civil servants (rules as to what employment they may find), could present civil servants claim an interest vested in the old rules?
Another day and right on cue we have another scientist talking about need for another lockdowns if there is a variant problem:
"Rapid spread of coronavirus variants could necessitate the reimposition of lockdown measures, a scientist advising the Government said.
Professor Peter Openshaw said his fellow scientists were "very concerned" after a cluster of cases of the South African coronavirus variant were found in London."
Telegraph blog.
Once again no doubt talking in a "personal capacity".
I know from my own extended family that these public utterances are just causing undue worry amongst older folk who have been vaccinated.
Stop it.
The problem is that "panic" garners clicks and shares and discussion like this.
Last week there were two stories:
(1) Pfizer announced that, based on long term trial data, it's vaccine was 90+% effective against the SA variant. (As in there was a 10- or 20-1 ratio between the number of people in the placebo and the trial group that ended up with a case of SA Covid.) This is, I think you will agree, excellent news.
(2) An Israeli study noted that of the - extremely small number of people in hospital with Covid - more of them had SA variant CV19 than other variants. The study basically said this suggested that vaccine was less effective against the variant. Two words from this report ("break through") were then taken to suggest Pfizer was somehow innefective against SA variant Covid.
The second - panic filled and largely inaccurate - story got all the headlines, while the first was basically ignored.
Indeed one interpretation of the latter is that the sa variant is the main one in circulation. Don’t know if true, but certainly possible. What worries me more is the drift away from avoiding hospitalisation and death, to a more zero Covid approach. If the vaccines meant no one needed hospital (and ignoring long Covid for the sake of brevity) then I wouldn’t care if we all caught Covid in any given year. And there would be no need for any other measures. Yet I sense some would now to head for elimination by the back door.
The variants stories look very like the classic "Cancer scare" stories that are used to generate fear as part of a bottom feeding media strategy by news outlets.
You missed the ruction yesterday? Boris telling Sky that he wasn't pursuing a zero COVID strategy? That is, that unlocking would increase cases, hospitalisations and possibly deaths.
The variant stories are not complete bollocks, however. There is some cause for agitation, if not alarm
The second wave in India is insane, even by the insane standards of exponentiality
Look at the curve of their latest spike. Right at the recent end it becomes near vertical
But also consider that two weeks ago they had 60000 spectators at the cricket, with still fairly low vaccination numbers. I sense that like so many other nations before, they thought they had beaten Covid well before they really had.
Sadly, the only surprise about India is that this massive spike didn't happen much earlier. That it didn't is still likely to be an issue with testing capacity rather than anything else. The country contains some of the most densely populated areas of the planet, with no concept whatsoever of 'social distancing'.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
Technically speaking if we never end lockdown 3 then there can be no lockdown 4.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
@DavidL are you expecting the SNP to get a majority?
Its going to be close. I think (hope) that they will fall just short but their little green helpers will get them over the line once again. I expect the Tories to fall back a bit, possibly to 3rd and Labour to pick up a bit but not necessarily win many more seats.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
It is true that there is a research lab in Wuhan that studies bat viruses (among other things). So, when you say "it is widely accepted they studied this virus" you're actually saying:
because this virus evolved in bats, and because there was a lab that studied bat viruses, then we know they were studying this virus
That's a leap.
You have to read around quite widely to get a sense of what China probably did. This is a decent summary, but imperfect
Now, has China lied - appallingly - about Covid? Yes. About death tolls and danger and a hundred other things? Yes.
Is this more evidence we shouldn't trust them? Yes.
Is this evidence that they are actively hostile to us? Yes.
Does this mean that CV19 crossed from bat to man because of a leak at a Chinese lab? No.
Slate?
“Most of the questions that you and others are raising revolve around the Wuhan Institute of Technology. Tell me more about it.
“It’s China’s first BSL-4 laboratory. It’s a very prestigious, highly funded institute that studies viruses.
“BSL-4 is the highest level of international bioresearch safety. You can have potentially dangerous stuff in there. And researchers are definitely studying viruses that look a lot like COVID, right?
“Yes, they have the closest virus genome to SARS-CoV-2, and it’s called RaTG13. That has its own interesting story because it’s linked to these cases among some miners in South China. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was one of the labs that followed up on those mysterious cases. They collected numerous viruses from that mine where the miners had been sickened with the SARS-like illness, and the closest relative was from that mine.”
Another day and right on cue we have another scientist talking about need for another lockdowns if there is a variant problem:
"Rapid spread of coronavirus variants could necessitate the reimposition of lockdown measures, a scientist advising the Government said.
Professor Peter Openshaw said his fellow scientists were "very concerned" after a cluster of cases of the South African coronavirus variant were found in London."
Telegraph blog.
Once again no doubt talking in a "personal capacity".
I know from my own extended family that these public utterances are just causing undue worry amongst older folk who have been vaccinated.
Stop it.
The problem is that "panic" garners clicks and shares and discussion like this.
Last week there were two stories:
(1) Pfizer announced that, based on long term trial data, it's vaccine was 90+% effective against the SA variant. (As in there was a 10- or 20-1 ratio between the number of people in the placebo and the trial group that ended up with a case of SA Covid.) This is, I think you will agree, excellent news.
(2) An Israeli study noted that of the - extremely small number of people in hospital with Covid - more of them had SA variant CV19 than other variants. The study basically said this suggested that vaccine was less effective against the variant. Two words from this report ("break through") were then taken to suggest Pfizer was somehow innefective against SA variant Covid.
The second - panic filled and largely inaccurate - story got all the headlines, while the first was basically ignored.
Indeed one interpretation of the latter is that the sa variant is the main one in circulation. Don’t know if true, but certainly possible. What worries me more is the drift away from avoiding hospitalisation and death, to a more zero Covid approach. If the vaccines meant no one needed hospital (and ignoring long Covid for the sake of brevity) then I wouldn’t care if we all caught Covid in any given year. And there would be no need for any other measures. Yet I sense some would now to head for elimination by the back door.
The variants stories look very like the classic "Cancer scare" stories that are used to generate fear as part of a bottom feeding media strategy by news outlets.
You missed the ruction yesterday? Boris telling Sky that he wasn't pursuing a zero COVID strategy? That is, that unlocking would increase cases, hospitalisations and possibly deaths.
The variant stories are not complete bollocks, however. There is some cause for agitation, if not alarm
The second wave in India is insane, even by the insane standards of exponentiality
Look at the curve of their latest spike. Right at the recent end it becomes near vertical
India have vaccinated only a very small percentage of their population. The worrying thing about the variants (so far) is that they can be much more infectious in unvaccinated populations.
Again, a variant which largely evades vaccine immunity is not impossible (which is why the relatively small cost of building vaccine capacity, and developing tweaked boosters is more than justified), but it is unlikely.
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
@kateferguson4: Tory MPs are being whipped to vote against Labour’s motion to have a full-blown parliamentary inquiry into lobbying, Rachel Reeves says
You are either naive or just silly to be honest
Of course they will be whipped
There is an independent enquiry and labour playing politics requires an equal response
Labour playing politics? They are the Opposition. We have seen precious little opposition from them since 2016, and you are by implication whining that they should behave and leave your boys alone
Although Cameron's name is to the fore there would appear to be the fingerprints of several serving Cabinet Ministers all over this unseemly mess.
But then, Boris will be Boris, and his friends can be a bit lairy too. Besides which the voters love them all anyway, and just want to go to the pub. So why the fuss?.
Personally I think there is a scandal in the operation of Greensill and what they were doing. I am not in finance but the explanation sounded a lot like CDOs. That to me sounds like poor government. Cameron phoning or texting friends - but being able to influence them seems second order although I think current rules should be followed. Some on here appear to obsessed with laying every small issue on Boris without considering the wider picture.
My ultimate test is would you be so worked up if it were Gordon Brown ex-pm stepping in to call darling and balls if they were back in government. My personal answer is no and I suspect most labour supporters and MPs would agree and wouldn't be proposing an independent inquiry
It depends what in that hypothetical scenario, what Mr Brown was asking for.
If he was asking then to consider, say, the foreign policy implications of an action/event that had no personal connection to himself, then that would be no problem.
If he was asking for financial assistance for a company he had shares in, then that would be a real issue.
But I don't see the problem in asking. Anyone employed legally to do so complying with relevant rules should be alliwed. It appears that neither Hancock or Sunak acted on this and therefore @Cyclefree s concern about conflict of interest can't happen - that is the very act of lobbying should not assert a conflict of interest over the lobbied party.
I want to live in a world where lobbying exists but is transparent. All organisations that lobby government including trade unions, charities, business, trade associations and specialist lobbying companies should be able to demonstrate what they do. If I were a charity donor or trustee spending significant sums on campaigns for example I would want to know how that worked so I could measure it's effectiveness in meeting the stated aims of the charity.
It is the next big scandal waiting to happen. It’s an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.
I’m talking about lobbying – and we all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisors for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way. In this party, we believe in competition, not cronyism. We believe in market economics, not crony capitalism. So we must be the party that sorts all this out.
Now, I want to be clear: it’s not just big business that gets involved in lobbying. Charities and other organisations, including trade unions, do it too. What’s more, when it's open and transparent, when people know who is meeting who, for what reason and with what outcome, lobbying is perfectly reasonable.
It’s important that businesses, charities and other organisations feel they can make sure their voice is heard. And indeed, lobbying often makes for better, more workable, legislation. But I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control.
Today it is a £2 billion industry that has a huge presence in Parliament. The Hansard Society has estimated that some MPs are approached over one hundred times a week by lobbyists. Much of the time this happens covertly.
We don’t know who is meeting whom. We don’t know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don’t know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence. This isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests - not to mention government contracts - worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake.
I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works, with money buying power, power fishing for money and a cosy club at the top making decisions in their own interest.
We can’t go on like this. I believe it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.
Fascinating. 15 gains by the Tories on this swing, which some like @kinabalu is saying should be considered the 'status quo'.
If they're right then the status quo going into the next election ought to be a 110 seat majority, not an 80 seat majority.
Yep, precise numbers aside, the general point is correct and is key to understanding the depth of the hole Labour must clamber out of in order to get competitive. The 80 seat Con majority doesn't tell the whole story. Take the BXP out of GE19 and you'd have an even bigger defeat. And of course nowhere is this factor more salient and important to grasp than in the seat where the BXP stood their leader in 2019, really went for it, and managed their largest vote share. The citadel of northern working class hard leave. Hartlepool.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
Don't take a job as a criminal prosecutor because the pay is shit and you're overworked, kids with paper rounds will make more money per hour than you would as a criminal prosecutor you might end up being just like Sir Keir Starmer.
@kateferguson4: Tory MPs are being whipped to vote against Labour’s motion to have a full-blown parliamentary inquiry into lobbying, Rachel Reeves says
You are either naive or just silly to be honest
Of course they will be whipped
There is an independent enquiry and labour playing politics requires an equal response
Labour playing politics? They are the Opposition. We have seen precious little opposition from them since 2016, and you are by implication whining that they should behave and leave your boys alone
Although Cameron's name is to the fore there would appear to be the fingerprints of several serving Cabinet Ministers all over this unseemly mess.
But then, Boris will be Boris, and his friends can be a bit lairy too. Besides which the voters love them all anyway, and just want to go to the pub. So why the fuss?.
Personally I think there is a scandal in the operation of Greensill and what they were doing. I am not in finance but the explanation sounded a lot like CDOs. That to me sounds like poor government. Cameron phoning or texting friends - but being able to influence them seems second order although I think current rules should be followed. Some on here appear to obsessed with laying every small issue on Boris without considering the wider picture.
My ultimate test is would you be so worked up if it were Gordon Brown ex-pm stepping in to call darling and balls if they were back in government. My personal answer is no and I suspect most labour supporters and MPs would agree and wouldn't be proposing an independent inquiry
To be honest, I am not particularly worked up by Cameron's role in the Greensill affair, I am even prepared to give him the benefit of any doubt, and concede that his primary concern was the jobs of workers at Liberty Steel. It is true, I wasn't particularly wound up by cash for honours. Perhaps I should have been.
My point was with reference to BigG 's suggestion that Labour are merely playing politics. I was confirming my opinion that opposition is their job, and when the unpleasant odour leads directly through the gates of Downing Street it should be looked into.
Your accusation against me is that I disregard Labour misdeeds and whine about trifles like the Garden Bridge and PPE contracts to Cabinet Ministers' friends. I believe you argument is unfair.
I am not happy that my contribution to the public purse is spent on Garden Bridges and PPE that will languish, unused in a store room for decades, until a waste contractor is paid to remove it, and I will point a finger at those I blame for this "spaffing" of my money. I think my calling out historical financial impropriety from the Labour Party over the years is well documented on PB, from T. Dan Smith to the late Graham Jenkins. I have called the Labour Party out!
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
Again, they always get jumpy around independent journalists. That’s because of the way they operate. It’s not in itself a sign of anything sinister going on.
As I noted earlier, they just passed a law in Hong Kong which would make @TheScreamingEagles advocating drawing a dick picture on a ballot paper an imprisonable offence.
Totalitarian regimes do stupid and brutal stuff, but it doesn't make conspiracies any more likely.
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
Don't take a job as a criminal prosecutor because the pay is shit and you're overworked, kids with paper rounds will make more money per hour than you would as a criminal prosecutor you might end up being just like Sir Keir Starmer.
Clearly the universe doesn't want me to be just like Sir Keir Starmer, unfortunately.
Glad we have the Leon report into the origins of covid, I was feeling quite underwhelmed having to rely on the WHO which involved those pesky "experts" doing lots of work based on years of boring study. What I really needed was someone deducing it from their feelings.
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
Don't take a job as a criminal prosecutor because the pay is shit and you're overworked, kids with paper rounds will make more money per hour than you would as a criminal prosecutor you might end up being just like Sir Keir Starmer.
What TSE says - I really can't imagine anything worse except possible being an on-duty legal aid defence lawyer.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
Again, they always get jumpy around independent journalists. That’s because of the way they operate. It’s not in itself a sign of anything sinister going on.
As I noted earlier, they just passed a law in Hong Kong which would make @TheScreamingEagles advocating drawing a dick picture on a ballot paper an imprisonable offence.
Totalitarian regimes do stupid and brutal stuff, but it doesn't make conspiracies any more likely.
Please, I'm much more classier than that.
I would never use the word dick, I would use the word phallus.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
"before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population" Seems perfectly logical to me.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
Don't take a job as a criminal prosecutor because the pay is shit and you're overworked, kids with paper rounds will make more money per hour than you would as a criminal prosecutor you might end up being just like Sir Keir Starmer.
What TSE says - I really can't imagine anything worse except possible being an on-duty legal aid defence lawyer.
I was quite excited about the opportunity. Although I didn't expect to actually be successful, I think it would have been good. Never mind.
If they change the rules for retiring civil servants (rules as to what employment they may find), could present civil servants claim an interest vested in the old rules?
Not really - as surely it only reduces options if you were planning to resign from the job.
If you are made redundant they cannot really stop you taking the work available...
It is the next big scandal waiting to happen. It’s an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.
I’m talking about lobbying – and we all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisors for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way. In this party, we believe in competition, not cronyism. We believe in market economics, not crony capitalism. So we must be the party that sorts all this out.
Now, I want to be clear: it’s not just big business that gets involved in lobbying. Charities and other organisations, including trade unions, do it too. What’s more, when it's open and transparent, when people know who is meeting who, for what reason and with what outcome, lobbying is perfectly reasonable.
It’s important that businesses, charities and other organisations feel they can make sure their voice is heard. And indeed, lobbying often makes for better, more workable, legislation. But I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control.
Today it is a £2 billion industry that has a huge presence in Parliament. The Hansard Society has estimated that some MPs are approached over one hundred times a week by lobbyists. Much of the time this happens covertly.
We don’t know who is meeting whom. We don’t know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don’t know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence. This isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests - not to mention government contracts - worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake.
I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works, with money buying power, power fishing for money and a cosy club at the top making decisions in their own interest.
We can’t go on like this. I believe it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
Fascinating. 15 gains by the Tories on this swing, which some like @kinabalu is saying should be considered the 'status quo'.
If they're right then the status quo going into the next election ought to be a 110 seat majority, not an 80 seat majority.
Yep, precise numbers aside, the general point is correct and is key to understanding the depth of the hole Labour must clamber out of in order to get competitive. The 80 seat Con majority doesn't tell the whole story. Take the BXP out of GE19 and you'd have an even bigger defeat. And of course nowhere is this factor more salient and important to grasp than in the seat where the BXP stood their leader in 2019, really went for it, and managed their largest vote share. The citadel of northern working class hard leave. Hartlepool.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
That's about my view too, based partly on second-hand reports from people involved. That said, there has been a longstanding shift of C2D voters from Lab to Con and a corresponding shift of ABC1 voters from Con to Lab - going back before Starmer, Corbyn or Miliband. Education and especially age are now much better predictors of voting intention than class. The effect of that is that seats like Hartlepool become vulnerable to the Tories, as the tweet shows, but that's matched by middle-class seats slipping to Labour. Obviously both parties should fight to retain both, but it's misleading that the tweet only looks at similar seats to Hartlepool.
Glad we have the Leon report into the origins of covid, I was feeling quite underwhelmed having to rely on the WHO which involved those pesky "experts" doing lots of work based on years of boring study. What I really needed was someone deducing it from their feelings.
Glad we have the Leon report into the origins of covid, I was feeling quite underwhelmed having to rely on the WHO which involved those pesky "experts" doing lots of work based on years of boring study. What I really needed was someone deducing it from their feelings.
Are you talking about THIS same WHO report? The one severely criticized by a dozen major governments, including the UK and USA, and even undermined by the chief of... the WHO?
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
Don't take a job as a criminal prosecutor because the pay is shit and you're overworked, kids with paper rounds will make more money per hour than you would as a criminal prosecutor you might end up being just like Sir Keir Starmer.
What TSE says - I really can't imagine anything worse except possible being an on-duty legal aid defence lawyer.
I was quite excited about the opportunity. Although I didn't expect to actually be successful, I think it would have been good. Never mind.
It can be a very good job, I have three friends who started off at the CPS, one of them is on course to be a head of a division, two two others left their mid level jobs at the CPS with no other jobs lined up simply because they wanted to get away from it.
Interestingly all three of them are very dubious of the police since they started working with the CPS.
Glad we have the Leon report into the origins of covid, I was feeling quite underwhelmed having to rely on the WHO which involved those pesky "experts" doing lots of work based on years of boring study. What I really needed was someone deducing it from their feelings.
We do know that viruses escape from research labs (see the Birmingham Smallpox outbreak and the sad death of Janet Parker).
I think it is true that we still don't really know exactly how the transmission to Janet Parker actually occurred in the University of Birmingham Medical School.
COVID is very infectious, and so the @Leon Report (whilst it may not have any direct evidence) certainly can't be dismissed out of hand, IMO.
In the land of covid and its restrictions, I reckon Greenshill is way down the list of the priorities of most voters.
It's also a story tied very much to Cameron rather than the wider Gov't. All I've seen has suggested Sunak has acted entirely properly. Now will Sunak be doing similar himself in 10 years time ? Perhaps but this isn't that story.
For those who REALLY want to dig deep, rather than believing China or ‘the WHO report dismissed by the WHO’ here’s an impossibly long, highly detailed New York mag essay which actually goes further, and claims the bug not only came from the lab, but was genetically altered
“What happened was fairly simple, I’ve come to believe. It was an accident. A virus spent some time in a laboratory, and eventually it got out. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, began its existence inside a bat, then it learned how to infect people in a claustrophobic mine shaft, and then it was made more infectious in one or more laboratories, perhaps as part of a scientist’s well-intentioned but risky effort to create a broad-spectrum vaccine.”
The president of the region of France containing the Riviera has placed an order for 500,000 doses of Sputnik.
That's not quite accurate: "he announced that he had contacted the Russian ambassador for a “pre-order” of 500,000 doses of the anti-Covid vaccine -19 Sputnik V"
"Wants to" is some way away from "has an order for"
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
Mostly, politicians don't run Britain, actually. Citizens do. Politicians mainly get in the way.
And this isn't a general election. Its a free hit. But accept the status quo if you want. I'm not going to tell you how to vote.
Here's the thing. Steve Baker & Co can't move if the tories do well in the locals. IF bedrock tory support drains away, he might be able to do something.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
"before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population" Seems perfectly logical to me.
Kids don't get sick from this and we have vaccinated a substantial majority of adults..
Indeed under-50s who are not vulnerable don't get particularly sick from it either, those who are vulnerable have been vaccinated already.
The Phase I vaccine group corresponded to over 99% of deaths and the first dose rollout for that is complete now. So the risk of deaths from Covid should be reduced by close to 99% now.
It is inexcusable to be removing fundamental civil liberties still as if the vaccine hasn't been rolled out yet.
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
Don't take a job as a criminal prosecutor because the pay is shit and you're overworked, kids with paper rounds will make more money per hour than you would as a criminal prosecutor you might end up being just like Sir Keir Starmer.
What TSE says - I really can't imagine anything worse except possible being an on-duty legal aid defence lawyer.
I was quite excited about the opportunity. Although I didn't expect to actually be successful, I think it would have been good. Never mind.
It can be a very good job, I have three friends who started off at the CPS, one of them is on course to be a head of a division, two two others left their mid level jobs at the CPS with no other jobs lined up simply because they wanted to get away from it.
Interestingly all three of them are very dubious of the police since they started working with the CPS.
since ?
The impression I get from people in the legal profession on here is that none of you particularly like the police regardless of CPS employment or not.
Glad we have the Leon report into the origins of covid, I was feeling quite underwhelmed having to rely on the WHO which involved those pesky "experts" doing lots of work based on years of boring study. What I really needed was someone deducing it from their feelings.
Glad we have the Leon report into the origins of covid, I was feeling quite underwhelmed having to rely on the WHO which involved those pesky "experts" doing lots of work based on years of boring study. What I really needed was someone deducing it from their feelings.
Are you talking about THIS same WHO report? The one severely criticized by a dozen major governments, including the UK and USA, and even undermined by the chief of... the WHO?
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
Yes, I wanted a report like the Leon report, by someone who knows nothing more about it than me, but has really strong feelings. Not some namby pamby report by boring nerds hedging their bets with things like uncertainty and further work needed.
In the land of covid and its restrictions, I reckon Greenshill is way down the list of the priorities of most voters.
It's also a story tied very much to Cameron rather than the wider Gov't. All I've seen has suggested Sunak has acted entirely properly. Now will Sunak be doing similar himself in 10 years time ? Perhaps but this isn't that story.
Given how rich Rishi's in-laws are I would hope not.
Interesting they have 2017 as 39% when the BBC figure is 38%
So barring general election turnout in 1992, the last time a governing party got 40% was back in 1982.
Fake news, the 1992 locals did NOT take place on the same day as the 1992 general election.
Here’s a question though, thinking of how that was a month after the general.
Does the campaigning for a general election in itself drive up turnout for the local elections? The first intimation I had that there were elections round here (other than PB, obviously) was when I got my polling card yesterday. Otherwise, everywhere is dead silent. No posters, no TV broadcasts, no leaflets - OK, so no canvassers anyway at the moment, but still, nothing at all is a bit limp.
Yes, I live in a safe Labour ward and therefore am probably assumed to be not worth canvassing. But you can understand when they’re this low key why people don’t bother to or even realise they could/should turn out.
Edit - and I note @Gallowgate hasn’t been contacted by the challengers in his ward either.
Turnout in most local elections is 35% or less, compared to say the turnout of 67% there was at the 2019 general election.
However campaigning in a general election constituency safe seat is actually less than in a council ward marginal, eg at the last general election in Epping Forest we put one leaflet out and spent the rest of the time delivering and canvassing in Chingford and Woodford Green, our nearest marginal seat.
In this year's locals in marginal wards we have already put out several newsletters before the election address and have resumed canvassing there too
I was thinking of things like TV/radio/internet coverage, plus posters, rallies etc.
They cut through as they are newsworthy.
A few public spirited people delivering leaflets in marginal wards, less so.
It is the next big scandal waiting to happen. It’s an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.
I’m talking about lobbying – and we all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisors for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way. In this party, we believe in competition, not cronyism. We believe in market economics, not crony capitalism. So we must be the party that sorts all this out.
Now, I want to be clear: it’s not just big business that gets involved in lobbying. Charities and other organisations, including trade unions, do it too. What’s more, when it's open and transparent, when people know who is meeting who, for what reason and with what outcome, lobbying is perfectly reasonable.
It’s important that businesses, charities and other organisations feel they can make sure their voice is heard. And indeed, lobbying often makes for better, more workable, legislation. But I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control.
Today it is a £2 billion industry that has a huge presence in Parliament. The Hansard Society has estimated that some MPs are approached over one hundred times a week by lobbyists. Much of the time this happens covertly.
We don’t know who is meeting whom. We don’t know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don’t know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence. This isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests - not to mention government contracts - worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake.
I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works, with money buying power, power fishing for money and a cosy club at the top making decisions in their own interest.
We can’t go on like this. I believe it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
Because China is - for want of a better word - our enemy (or should I say actively hostile towards us), we are predisposed to believe everything.
Almost nobody who actually works in viral research, even the most hawkish and anti-China, believes CV19 escaped from a lab. They all think that the simpler explanation is more likely correct.
In the land of covid and its restrictions, I reckon Greenshill is way down the list of the priorities of most voters.
It's also a story tied very much to Cameron rather than the wider Gov't. All I've seen has suggested Sunak has acted entirely properly. Now will Sunak be doing similar himself in 10 years time ? Perhaps but this isn't that story.
Given how rich Rishi's in-laws are I would hope not.
Cameron's in-laws are hardly short of a bob or two either, but wealth doesn't appear to stop relatively young former ministers getting bored and wanting to keep themselves busy...
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
Don't take a job as a criminal prosecutor because the pay is shit and you're overworked, kids with paper rounds will make more money per hour than you would as a criminal prosecutor you might end up being just like Sir Keir Starmer.
What TSE says - I really can't imagine anything worse except possible being an on-duty legal aid defence lawyer.
I was quite excited about the opportunity. Although I didn't expect to actually be successful, I think it would have been good. Never mind.
It can be a very good job, I have three friends who started off at the CPS, one of them is on course to be a head of a division, two two others left their mid level jobs at the CPS with no other jobs lined up simply because they wanted to get away from it.
Interestingly all three of them are very dubious of the police since they started working with the CPS.
since ?
The impression I get from people in the legal profession on here is that none of you particularly like the police regardless of CPS employment or not.
Since, I was fine with the police until I started to deal with them on a regular basis. Is the way of the world.
For the CPS it is a two way street, I believe the Rozzers tell everyone that the CPS stands for the Criminal Protection Service.
Though the CPS will bang on that the quality of evidence produced by a lot of police is substandard.
One of Mrs Thatcher's great achievements was bringing in PACE.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
Again, they always get jumpy around independent journalists. That’s because of the way they operate. It’s not in itself a sign of anything sinister going on.
As I noted earlier, they just passed a law in Hong Kong which would make @TheScreamingEagles advocating drawing a dick picture on a ballot paper an imprisonable offence.
Totalitarian regimes do stupid and brutal stuff, but it doesn't make conspiracies any more likely.
Please, I'm much more classier than that.
I would never use the word dick, I would use the word phallus.
Dominic Cummings was right - the senior Civil Service is rotten and needs a total clearout.
I always worry when a private company gets its hooks into the civil service, and you end up with a revolving door between a few companies and the state. It rather discourages critical thinking when civil servants know there is good money in helping a particular company out.
Indeed. The question is how would you enforce lobbying rules on civil servants who are obviously free to leave one employment and start another? Would something like a five-year rule even be enforceable on members of staff, as opposed to elected representatives?
Clearly, the Civil Servant who's managed to somehow end up working for Greensill while still employed by the government is an almighty screwup, the rules should explicitly prohibit freelancing for another company whilst taking the Queen's shilling.
How to sort out this sort of issue in the future is going to be a nightmare if we treat people as people. There will always be a company making it clear there's a future 'opportunity' to those they speak to in government departments - and those with a habit of following through will quickly command attention within gov departments.
The problem is that many peoples employability is based on the networks of who they know. And what they know.
Further, you could end up baring people who have intimate knowledge of a sector, from working in that sector. And there are enough problems with people in government not knowing anything about what they are governing as it is.
Glad we have the Leon report into the origins of covid, I was feeling quite underwhelmed having to rely on the WHO which involved those pesky "experts" doing lots of work based on years of boring study. What I really needed was someone deducing it from their feelings.
We do know that viruses escape from research labs (see the Birmingham Smallpox outbreak and the sad death of Janet Parker).
I think it is true that we still don't really know exactly how the transmission to Janet Parker actually occurred in the University of Birmingham Medical School.
COVID is very infectious, and so the @Leon Report (whilst it may not have any direct evidence) certainly can't be dismissed out of hand, IMO.
That unherd article makes a very good point. Otherwise intelligent people are stupidly refusing to believe the likeliest explanation - it leaked out of the lab. Why? Because this theory was advanced by Trump, which has made it toxic. No one wants to agree with a racist madman
If a new theory was propounded by Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson, many sane people would go to great lengths to disagree with it, even if it were palpably true
Indeed something exactly like that happened when Nick Griffin broke the Grooming scandal
It is the next big scandal waiting to happen. It’s an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.
I’m talking about lobbying – and we all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisors for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way. In this party, we believe in competition, not cronyism. We believe in market economics, not crony capitalism. So we must be the party that sorts all this out.
Now, I want to be clear: it’s not just big business that gets involved in lobbying. Charities and other organisations, including trade unions, do it too. What’s more, when it's open and transparent, when people know who is meeting who, for what reason and with what outcome, lobbying is perfectly reasonable.
It’s important that businesses, charities and other organisations feel they can make sure their voice is heard. And indeed, lobbying often makes for better, more workable, legislation. But I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control.
Today it is a £2 billion industry that has a huge presence in Parliament. The Hansard Society has estimated that some MPs are approached over one hundred times a week by lobbyists. Much of the time this happens covertly.
We don’t know who is meeting whom. We don’t know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don’t know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence. This isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests - not to mention government contracts - worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake.
I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works, with money buying power, power fishing for money and a cosy club at the top making decisions in their own interest.
We can’t go on like this. I believe it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.
Comments
The second wave in India is insane, even by the insane standards of exponentiality
Look at the curve of their latest spike. Right at the recent end it becomes near vertical
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/
I know he's dead and therefore can't answer questions. But with that caveat in mind, his actions bear very close examination and I am not at all sure that he comes out of this well - based on what we know so far.
If May tries to take down Johnson over this it could rebound on her. After all, what did she do during her time in office when Greensill was still all over government like a bad rash?
Although there's probably some duplication there.
The fact that a bunch of stupid paranoid tossers are behaving like a bunch of stupid paranoid tossers is not a reason to fear there’s a conspiracy going on.
The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though.
One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
Science, neither Chinese nor US nor British, has any ability to manufacture or design viruses. We just don't know enough about them yet. So while it's possible that it was a virus being studied at a lab that escaped, it has to be at least as likely that it made it across the the animal-human gap the old fashioned way... you know, the way that SARS and MERS all made it.
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-55404485
When your bases are like that then through sheer effort one side makes biggish the gain, the other side biggish losses, the energy is only one way.
Kinnock was on the way out and John Major was front and centre in this campaign.
I am sure Airbus are on board so to speak as their A320 is their workhorse for these flights
Strange how people forget. "Cases are only rising slowly" becomes "Cases are rising like a space rocket" in an eyeblink.
R below 0.9999999 - result happiness
R above 1.0000000 - result misery
So we can now assume the moribund StopHS2 campaign is suddenly going to be very popular with the airline industry.
My ultimate test is would you be so worked up if it were Gordon Brown ex-pm stepping in to call darling and balls if they were back in government. My personal answer is no and I suspect most labour supporters and MPs would agree and wouldn't be proposing an independent inquiry
My ultimate test is would you be so worked up if it were Gordon Brown ex-pm stepping in to call darling and balls if they were back in government. My personal answer is no and I suspect most labour supporters and MPs would agree and wouldn't be proposing an independent inquiry
That’s some major bad luck, right there
because this virus evolved in bats, and because there was a lab that studied bat viruses, then we know they were studying this virus
That's a leap.
The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-covid-dissidents-taking-on-china/
Too much - 57%
About right - 32%
Too little - 2%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2021/04/13/e74cc/2?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=question_2
Also see Eddie Lister and his current multiple roles.
What is at the heart of this scandal - and many others, both in politics and elsewhere - is conflicts of interest not lobbying.
1. The vaccines (including any variant boosters) still work well enough to prevent hospitalization that the numbers in hospital with super-variant Covid never reach the levels that lead to Johnson pushing the big red lockdown button.
2. The vaccines do not work well enough (or the variant boosters are too late) to prevent hospitalization, and we end up with the NHS on the brink of collapse again. No way around it, if the NHS is genuinely on the brink of collapse in the face of an infectious disease, the lockdown button will be pressed.
I'm sadly entirely discounting the hypothetical possibility that effective border control would keep any super-variant out. The politicians are entirely unwilling.
I've seen no evidence that (2) will happen, but it is a low probability possibility - perhaps about as likely as an entirely new virus making the jump between species and causing a new pandemic.
If he was asking then to consider, say, the foreign policy implications of an action/event that had no personal connection to himself, then that would be no problem.
If he was asking for financial assistance for a company he had shares in, then that would be a real issue.
Clearly, the Civil Servant who's managed to somehow end up working for Greensill while still employed by the government is an almighty screwup, the rules should explicitly prohibit freelancing for another company whilst taking the Queen's shilling.
How to sort out this sort of issue in the future is going to be a nightmare if we treat people as people. There will always be a company making it clear there's a future 'opportunity' to those they speak to in government departments - and those with a habit of following through will quickly command attention within gov departments.
But the Cambridge studies are pretty conclusive that it is not. CV19 did not originate in Wuhan. I.e., the genetic parent of all the CV19 variants out there appeared elsewhere in China.
Now, last time you suggested (and this is perfectly possible, albeit in total contradiction to your current hangover addled argument) that this was because the disease might have been first found in Ghangzhou, but then taken to Wuhan for study and then escaped.
Which is perfectly possible.
But it's also perfectly possible that the disease just jumped the animal-human barrier in the same way that SARS and MERS (and for that matter Ebola or AIDS) did.
God I'm so sorry.
I was completely wrong.
Now, has China lied - appallingly - about Covid? Yes. About death tolls and danger and a hundred other things? Yes.
Is this more evidence we shouldn't trust them? Yes.
Is this evidence that they are actively hostile to us? Yes.
Does this mean that CV19 crossed from bat to man because of a leak at a Chinese lab? No.
Luck plays an incredibly important role here.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
Anyway, beautiful day, leaflets to deliver in the sunshine - and somewhere in between, a haircut.
On the reality level for a moment, there are several things to distinguish:
Lobbying, advertising, position maximising, service providing, mutual back scratching, bribery, theft, getting a job matching your past experience, risk taking, lying, making big profits, networking are all things. They vary from public service to stuff you should get 20 years for; they can look remarkably similar. At the moment Labour's job is to make them all look the same. When in government their job is make them all look different.
Our job is to enjoy the show and back the winner. (Labour for Hartlepool for example).
However campaigning in a general election constituency safe seat is actually less than in a council ward marginal, eg at the last general election in Epping Forest we put one leaflet out and spent the rest of the time delivering and canvassing in Chingford and Woodford Green, our nearest marginal seat.
In this year's locals in marginal wards we have already put out several newsletters before the election address and have resumed canvassing there too
It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
“Most of the questions that you and others are raising revolve around the Wuhan Institute of Technology. Tell me more about it.
“It’s China’s first BSL-4 laboratory. It’s a very prestigious, highly funded institute that studies viruses.
“BSL-4 is the highest level of international bioresearch safety. You can have potentially dangerous stuff in there. And researchers are definitely studying viruses that look a lot like COVID, right?
“Yes, they have the closest virus genome to SARS-CoV-2, and it’s called RaTG13. That has its own interesting story because it’s linked to these cases among some miners in South China. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was one of the labs that followed up on those mysterious cases. They collected numerous viruses from that mine where the miners had been sickened with the SARS-like illness, and the closest relative was from that mine.”
https://slate.com/technology/2021/04/covid-lab-leak-theory-pandemic-research.html
The worrying thing about the variants (so far) is that they can be much more infectious in unvaccinated populations.
Again, a variant which largely evades vaccine immunity is not impossible (which is why the relatively small cost of building vaccine capacity, and developing tweaked boosters is more than justified), but it is unlikely.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
I want to live in a world where lobbying exists but is transparent. All organisations that lobby government including trade unions, charities, business, trade associations and specialist lobbying companies should be able to demonstrate what they do. If I were a charity donor or trustee spending significant sums on campaigns for example I would want to know how that worked so I could measure it's effectiveness in meeting the stated aims of the charity.
It is the next big scandal waiting to happen. It’s an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.
I’m talking about lobbying – and we all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisors for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way. In this party, we believe in competition, not cronyism. We believe in market economics, not crony capitalism. So we must be the party that sorts all this out.
Now, I want to be clear: it’s not just big business that gets involved in lobbying. Charities and other organisations, including trade unions, do it too. What’s more, when it's open and transparent, when people know who is meeting who, for what reason and with what outcome, lobbying is perfectly reasonable.
It’s important that businesses, charities and other organisations feel they can make sure their voice is heard. And indeed, lobbying often makes for better, more workable, legislation. But I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control.
Today it is a £2 billion industry that has a huge presence in Parliament. The Hansard Society has estimated that some MPs are approached over one hundred times a week by lobbyists. Much of the time this happens covertly.
We don’t know who is meeting whom. We don’t know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don’t know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence. This isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests - not to mention government contracts - worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake.
I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works, with money buying power, power fishing for money and a cosy club at the top making decisions in their own interest.
We can’t go on like this. I believe it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100414161246/http:/www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2010/02/David_Cameron_Rebuilding_trust_in_politics.aspx
to the Greensill share options and 'lessons to be learned'.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
My point was with reference to BigG 's suggestion that Labour are merely playing politics. I was confirming my opinion that opposition is their job, and when the unpleasant odour leads directly through the gates of Downing Street it should be looked into.
Your accusation against me is that I disregard Labour misdeeds and whine about trifles like the Garden Bridge and PPE contracts to Cabinet Ministers' friends. I believe you argument is unfair.
I am not happy that my contribution to the public purse is spent on Garden Bridges and PPE that will languish, unused in a store room for decades, until a waste contractor is paid to remove it, and I will point a finger at those I blame for this "spaffing" of my money. I think my calling out historical financial impropriety from the Labour Party over the years is well documented on PB, from T. Dan Smith to the late Graham Jenkins. I have called the Labour Party out!
Totalitarian regimes do stupid and brutal stuff, but it doesn't make conspiracies any more likely.
I would never use the word dick, I would use the word phallus.
Seems perfectly logical to me.
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/who-wuhan-tedros-lab/2021/03/30/896fe3f6-90d1-11eb-aadc-af78701a30ca_story.html
If you are made redundant they cannot really stop you taking the work available...
And has he asked what the blood clot data for Sputnik is ?
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/who-wuhan-tedros-lab/2021/03/30/896fe3f6-90d1-11eb-aadc-af78701a30ca_story.html
Interestingly all three of them are very dubious of the police since they started working with the CPS.
We do know that viruses escape from research labs (see the Birmingham Smallpox outbreak and the sad death of Janet Parker).
I think it is true that we still don't really know exactly how the transmission to Janet Parker actually occurred in the University of Birmingham Medical School.
COVID is very infectious, and so the @Leon Report (whilst it may not have any direct evidence) certainly can't be dismissed out of hand, IMO.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html
“What happened was fairly simple, I’ve come to believe. It was an accident. A virus spent some time in a laboratory, and eventually it got out. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, began its existence inside a bat, then it learned how to infect people in a claustrophobic mine shaft, and then it was made more infectious in one or more laboratories, perhaps as part of a scientist’s well-intentioned but risky effort to create a broad-spectrum vaccine.”
"Wants to" is some way away from "has an order for"
https://yrtnews.com/the-president-of-the-paca-region-wants-to-pre-order-500000-doses-of-the-russian-vaccine-sputnik-v-rt-in-french/
And this isn't a general election. Its a free hit. But accept the status quo if you want. I'm not going to tell you how to vote.
Here's the thing. Steve Baker & Co can't move if the tories do well in the locals. IF bedrock tory support drains away, he might be able to do something.
Indeed under-50s who are not vulnerable don't get particularly sick from it either, those who are vulnerable have been vaccinated already.
The Phase I vaccine group corresponded to over 99% of deaths and the first dose rollout for that is complete now. So the risk of deaths from Covid should be reduced by close to 99% now.
It is inexcusable to be removing fundamental civil liberties still as if the vaccine hasn't been rolled out yet.
The impression I get from people in the legal profession on here is that none of you particularly like the police regardless of CPS employment or not.
President of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur is a wonderful title, and a job I wouldn't say no to.
They cut through as they are newsworthy.
A few public spirited people delivering leaflets in marginal wards, less so.
I’d just have waited for Moderna, myself (not that I have any choice in the matter.)
Poor old TSE must be in mourning.
Almost nobody who actually works in viral research, even the most hawkish and anti-China, believes CV19 escaped from a lab. They all think that the simpler explanation is more likely correct.
For the CPS it is a two way street, I believe the Rozzers tell everyone that the CPS stands for the Criminal Protection Service.
Though the CPS will bang on that the quality of evidence produced by a lot of police is substandard.
One of Mrs Thatcher's great achievements was bringing in PACE.
No. Not necessarily. It depends - as per usual in matters of this sort - on context and tone.
One must assess these things case by case.
What sort of person says ‘more classier?’
Further, you could end up baring people who have intimate knowledge of a sector, from working in that sector. And there are enough problems with people in government not knowing anything about what they are governing as it is.
That unherd article makes a very good point. Otherwise intelligent people are stupidly refusing to believe the likeliest explanation - it leaked out of the lab. Why? Because this theory was advanced by Trump, which has made it toxic. No one wants to agree with a racist madman
If a new theory was propounded by Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson, many sane people would go to great lengths to disagree with it, even if it were palpably true
Indeed something exactly like that happened when Nick Griffin broke the Grooming scandal
Cammo is covered in ordure, but there is still George of the Many Jobs.