Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
I fall, just about, on the opposition side to voter ID as I agree that at present the fraud doesn't seem to be serious enough to warrant it.
But I do think OGH might be mistaken in using figures for known voter ID fraud as a measure of the problem. The reason I say this is because, as he mentions, detection seems to rely primarily on people turning up at polling stations to find they have already voted.
But there is another clear way in which this fraud can be achieved without much fear of detection.
All it would need is for canvassers to note which households have said they do not intend to vote. This means that any fraud operation could then pretty safely claim to be those people with little fear of being detected. Is this a real problem? Who knows. But it is certainly a way in which it could be in issue that circumvents the evidence that OGH is relying on to say there is no real fraud issue.
Of course the answer to this is not to insist on voter ID which has other drawbacks, but to educate people not to tell canvassers that they do not intend to vote.
I have never been involved in local politics but it seems a world of egos and big fall outs. If there has been any significant collusion with canvassers to act in this way, I would be surprised someone hasn't whisteblown to get revenge.
Depends if the person coming to your door claiming to be a canvasser really is surely.
Why tell the canvasser? Just have a checkbox for "not going to vote".
That is the whole point. People do tell the canvassers.
"I'm not voting for any of them, they are all bloody useless". "I don't bother voting, it makes no difference".
My experience of campaigning is people like to let you know when they are not going to vote. They wear it as a badge of honour. That is the problem. They don't realise it can be used against them.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Four people have been jailed for electoral fraud after a local by-election in Surrey in 2012.
A fifth person was given a suspended jail term following the Maybury and Sheerwater poll three years ago.
Shaukat Ali, Parveen Akhtar, Shamraiz Ali, Sobia Ali-Akhtar and Abid Hussain, from New Haw, were charged over claims that postal votes were being fraudulently submitted.
They were all convicted of conspiracy to defraud at Reading Crown Court.
Shaukat Ali was jailed for 15 months, Parveen Akhtar and Sobia Ali-Akhtar were both jailed for nine months, and Shamraiz Ali was jailed for six months.
Abid Hussain was given a six-month prison term suspended for 18 months.
One problem is persistent official disinterest in "finding" a problem. When my flatmate had his vote stolen in Tower Hill, he was all but told to go away by the police - who didn't want to record a crime.
The police really really aren't interested. All parties report misdeeds by other parties, most of which are a waste of time, so when a real issue arises they don't believe you. What is more they don't understand the law a lot of the time and don't think of it as a real crime. Also some of the laws are bizarre around elections. They understand burglars.
Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
I find Pagel almost as unbearable as Devi –– she appears to be suggesting continuing lockdown all summer until everyone is vaccinated twice. In late September, she will of course find another reason to propose continuing lockdown indefinitely.
That said, the government does need to get in front of the messaging on the Indian variant –– I have heard a few people say that it's vaccine resistant, when the evidence points to the contrary. It risks becoming another pervasive myth of the pandemic.
Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
Given we're already vaccination thirty-somethings around the nation we should however surge vaccinations in the few areas where this is spreading.
If everyone in Bolton etc has been offered their vaccine by end May then any more spread will be because people have chosen to decline the vaccine. Their own damn fault.
I think that's a good shout –– and something the NHS could do under the radar if it so chose. Flooding Greater Manchester with juice would barely trouble the scorers nationally – the unvaxed cohort therein could be done and dusted in a few days.
But I do think OGH might be mistaken in using figures for known voter ID fraud as a measure of the problem. The reason I say this is because, as he mentions, detection seems to rely primarily on people turning up at polling stations to find they have already voted.
Not just that, but:
1) Person turns up at polling station to find they have already voted 2) Person doesn't just write this off as a mere accident on the part of the tellers 3) Person goes to the trouble of making a formal complaint to the police 4) Police don't persuade the person to write the incident off 5) Police actively investigate crime rather than letting it languish unsolved 6) Police succesfully catch criminal 7) CPS take criminal to court 8) CPS successfully prosecute criminal.
That's an awfully long distance between prevalence and conviction.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Four people have been jailed for electoral fraud after a local by-election in Surrey in 2012.
A fifth person was given a suspended jail term following the Maybury and Sheerwater poll three years ago.
Shaukat Ali, Parveen Akhtar, Shamraiz Ali, Sobia Ali-Akhtar and Abid Hussain, from New Haw, were charged over claims that postal votes were being fraudulently submitted.
They were all convicted of conspiracy to defraud at Reading Crown Court.
Shaukat Ali was jailed for 15 months, Parveen Akhtar and Sobia Ali-Akhtar were both jailed for nine months, and Shamraiz Ali was jailed for six months.
Abid Hussain was given a six-month prison term suspended for 18 months.
Voting fraud is a non-issue for over 95% of this country.
Voting fraud is a problem in some areas dominated by people of Pakistani heritage.
Sort out the problem in the latter areas before making needless changes in the rest.
I suspect that is the aim. Introduce it as a proposal to ensure that it looks like it is neutral, then get to the amendment stage where people kick up a fuss and say it is only one part of the system, and then the Govt changes courses and focuses the attention on postal votes. I think saying directly, we are going after postal voters makes it look as though it is targeted. Frame it in this way, and then amend later, takes away the edge.
All I can say is that this was the case of fraud I had to deal with. In South Africa, everyone has to show photo ID and it is a lot poorer than the UK. There is far more fraud going on and you wouldn't even know it because it is so difficult to detect. The legal burden of proof is disproportionately on the victim when it should be on the politicians to demonstrate that they have acted non-fraudulently. Even when the Tories broke political funding rules in 2015, the Electoral Commission could only slap a fine on the party and not on individual politicians running for election.
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
On the import/export numbers - I see the fucking idiots (you know who you are) are saying - aha! The EU have imported less from the UK so they must be hurting...who's laughing now...etc.
Just like we did when we were members and we compared our trade figures with those of Germany and Spain. ie never.
"The EU" is 27 countries so individually the increase or decrease in trade terms with the UK is barely a rounding error.
I haven't seen a single person make that remark, who are you referring to.
I have seen people remark on the improvement on the UK's Balance of Payments. That's purely from the UK's perspective not the EU's - whether 27 on 1.
The main consequence seems to be that we have made it much harder for people to buy stuff from Europe. And many EU retail companies have had to close their mail order business to UK customers, in the same way as some UK companies have closed their mail order to Northern Ireland.
Which, if you believe in free trade, is a loss for consumers.
Indeed it is, but its also a gain for some businesses here based on import substitutions.
It will take time for the aggregate figures to play out but the fact that we're over £10 billion better off in Balance of Payments is not something to be screaming in horror at. That the EU are over £10 billion worse off is something they can own too.
The reality is though that figure will almost certainly shrink as time goes on since its largely measuring stockpile versus unwind, so its rather meaningless.
But doesn't import substitution generally work out badly for countries that try to do it? (Are there any counterexamples?) Both as an observation in history, and because it goes against the idea of comparative advantage?
Indeed, school geography textbooks are full of case studies of countries that tried import substitution, fell progressively behind in technology and efficiency, and ended up pivoting to export orientation. Brazil, India, South Africa etc all current examples of import substitution leading to inefficiency. It's no surprise India's big export success in recent years has been in tech enabled services where the same barriers don't apply, or that Brazil essentially ships little more than raw materials to the rest of the world.
There are exceptions to the rule but generally when import protectionism is culturally popular and coupled with an aggressive export strategy. Like France and Italy with food and wine, or Russia's defence industry.
But the UK isn't going protectionist. There are no tariffs and no quotas, so we're doing the free trade exporting.
The EU's border pedantry is petty and pathetic but what they've decided upon. If that results in import substitutions then there can't have been that much competitive advantage there to lose and we've gained from the substitutions. If there's significant competitive advantage then our zero-tariff, zero-quota deal will trump any petty border pedantry.
We are allowing importing.
Exports are outside our control which means the French / whoever can use whatever barriers they want to stop our goods being imported into France.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/tony-blair-without-total-change-labour-will-die Don't know if anyone has posted this (saw it on a Labour subreddit, which are both currently cosplaying as political toilets) but I thought it was spot on at identifying some of the problems of the left/progressive movements. Does the left, in general, have the ideological flexibility to adjust to the modern world? I remain to be convinced, but am optimistic.
I think the article also shows the magic of Blair, which as a child in the 90s and during the Iraq War kind of passed me by. His ability to articulate a problem and produce a bold, clear response is something yet to be replicated fully in the current generation of British leadership. Some seem to be speculating that this is Blair making a push to return to politics. Again, I'm not sure he would want to demote himself in that way and I think it would be a mistake (he remains a deeply unpopular individual desire his previous popularity) The 90s are long gone and the world has moved on a lot since then, but Blair's ambition to make Labour the natural party of Government for the 21st Century contained more than the aspiration to liberalise Old Labour and, I imagine, included a future Labour party, able to readily reinvent itself to face new challenges. Instead it is stuck in a tug of war between the 80s and 90s.
“Hello I’d like to rearrange my 2nd covid vaccine. It’s on Saturday at X”.
“No, that site shut down ages ago”.
“Oh right well that’s what’s on my appointment card. What would have happened if I hadn’t phoned to change it?”
“Nothing to do with me, bye”.
Why are GP receptionists so rude and unhelpful?
Mother in law was concerned at going over the 12 weeks since first vaccination - I advised her to ring the GP, as that was where the first one had been done. She battled past the 'don't call us, we'll call you' message, to be told that as they don't have AZ on the island she need to go elsewhere. Didn't offer to arrange, or apologise for not contacting, nothing. She left it a few days (now well past 12 weeks) until I badgered her again - she now has an appointment (off island), but still no apology or indication what would happen if she had not contacted them (in line with the phone message). I am sure some GP's surgeries have been great through this, this one has not...
On the import/export numbers - I see the fucking idiots (you know who you are) are saying - aha! The EU have imported less from the UK so they must be hurting...who's laughing now...etc.
Just like we did when we were members and we compared our trade figures with those of Germany and Spain. ie never.
"The EU" is 27 countries so individually the increase or decrease in trade terms with the UK is barely a rounding error.
I haven't seen a single person make that remark, who are you referring to.
I have seen people remark on the improvement on the UK's Balance of Payments. That's purely from the UK's perspective not the EU's - whether 27 on 1.
The main consequence seems to be that we have made it much harder for people to buy stuff from Europe. And many EU retail companies have had to close their mail order business to UK customers, in the same way as some UK companies have closed their mail order to Northern Ireland.
Which, if you believe in free trade, is a loss for consumers.
Indeed it is, but its also a gain for some businesses here based on import substitutions.
It will take time for the aggregate figures to play out but the fact that we're over £10 billion better off in Balance of Payments is not something to be screaming in horror at. That the EU are over £10 billion worse off is something they can own too.
The reality is though that figure will almost certainly shrink as time goes on since its largely measuring stockpile versus unwind, so its rather meaningless.
But doesn't import substitution generally work out badly for countries that try to do it? (Are there any counterexamples?) Both as an observation in history, and because it goes against the idea of comparative advantage?
Indeed, school geography textbooks are full of case studies of countries that tried import substitution, fell progressively behind in technology and efficiency, and ended up pivoting to export orientation. Brazil, India, South Africa etc all current examples of import substitution leading to inefficiency. It's no surprise India's big export success in recent years has been in tech enabled services where the same barriers don't apply, or that Brazil essentially ships little more than raw materials to the rest of the world.
There are exceptions to the rule but generally when import protectionism is culturally popular and coupled with an aggressive export strategy. Like France and Italy with food and wine, or Russia's defence industry.
The balance of payments doesn't matter in a floating exchange rate system, because the exchange rate adjusts as necessary to finance a deficit. That's why we, as a deficit country, should NEVER join the euro. It's the total amount of trade that promotes economic welfare, not the balance.
Import substitution can just about work if the country's government is not corrupt, if it has a population with the right skills mix, if it has the right infrastructure to support the industry, and if the necessary capital is made available. Many East Asian countries have developed world-beating industries that way, though they've also had failures. But in Africa or Latin America it usually fails, and its record in Europe is very spotty.
On the import/export numbers - I see the fucking idiots (you know who you are) are saying - aha! The EU have imported less from the UK so they must be hurting...who's laughing now...etc.
Just like we did when we were members and we compared our trade figures with those of Germany and Spain. ie never.
"The EU" is 27 countries so individually the increase or decrease in trade terms with the UK is barely a rounding error.
I haven't seen a single person make that remark, who are you referring to.
I have seen people remark on the improvement on the UK's Balance of Payments. That's purely from the UK's perspective not the EU's - whether 27 on 1.
The main consequence seems to be that we have made it much harder for people to buy stuff from Europe. And many EU retail companies have had to close their mail order business to UK customers, in the same way as some UK companies have closed their mail order to Northern Ireland.
Which, if you believe in free trade, is a loss for consumers.
Indeed it is, but its also a gain for some businesses here based on import substitutions.
It will take time for the aggregate figures to play out but the fact that we're over £10 billion better off in Balance of Payments is not something to be screaming in horror at. That the EU are over £10 billion worse off is something they can own too.
The reality is though that figure will almost certainly shrink as time goes on since its largely measuring stockpile versus unwind, so its rather meaningless.
But doesn't import substitution generally work out badly for countries that try to do it? (Are there any counterexamples?) Both as an observation in history, and because it goes against the idea of comparative advantage?
Indeed, school geography textbooks are full of case studies of countries that tried import substitution, fell progressively behind in technology and efficiency, and ended up pivoting to export orientation. Brazil, India, South Africa etc all current examples of import substitution leading to inefficiency. It's no surprise India's big export success in recent years has been in tech enabled services where the same barriers don't apply, or that Brazil essentially ships little more than raw materials to the rest of the world.
There are exceptions to the rule but generally when import protectionism is culturally popular and coupled with an aggressive export strategy. Like France and Italy with food and wine, or Russia's defence industry.
But the UK isn't going protectionist. There are no tariffs and no quotas, so we're doing the free trade exporting.
The EU's border pedantry is petty and pathetic but what they've decided upon. If that results in import substitutions then there can't have been that much competitive advantage there to lose and we've gained from the substitutions. If there's significant competitive advantage then our zero-tariff, zero-quota deal will trump any petty border pedantry.
We are allowing importing.
Exports are outside our control which means the French / whoever can use whatever barriers they want to stop our goods being imported into France.
Only trivial amounts of border pedantry really.
Tariffs, quotas etc aren't allowed and non-tariff barriers nowadays are quite regulated too.
Hence why are exports (barring January's disruption) are barely affected.
It serves the Brexit narrative to focus on EU trade in goods recovering moderately, but services (which make up a much larger chunk of the UK economy) are suffering and have less recovery prospects, since they weren't included in the deal. This is definitely not 'teething'. ~AA https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1392412612483244033/photo/1
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
No, the R&A have said they're awaiting the government's decision. The government's decision hasn't been made.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/tony-blair-without-total-change-labour-will-die Don't know if anyone has posted this (saw it on a Labour subreddit, which are both currently cosplaying as political toilets) but I thought it was spot on at identifying some of the problems of the left/progressive movements. Does the left, in general, have the ideological flexibility to adjust to the modern world? I remain to be convinced, but am optimistic.
I think the article also shows the magic of Blair, which as a child in the 90s and during the Iraq War kind of passed me by. His ability to articulate a problem and produce a bold, clear response is something yet to be replicated fully in the current generation of British leadership. Some seem to be speculating that this is Blair making a push to return to politics. Again, I'm not sure he would want to demote himself in that way and I think it would be a mistake (he remains a deeply unpopular individual desire his previous popularity) The 90s are long gone and the world has moved on a lot since then, but Blair's ambition to make Labour the natural party of Government for the 21st Century contained more than the aspiration to liberalise Old Labour and, I imagine, included a future Labour party, able to readily reinvent itself to face new challenges. Instead it is stuck in a tug of war between the 80s and 90s.
I dont think there is anything wrong with Blair returning to politics. He would be unpopular now and probably for the next few years, but if he stuck at it would come in fashion again at some point, because he is head and shoulders above most of our existing politicians. We have a lack of elder statesmen (and women) in our politics and that is part of our problem.
On the import/export numbers - I see the fucking idiots (you know who you are) are saying - aha! The EU have imported less from the UK so they must be hurting...who's laughing now...etc.
Just like we did when we were members and we compared our trade figures with those of Germany and Spain. ie never.
"The EU" is 27 countries so individually the increase or decrease in trade terms with the UK is barely a rounding error.
I haven't seen a single person make that remark, who are you referring to.
I have seen people remark on the improvement on the UK's Balance of Payments. That's purely from the UK's perspective not the EU's - whether 27 on 1.
The main consequence seems to be that we have made it much harder for people to buy stuff from Europe. And many EU retail companies have had to close their mail order business to UK customers, in the same way as some UK companies have closed their mail order to Northern Ireland.
Which, if you believe in free trade, is a loss for consumers.
Indeed it is, but its also a gain for some businesses here based on import substitutions.
It will take time for the aggregate figures to play out but the fact that we're over £10 billion better off in Balance of Payments is not something to be screaming in horror at. That the EU are over £10 billion worse off is something they can own too.
The reality is though that figure will almost certainly shrink as time goes on since its largely measuring stockpile versus unwind, so its rather meaningless.
But doesn't import substitution generally work out badly for countries that try to do it? (Are there any counterexamples?) Both as an observation in history, and because it goes against the idea of comparative advantage?
Indeed, school geography textbooks are full of case studies of countries that tried import substitution, fell progressively behind in technology and efficiency, and ended up pivoting to export orientation. Brazil, India, South Africa etc all current examples of import substitution leading to inefficiency. It's no surprise India's big export success in recent years has been in tech enabled services where the same barriers don't apply, or that Brazil essentially ships little more than raw materials to the rest of the world.
There are exceptions to the rule but generally when import protectionism is culturally popular and coupled with an aggressive export strategy. Like France and Italy with food and wine, or Russia's defence industry.
But the UK isn't going protectionist. There are no tariffs and no quotas, so we're doing the free trade exporting.
The EU's border pedantry is petty and pathetic but what they've decided upon. If that results in import substitutions then there can't have been that much competitive advantage there to lose and we've gained from the substitutions. If there's significant competitive advantage then our zero-tariff, zero-quota deal will trump any petty border pedantry.
We are allowing importing.
Exports are outside our control which means the French / whoever can use whatever barriers they want to stop our goods being imported into France.
Only trivial amounts of border pedantry really.
Tariffs, quotas etc aren't allowed and non-tariff barriers nowadays are quite regulated too.
Hence why are exports (barring January's disruption) are barely affected.
I was being pedantic about your statement that we are doing free trade exporting - it's not we are under WTO rules which means there is paperwork and hassle that is the chief benefit of free trade zones.
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
No, the R&A have said they're awaiting the government's decision. The government's decision hasn't been made.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
The govt knew the target for first vaccines when they said all legal restrictions were planned to be lifted on 21 June. Given things have gone better than expected, if legal restrictions are not lifted then people and businesses will rightly feel misled and let down.
Post 21 June the only legal restrictions should be international travel, everything else should be advisory.
“Hello I’d like to rearrange my 2nd covid vaccine. It’s on Saturday at X”.
“No, that site shut down ages ago”.
“Oh right well that’s what’s on my appointment card. What would have happened if I hadn’t phoned to change it?”
“Nothing to do with me, bye”.
Why are GP receptionists so rude and unhelpful?
Mother in law was concerned at going over the 12 weeks since first vaccination - I advised her to ring the GP, as that was where the first one had been done. She battled past the 'don't call us, we'll call you' message, to be told that as they don't have AZ on the island she need to go elsewhere. Didn't offer to arrange, or apologise for not contacting, nothing. She left it a few days (now well past 12 weeks) until I badgered her again - she now has an appointment (off island), but still no apology or indication what would happen if she had not contacted them (in line with the phone message). I am sure some GP's surgeries have been great through this, this one has not...
Someone asked the other day if stats has been published on 2nd dose uptake. It’s gonna be cack once we get down the age curve if these anecdotes are anything to go by.
It serves the Brexit narrative to focus on EU trade in goods recovering moderately, but services (which make up a much larger chunk of the UK economy) are suffering and have less recovery prospects, since they weren't included in the deal. This is definitely not 'teething'. ~AA https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1392412612483244033/photo/1
That's a zealous pro-EU campaign group that is incredibly illiterate, just like you it seems. The economic equivalent of "Independent SAGE".
In Quarter 1 2021, trade in service imports were £13.4 billion (27.9%) lower than Quarter 1 2020, while exports were £10.4 billion (14.0%) lower.
Anything else different than in 2021 to Quarter 1 2020? Like a global pandemic going on?
Quite remarkable that the EU's loss of exports to the EU are more than double the percentage of the other way around - and even more gross than percentage, considering this is the one area we already had a surplus, our surplus has grown not shrank (!)
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
No, the R&A have said they're awaiting the government's decision. The government's decision hasn't been made.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
The govt knew the target for first vaccines when they said all legal restrictions were planned to be lifted on 21 June. Given things have gone better than expected, if legal restrictions are not lifted then people and businesses will rightly feel misled and let down.
Post 21 June the only legal restrictions should be international travel, everything else should be advisory.
They said "no earlier than 21 June". They're still saying that, so businesses are planning for that.
If the government says 21 June is not viable (extremely unlikely, but if) then that's consistent with saying "no earlier than".
Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
It’s not all ‘independent SAGE’ however
“Given that so much of our plans for unlocking rely on the protection afforded by vaccination my main concern is that we do not yet know the extent to which many variants escape either naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity,” said Andrew Hayward, Sage member and director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
“We know that the vaccine is very effective against the B.1.1.7 [Kent] strain … but we also know that the vaccine is less effective at protecting against the variant originating in South Africa. For the variants arising in India … we have no real-world data and relatively little laboratory data to assess whether it is likely to evade immunity.”
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
No, the R&A have said they're awaiting the government's decision. The government's decision hasn't been made.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
What is people’s understanding of the Rule of 6 for pubs and restaurants if sitting outside after 17th May? Tried to advance book a bigger outside table for a family event yesterday and was told that the increase to 30 people outside will only apply to wedding and wakes and there will still be a 6 person restriction.
All the govt website says is “outside gatherings of 30 people permitted”, nothing directly about hospitality.
It serves the Brexit narrative to focus on EU trade in goods recovering moderately, but services (which make up a much larger chunk of the UK economy) are suffering and have less recovery prospects, since they weren't included in the deal. This is definitely not 'teething'. ~AA https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1392412612483244033/photo/1
I see goalpost shifting now we aren't all having only rotten turnip to eat.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/tony-blair-without-total-change-labour-will-die Don't know if anyone has posted this (saw it on a Labour subreddit, which are both currently cosplaying as political toilets) but I thought it was spot on at identifying some of the problems of the left/progressive movements. Does the left, in general, have the ideological flexibility to adjust to the modern world? I remain to be convinced, but am optimistic.
I think the article also shows the magic of Blair, which as a child in the 90s and during the Iraq War kind of passed me by. His ability to articulate a problem and produce a bold, clear response is something yet to be replicated fully in the current generation of British leadership. Some seem to be speculating that this is Blair making a push to return to politics. Again, I'm not sure he would want to demote himself in that way and I think it would be a mistake (he remains a deeply unpopular individual desire his previous popularity) The 90s are long gone and the world has moved on a lot since then, but Blair's ambition to make Labour the natural party of Government for the 21st Century contained more than the aspiration to liberalise Old Labour and, I imagine, included a future Labour party, able to readily reinvent itself to face new challenges. Instead it is stuck in a tug of war between the 80s and 90s.
Aye, interesting piece. I'm old enough to remember Blair's ascendancy - I was just becoming politically aware and that wsa the first GE I watched; I was there for Portillo.* I was growing up in a decidedly Tory household (despite being working class - down south and a strong distrust of socialism) but even my dad was a bit excited by Brown and Blair (I remember him calling Brown "the acceptable face of Labour" during/shortly after the 92 election). Blair was special, there's no denying it. As Thatcher was special, in different ways. Both could speak of a vision that could resonate with people beyond their party's natural support.
One big problem Labour has is patriotism, particularly in England. They - largely due to Corbyn, although it also happened under Miliband (Thornberry...) and still under Starmer - have let the Tories define patriotism and make themselves the 'patriotic' party. Gardenwalker was bemoaning death of the more inclusive ideas of patriotism and Philip's shopping list of English identity are things that Labour could and should embrace and get behind. Celebrate the diversity of England/UK. Do a campaign with Brits of all colours and backgounds - ideally famous ones if they can be found and are not all 'luvvies' - wrapped in the union flag and declaring their Britishness and their pride in being British. Don't let the Tories define patriotism as being sticking it to Europe. Cool Britannia might make us cringe now, but in that era, Labour took patriotism from the Tories - the Tories were backwards looking and reactionary and New Labour defined the optimism and open outlook that defined the new Britain (at least, that's how it felt to a young lad about to go off to uni). When Blair won, the crowds were all waving union flags. Now most Labour MPs seem embarassed/awkward to talk about Britishness because they think it might be a wee bit racist or xenophobic or - shudder - white working class.
*and pretty shocked by the moment - Portillo was my pick as a young, euro-sceptic Tory-supporter (don't blame me, I was raised on the Daily Mail and then the Telegraph!) to take over after the election defeat and give Labour a good kicking at the next election.
“Hello I’d like to rearrange my 2nd covid vaccine. It’s on Saturday at X”.
“No, that site shut down ages ago”.
“Oh right well that’s what’s on my appointment card. What would have happened if I hadn’t phoned to change it?”
“Nothing to do with me, bye”.
Why are GP receptionists so rude and unhelpful?
Mother in law was concerned at going over the 12 weeks since first vaccination - I advised her to ring the GP, as that was where the first one had been done. She battled past the 'don't call us, we'll call you' message, to be told that as they don't have AZ on the island she need to go elsewhere. Didn't offer to arrange, or apologise for not contacting, nothing. She left it a few days (now well past 12 weeks) until I badgered her again - she now has an appointment (off island), but still no apology or indication what would happen if she had not contacted them (in line with the phone message). I am sure some GP's surgeries have been great through this, this one has not...
Someone asked the other day if stats has been published on 2nd dose uptake. It’s gonna be cack once we get down the age curve if these anecdotes are anything to go by.
Actually, I think that a question that needs to be asked is what, if any, is the role of GPS surgeries in the future. Or, put another way, do they have one?If I want to see my local GP it's easier to go to the Golf Club. And yes, GP receptionists do receive special rudeness training. I'm always amused that my GPs surgery has posters everywhere requesting that patients are not rude to staff when actually it needs to be the other way around.
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
No, the R&A have said they're awaiting the government's decision. The government's decision hasn't been made.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
What is people’s understanding of the Rule of 6 for pubs and restaurants if sitting outside after 17th May? Tried to advance book a bigger outside table for a family event yesterday and was told that the increase to 30 people outside will only apply to wedding and wakes and there will still be a 6 person restriction.
All the govt website says is “outside gatherings of 30 people permitted”, nothing directly about hospitality.
Good question, the govt websites suggest the restaurant is correct
That is different to the impression dear leader gave us on Monday and how it therefore has been reported in the press. Hopefully it is just the govt websites being slow to update.
Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
It’s not all ‘independent SAGE’ however
“Given that so much of our plans for unlocking rely on the protection afforded by vaccination my main concern is that we do not yet know the extent to which many variants escape either naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity,” said Andrew Hayward, Sage member and director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
“We know that the vaccine is very effective against the B.1.1.7 [Kent] strain … but we also know that the vaccine is less effective at protecting against the variant originating in South Africa. For the variants arising in India … we have no real-world data and relatively little laboratory data to assess whether it is likely to evade immunity.”
Not entirely reassuring. Let’s hope you’re right.
It's one of those statements where you really need to delve into the "less effective..." bit to found out what he means.
If (as I suspect it does) it means you may still catch it but the impact is no longer serious enough to place you in hospital - it's not perfect but that is no reason to lock down again.
The issue really is - make sure people don't get ill enough that they end up in hospital and ideally not ill long term. We can't hope for much more than that really.
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
No, the R&A have said they're awaiting the government's decision. The government's decision hasn't been made.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
The govt knew the target for first vaccines when they said all legal restrictions were planned to be lifted on 21 June. Given things have gone better than expected, if legal restrictions are not lifted then people and businesses will rightly feel misled and let down.
Post 21 June the only legal restrictions should be international travel, everything else should be advisory.
They said "no earlier than 21 June". They're still saying that, so businesses are planning for that.
If the government says 21 June is not viable (extremely unlikely, but if) then that's consistent with saying "no earlier than".
You are in for a shock if you think it is extremely unlikely. I think it is very likely there will be ongoing legal restrictions on UK hospitality post 21 June, and that is what the likes of the R&A, Wimbledon, and Brighton Pride are signalling too.
Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
It’s not all ‘independent SAGE’ however
“Given that so much of our plans for unlocking rely on the protection afforded by vaccination my main concern is that we do not yet know the extent to which many variants escape either naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity,” said Andrew Hayward, Sage member and director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
“We know that the vaccine is very effective against the B.1.1.7 [Kent] strain … but we also know that the vaccine is less effective at protecting against the variant originating in South Africa. For the variants arising in India … we have no real-world data and relatively little laboratory data to assess whether it is likely to evade immunity.”
Not entirely reassuring. Let’s hope you’re right.
It's one of those statements where you really need to delve into the "less effective..." bit to found out what he means.
If (as I suspect it does) it means you may still catch it but the impact is no longer serious enough to place you in hospital - it's not perfect but that is no reason to lock down again.
The issue really is - make sure people don't get ill enough that they end up in hospital and ideally not ill long term. We can't hope for much more than that really.
This bit is also mildly concerning
‘Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said he and his colleagues are very worried.
“There are still many people, especially the young, those in disadvantaged areas, and those from ethnic minorities that are still unvaccinated. I am less concerned about meetings out of doors, as the risks there are low, but I will personally continue to avoid indoor meetings, such as restaurants, even though I am fully vaccinated.”’
What is the informed layman to think? These are senior scientists saying ‘eating in a restaurant’ is too risky, even for the fully vaccinated. Either this man is an idiot sending out irresponsible alarm calls, or there is reason to be anxious, despite the vaccines
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
No, the R&A have said they're awaiting the government's decision. The government's decision hasn't been made.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
The govt knew the target for first vaccines when they said all legal restrictions were planned to be lifted on 21 June. Given things have gone better than expected, if legal restrictions are not lifted then people and businesses will rightly feel misled and let down.
Post 21 June the only legal restrictions should be international travel, everything else should be advisory.
They said "no earlier than 21 June". They're still saying that, so businesses are planning for that.
If the government says 21 June is not viable (extremely unlikely, but if) then that's consistent with saying "no earlier than".
You are in for a shock if you think it is extremely unlikely. I think it is very likely there will be ongoing legal restrictions on UK hospitality post 21 June, and that is what the likes of the R&A, Wimbledon, and Brighton Pride are signalling too.
I will be very disappointed if that happens.
And the R&A aren't signalling anything, they're just following the government's signal which is that there are no guarantees yet.
On the import/export numbers - I see the fucking idiots (you know who you are) are saying - aha! The EU have imported less from the UK so they must be hurting...who's laughing now...etc.
Just like we did when we were members and we compared our trade figures with those of Germany and Spain. ie never.
"The EU" is 27 countries so individually the increase or decrease in trade terms with the UK is barely a rounding error.
I haven't seen a single person make that remark, who are you referring to.
I have seen people remark on the improvement on the UK's Balance of Payments. That's purely from the UK's perspective not the EU's - whether 27 on 1.
The main consequence seems to be that we have made it much harder for people to buy stuff from Europe. And many EU retail companies have had to close their mail order business to UK customers, in the same way as some UK companies have closed their mail order to Northern Ireland.
Which, if you believe in free trade, is a loss for consumers.
Indeed it is, but its also a gain for some businesses here based on import substitutions.
It will take time for the aggregate figures to play out but the fact that we're over £10 billion better off in Balance of Payments is not something to be screaming in horror at. That the EU are over £10 billion worse off is something they can own too.
The reality is though that figure will almost certainly shrink as time goes on since its largely measuring stockpile versus unwind, so its rather meaningless.
But doesn't import substitution generally work out badly for countries that try to do it? (Are there any counterexamples?) Both as an observation in history, and because it goes against the idea of comparative advantage?
Indeed, school geography textbooks are full of case studies of countries that tried import substitution, fell progressively behind in technology and efficiency, and ended up pivoting to export orientation. Brazil, India, South Africa etc all current examples of import substitution leading to inefficiency. It's no surprise India's big export success in recent years has been in tech enabled services where the same barriers don't apply, or that Brazil essentially ships little more than raw materials to the rest of the world.
There are exceptions to the rule but generally when import protectionism is culturally popular and coupled with an aggressive export strategy. Like France and Italy with food and wine, or Russia's defence industry.
Actually, historically, it worked well. The United States is the best examples. Its industries were built up behind a wall of protectionism. Same goes for Germany pre-World War 1. South Korea is a classic example post-World War 2, as is Japan. In fact, it might be argued the UK is another example, given the height of its economic supremacy was pre-the 1850s. From that base, you can expand aggressively overseas but need a strong domestic base.
The examples you gave didn't work well because the commitment / Government infrastructures / plain old corruption meant it morphed into something else, namely cronyism. However, when properly applied, protectionism, rather than free market, helps build up industries.
Those are useful counter-examples I agree. I'll come back to South Korea and Japan shortly but the others were examples of countries with comparative advantage particularly in technology development which meant they would suffer less from the big problem with import substitution which is the starving of a country of access to new ideas from abroad, and a tendency to innovate more slowly and spread its bets too widely and thinly. The US post independence was a whirlwind of innovation able to leapfrog Britain's technology.
S Korea and Japan were at a different earlier stage of the cycle, rather like China a decade ago, and made a lot of use of - shall we say - a liberal approach to IP rights in order to build up a manufacturing base. Obviously if you "borrow" other people's technology and copy it you don't get quite the same loss of innovative advantage than if you stick hard and fast to IP norms. Korea also bet big on shipbuilding. In both cases the countries were not trying to do everything, they were picking specific industries to build up behind a barrier. So the risk of spreading talent and effort too thinly and not focusing on strengths is less pronounced.
Calling for Israel to respect international law. That's TERRIBLE. The guy is utterly captured by the Hard Left.
That also tells you, together with Rayner's comments this morning, that Starmer is now effectively a prisoner of the left. So I guess those reports saying that Rayner had "won" were not far off the mark.
On Starmer, I'm laying him like there's no tomorrow now.
His authority has been shot, and he's had to backtrack on Rayner, who's now out-of-control and doing her own thing. Even Tony Blair has criticised him in the New Statesman today. He's obliged to genuflect to all wings of his party, not lead it, just to survive in office; he's being attacked from all sides.
I think he'll be out within 18 months. Possibly sooner.
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
No, the R&A have said they're awaiting the government's decision. The government's decision hasn't been made.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
The govt knew the target for first vaccines when they said all legal restrictions were planned to be lifted on 21 June. Given things have gone better than expected, if legal restrictions are not lifted then people and businesses will rightly feel misled and let down.
Post 21 June the only legal restrictions should be international travel, everything else should be advisory.
They said "no earlier than 21 June". They're still saying that, so businesses are planning for that.
If the government says 21 June is not viable (extremely unlikely, but if) then that's consistent with saying "no earlier than".
You are in for a shock if you think it is extremely unlikely. I think it is very likely there will be ongoing legal restrictions on UK hospitality post 21 June, and that is what the likes of the R&A, Wimbledon, and Brighton Pride are signalling too.
Even if there aren’t ongoing legal restrictions (I agree with you that there will be) everyone is now so terrified many businesses will retain restrictions even if they aren’t mandatory. I can see these horrible Perspex screens lasting into 2022. Ditto masks, 2 metre distancing, etc
WHO report - The Covid pandemic was a preventable disaster that need not have cost millions of lives if the world had reacted more quickly, according to an independent high-level panel, which castigates global leaders and calls for major changes to bring it to an end and ensure it cannot happen again.
WHO report - The Covid pandemic was a preventable disaster that need not have cost millions of lives if the world had reacted more quickly, according to an independent high-level panel, which castigates global leaders and calls for major changes to bring it to an end and ensure it cannot happen again.
-----
Or if China had just been honest.....
How? - the fact is it spread round the world before the rest of the world knew enough about it to stop things.
On Starmer, I'm laying him like there's no tomorrow now.
His authority has been shot, and he's had to backtrack on Rayner, who's now out-of-control and doing her own thing. Even Tony Blair has criticised him in the New Statesman today. He's obliged to genuflect to all wings of his party, not lead it, just to survive in office; he's being attacked from all sides.
I think he'll be out within 18 months. Possibly sooner.
In which case he would last about as long as the 2 years 2 months IDS lasted as Tory leader before he was replaced by Michael Howard.
However Howard did not lead the Tories to victory either in 2005 although he gained a few seats and just replacing Starmer is not going to solve Labour's problem, which is basically they need a leader who was more accepting of Brexit to win back the Red Wall Leave seats (even if they backed Remain pre referendum as long as they were not pushing for EUref2 after it) and who is ideally from the North or Midlands. Remain areas outside London and the big cities (which are still solid Labour anyway) will look to the LDs rather than Labour to take on the Tories so the Red Wall should be the target, not Remain areas in the South, Labour should mostly leave them to the LDs.
So unless Burnham gets into parliament and replaces Starmer I doubt a new leader would make much difference at all
WHO report - The Covid pandemic was a preventable disaster that need not have cost millions of lives if the world had reacted more quickly, according to an independent high-level panel, which castigates global leaders and calls for major changes to bring it to an end and ensure it cannot happen again.
-----
Or if China had just been honest.....
How? - the fact is it spread round the world before the rest of the world knew enough about it to stop things.
Its nonsense. We know it was well seeded in Italy and in the Austrian ski resort well before China said anything. We also know that China covered it up for several months.
Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
It’s not all ‘independent SAGE’ however
“Given that so much of our plans for unlocking rely on the protection afforded by vaccination my main concern is that we do not yet know the extent to which many variants escape either naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity,” said Andrew Hayward, Sage member and director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
“We know that the vaccine is very effective against the B.1.1.7 [Kent] strain … but we also know that the vaccine is less effective at protecting against the variant originating in South Africa. For the variants arising in India … we have no real-world data and relatively little laboratory data to assess whether it is likely to evade immunity.”
Not entirely reassuring. Let’s hope you’re right.
It's one of those statements where you really need to delve into the "less effective..." bit to found out what he means.
If (as I suspect it does) it means you may still catch it but the impact is no longer serious enough to place you in hospital - it's not perfect but that is no reason to lock down again.
The issue really is - make sure people don't get ill enough that they end up in hospital and ideally not ill long term. We can't hope for much more than that really.
This bit is also mildly concerning
‘Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said he and his colleagues are very worried.
“There are still many people, especially the young, those in disadvantaged areas, and those from ethnic minorities that are still unvaccinated. I am less concerned about meetings out of doors, as the risks there are low, but I will personally continue to avoid indoor meetings, such as restaurants, even though I am fully vaccinated.”’
What is the informed layman to think? These are senior scientists saying ‘eating in a restaurant’ is too risky, even for the fully vaccinated. Either this man is an idiot sending out irresponsible alarm calls, or there is reason to be anxious, despite the vaccines
I think the truth is a bit of both isn't it? Scientists will do what scientists do - ask them about what's a safe number of alcohol units per week, or how much sunshine is safe, and you'll get the most risk averse position which is fewer than 14 for the former (and even "there's no safe level"), and wear high factor sunblock, long sleeves and a hat and if possible avoid going out into the sun for the latter.
Something is definitely up with this variant. It seems to be making very rapid progress and the zoe app trend seems clear. Feels a bit like last November with Kent. But unlike in November our most vulnerable people are now vaccinated.
On the import/export numbers - I see the fucking idiots (you know who you are) are saying - aha! The EU have imported less from the UK so they must be hurting...who's laughing now...etc.
Just like we did when we were members and we compared our trade figures with those of Germany and Spain. ie never.
"The EU" is 27 countries so individually the increase or decrease in trade terms with the UK is barely a rounding error.
I haven't seen a single person make that remark, who are you referring to.
I have seen people remark on the improvement on the UK's Balance of Payments. That's purely from the UK's perspective not the EU's - whether 27 on 1.
"I wonder, which side of the Channel is looking at those numbers and gnashing its teeth more?"
I didn't make that remark but yes the UK side of the Channel has seen a massive net over £10 billion improvement in its balance of payments - and the other side has seen a massive net over £10 billion deterioration.
The UK shouldn't be gnashing its teeth over improving its balance of payments by £10.6 bn should it, don't you agree?
Although the reality is of course that its far too early to draw much judgement since the Q4 figures included stockpiling, the Q1 figures included unwind of stockpiling, and there is a pandemic going on.
I agree it's far too early to make judgements and I didn't say you had said that. I said a fucking idiot had said that. I did say "idiots" and I may easily be wrong but can't be bothered to go through every post.
The only idiots are the EU that insisted upon border pedantry and are now billions worse off. We'll see how it plays out in the future.
Why are the EU billions worse off? Surely they can simply trade with other people instead, the same way we supposedly can?
The EU can only trade with the UK. That they have lost exports to us means they have no other way to export to other markets. Whereas the UK can now trade globally and our farmers and fishing fleets are now enjoying record exports and definitely aren't tied to the dock unable to trade.
Huzzah!
The UK has the possibility to sign trade deals with the Rest of the World (like CPTPP) that the EU wouldn't sign.
The EU has not gained any possibility to do that from the UK leaving.
The EU was an impediment to the UK doing its own agreements. The UK was not an impediment to the EU doing its own agreements.
I know that. When the UK left the EU it didn't impact any of the trade deals the EU had with the rest of the world. It did rip up every trade deal the UK had as part of the EU. It didn't make anything more difficult for the EU. It made a lot of things more difficult for the EU.
As for deals now being signed elsewhere for the UK that doesn't help farmers and fishermen who can only sell their product fresh. Anyway lets not go back around debating whether or not this has been bad for the fishing fleets no longer able to fish their normal areas or sell to their main markets.
I care as little about agriculture as I do about Northern Ireland.
Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
It’s not all ‘independent SAGE’ however
“Given that so much of our plans for unlocking rely on the protection afforded by vaccination my main concern is that we do not yet know the extent to which many variants escape either naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity,” said Andrew Hayward, Sage member and director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
“We know that the vaccine is very effective against the B.1.1.7 [Kent] strain … but we also know that the vaccine is less effective at protecting against the variant originating in South Africa. For the variants arising in India … we have no real-world data and relatively little laboratory data to assess whether it is likely to evade immunity.”
Not entirely reassuring. Let’s hope you’re right.
It's one of those statements where you really need to delve into the "less effective..." bit to found out what he means.
If (as I suspect it does) it means you may still catch it but the impact is no longer serious enough to place you in hospital - it's not perfect but that is no reason to lock down again.
The issue really is - make sure people don't get ill enough that they end up in hospital and ideally not ill long term. We can't hope for much more than that really.
This bit is also mildly concerning
‘Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said he and his colleagues are very worried.
“There are still many people, especially the young, those in disadvantaged areas, and those from ethnic minorities that are still unvaccinated. I am less concerned about meetings out of doors, as the risks there are low, but I will personally continue to avoid indoor meetings, such as restaurants, even though I am fully vaccinated.”’
What is the informed layman to think? These are senior scientists saying ‘eating in a restaurant’ is too risky, even for the fully vaccinated. Either this man is an idiot sending out irresponsible alarm calls, or there is reason to be anxious, despite the vaccines
I think the truth is a bit of both isn't it? Scientists will do what scientists do - ask them about what's a safe number of alcohol units per week, or how much sunshine is safe, and you'll get the most risk averse position which is fewer than 14 for the former (and even "there's no safe level"), and wear high factor sunblock, long sleeves and a hat and if possible avoid going out into the sun for the latter.
Something is definitely up with this variant. It seems to be making very rapid progress and the zoe app trend seems clear. Feels a bit like last November with Kent. But unlike in November our most vulnerable people are now vaccinated.
Yes, we are about to find out
The Indian variant feels like the V2 campaign in 1944. We had Nazi Germany on the run - they’d been retreating since 1942, then at the last moment they launched those damn rockets. A scary moment in history, right on the edge of victory
Calling for Israel to respect international law. That's TERRIBLE. The guy is utterly captured by the Hard Left.
Not often we agree but I think in this instance we are on the same page. Personally I think Israel instigated this by supporting the far right marches and attacking those demonstrating against them. They expected and even hoped for the Palestinian reaction as it furthers their cause to have the Palestinians painted as the aggressors so they can continue their illegal seizure and settlement of Palestinian land.
I have zero sympathy for the Israeli Government in this. They went looking for trouble and are now taking full advantage of it.
We look forward with increasing optimism to The 149th Open at Royal St George’s from 11-18 July 2021.
Whilst we would like to be able to give greater clarity at this stage, a number of important decisions have still to be made by the government, on issues such as social distancing, testing and Covid certification. These will have a significant bearing on the number of fans permitted at the Championship.
So much for everything back to normal from 21 June.
That's the issue all outdoor large events currently have - it's likely everything returns to normal of 21st June but no-one can be 100% sure about it.
Even though infection rates rose slightly earlier this week I still think the vaccination numbers are such that the current roadmap will remain as its planned to be.
For sure, I get that they don't want to commit to anything at this point, but that paragraph reads to me as though the government hasn't actually decided what is happening after 21 June.
EDIT: I mean, the government has said if all goes well then that's the end of restrictions, but I don't think they actually mean it. They are very much going to keep some things even if there is no reason to delay the 21 June stage.
The government hasn't decided though.
Its given an indication of what its thinking, subject to confirmation. But prior to confirmation nothing is official yet.
No, we've been told 21 June, end of all legal restrictions (all back to normal, in other words). Obviously they want to review what happens after the 17 May changes. Fine.
But I get the feeling that end of all legal restrictions isn't going to be the end of the matter.
They've literally said all along there will be a review on social distancing and whether that will continue to be advised once the legal restrictions have been removed.
What part of that is confusing you? That's all in public domain. No decision is made yet, so they're just parroting what the government has said for months now.
If all legal restrictions have been removed it is up the R&A (and local HSE?) to decide how many spectators can attend. The R&A expect that there will be govt restrictions, i.e. all legal restrictions will not have been removed as promised/planned/indicated (take your pick).
No, the R&A have said they're awaiting the government's decision. The government's decision hasn't been made.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
What is people’s understanding of the Rule of 6 for pubs and restaurants if sitting outside after 17th May? Tried to advance book a bigger outside table for a family event yesterday and was told that the increase to 30 people outside will only apply to wedding and wakes and there will still be a 6 person restriction.
All the govt website says is “outside gatherings of 30 people permitted”, nothing directly about hospitality.
Good question, the govt websites suggest the restaurant is correct
That is different to the impression dear leader gave us on Monday and how it therefore has been reported in the press. Hopefully it is just the govt websites being slow to update.
Worth deploying ring-vaccination in and around clusters? There seem to be some very defined local outbreaks which will spread over time. Vaccinate everyone above 16 in those areas in priority over people in their 30s in Devon or Dorset for example?
Coming soon to an episode of Can't Pay We'll Take It Away...
Given the value of most goods when seized for auction and it's things you own that can be seized - I do wonder what would be seizible to recover the debt.
On Starmer, I'm laying him like there's no tomorrow now.
His authority has been shot, and he's had to backtrack on Rayner, who's now out-of-control and doing her own thing. Even Tony Blair has criticised him in the New Statesman today. He's obliged to genuflect to all wings of his party, not lead it, just to survive in office; he's being attacked from all sides.
I think he'll be out within 18 months. Possibly sooner.
I'm not yet certain that he's doomed as leader, but he has kind of Mayed himself. From his weedy little boxing stunt a few days ago to this sad picture drawn by Michael Deacon in the Telegraph:
I fall, just about, on the opposition side to voter ID as I agree that at present the fraud doesn't seem to be serious enough to warrant it.
But I do think OGH might be mistaken in using figures for known voter ID fraud as a measure of the problem. The reason I say this is because, as he mentions, detection seems to rely primarily on people turning up at polling stations to find they have already voted.
But there is another clear way in which this fraud can be achieved without much fear of detection.
All it would need is for canvassers to note which households have said they do not intend to vote. This means that any fraud operation could then pretty safely claim to be those people with little fear of being detected. Is this a real problem? Who knows. But it is certainly a way in which it could be in issue that circumvents the evidence that OGH is relying on to say there is no real fraud issue.
Of course the answer to this is not to insist on voter ID which has other drawbacks, but to educate people not to tell canvassers that they do not intend to vote.
Hi Richard, I covered this the other day. This is a very inefficient way of committing voter id fraud. I covered the 2 methods of doing so yesterday. I am aware of one case decades ago. I suspect it was more prevalent in the distant past. It is very difficult to pull off as you need a lot of people, who are unknown, to go vote pretending to be those who are absent. So the fraud is usually only a handful of votes and you are likely to get caught (already voted, person you are pretending to be is known) as you have to take the risk for each vote and you have to use a different person to cast the vote so a team of 20 will only garner 20 votes and if you have 20 people doing it soon becomes apparent to others what is going on. There is a mechanism of allowing parties to put an agent in the polling station and challenge voters. We were aware of this likely to happen at a particular polling station. 2 voters were challenged. One did a runner, but the police were not interested as they didn't get a chance to vote. The other was genuine, but who said they were going to be away to our canvassers.
One of the biggest problems was the police not being interested. The Sheerwater and then later Maybury and Sheerwater example was well known to everyone. It had been going on for years. None of it condoned by the parties. All parties had won it at some stage. I suspect the result in each case was due to the efficiency of deception, but all the later examples were not a case of voter id at the polling station and lack of police interest. Eventually they did something.
And people do claim never to vote to get rid of the canvasser. My cards used to be marked up with the marked register data from previous elections (eventually I had 25 years of data, for people who hadn't moved). Sometimes I used to say, to one of these self claimed non voters, "that's funny, I see that you voted last time?"; If you did it with humour sometimes they would fess up
On the import/export numbers - I see the fucking idiots (you know who you are) are saying - aha! The EU have imported less from the UK so they must be hurting...who's laughing now...etc.
Just like we did when we were members and we compared our trade figures with those of Germany and Spain. ie never.
"The EU" is 27 countries so individually the increase or decrease in trade terms with the UK is barely a rounding error.
I haven't seen a single person make that remark, who are you referring to.
I have seen people remark on the improvement on the UK's Balance of Payments. That's purely from the UK's perspective not the EU's - whether 27 on 1.
The main consequence seems to be that we have made it much harder for people to buy stuff from Europe. And many EU retail companies have had to close their mail order business to UK customers, in the same way as some UK companies have closed their mail order to Northern Ireland.
Which, if you believe in free trade, is a loss for consumers.
Indeed it is, but its also a gain for some businesses here based on import substitutions.
It will take time for the aggregate figures to play out but the fact that we're over £10 billion better off in Balance of Payments is not something to be screaming in horror at. That the EU are over £10 billion worse off is something they can own too.
The reality is though that figure will almost certainly shrink as time goes on since its largely measuring stockpile versus unwind, so its rather meaningless.
But doesn't import substitution generally work out badly for countries that try to do it? (Are there any counterexamples?) Both as an observation in history, and because it goes against the idea of comparative advantage?
Indeed, school geography textbooks are full of case studies of countries that tried import substitution, fell progressively behind in technology and efficiency, and ended up pivoting to export orientation. Brazil, India, South Africa etc all current examples of import substitution leading to inefficiency. It's no surprise India's big export success in recent years has been in tech enabled services where the same barriers don't apply, or that Brazil essentially ships little more than raw materials to the rest of the world.
There are exceptions to the rule but generally when import protectionism is culturally popular and coupled with an aggressive export strategy. Like France and Italy with food and wine, or Russia's defence industry.
Actually, historically, it worked well. The United States is the best examples. Its industries were built up behind a wall of protectionism. Same goes for Germany pre-World War 1. South Korea is a classic example post-World War 2, as is Japan. In fact, it might be argued the UK is another example, given the height of its economic supremacy was pre-the 1850s. From that base, you can expand aggressively overseas but need a strong domestic base.
The examples you gave didn't work well because the commitment / Government infrastructures / plain old corruption meant it morphed into something else, namely cronyism. However, when properly applied, protectionism, rather than free market, helps build up industries.
Those are useful counter-examples I agree. I'll come back to South Korea and Japan shortly but the others were examples of countries with comparative advantage particularly in technology development which meant they would suffer less from the big problem with import substitution which is the starving of a country of access to new ideas from abroad, and a tendency to innovate more slowly and spread its bets too widely and thinly. The US post independence was a whirlwind of innovation able to leapfrog Britain's technology.
S Korea and Japan were at a different earlier stage of the cycle, rather like China a decade ago, and made a lot of use of - shall we say - a liberal approach to IP rights in order to build up a manufacturing base. Obviously if you "borrow" other people's technology and copy it you don't get quite the same loss of innovative advantage than if you stick hard and fast to IP norms. Korea also bet big on shipbuilding. In both cases the countries were not trying to do everything, they were picking specific industries to build up behind a barrier. So the risk of spreading talent and effort too thinly and not focusing on strengths is less pronounced.
Yes, would agree with a lot of that. The successful nations didn't starve themselves of the best ideas from overseas, they gorged on that. I would say though that the US had a somewhat South Korean / Japanese "liberal" attitude to poaching IP as well in the 19th Century but there was a real tussle there over which way to go. Originally, many of the Founding Fathers saw the US as a primarily agricultural nation supplying foodstuffs.
Germany definitely had a big technical advantage given its education system and the grants given to it by the Government. Ironically, the UK didn't do too badly in responding and it is what led to then likes of Imperial College and UMIST, together with the pushing of the Red Brick universities.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/tony-blair-without-total-change-labour-will-die Don't know if anyone has posted this (saw it on a Labour subreddit, which are both currently cosplaying as political toilets) but I thought it was spot on at identifying some of the problems of the left/progressive movements. Does the left, in general, have the ideological flexibility to adjust to the modern world? I remain to be convinced, but am optimistic.
I think the article also shows the magic of Blair, which as a child in the 90s and during the Iraq War kind of passed me by. His ability to articulate a problem and produce a bold, clear response is something yet to be replicated fully in the current generation of British leadership. Some seem to be speculating that this is Blair making a push to return to politics. Again, I'm not sure he would want to demote himself in that way and I think it would be a mistake (he remains a deeply unpopular individual desire his previous popularity) The 90s are long gone and the world has moved on a lot since then, but Blair's ambition to make Labour the natural party of Government for the 21st Century contained more than the aspiration to liberalise Old Labour and, I imagine, included a future Labour party, able to readily reinvent itself to face new challenges. Instead it is stuck in a tug of war between the 80s and 90s.
Aye, interesting piece. I'm old enough to remember Blair's ascendancy - I was just becoming politically aware and that wsa the first GE I watched; I was there for Portillo.* I was growing up in a decidedly Tory household (despite being working class - down south and a strong distrust of socialism) but even my dad was a bit excited by Brown and Blair (I remember him calling Brown "the acceptable face of Labour" during/shortly after the 92 election). Blair was special, there's no denying it. As Thatcher was special, in different ways. Both could speak of a vision that could resonate with people beyond their party's natural support.
One big problem Labour has is patriotism, particularly in England. They - largely due to Corbyn, although it also happened under Miliband (Thornberry...) and still under Starmer - have let the Tories define patriotism and make themselves the 'patriotic' party. Gardenwalker was bemoaning death of the more inclusive ideas of patriotism and Philip's shopping list of English identity are things that Labour could and should embrace and get behind. Celebrate the diversity of England/UK. Do a campaign with Brits of all colours and backgounds - ideally famous ones if they can be found and are not all 'luvvies' - wrapped in the union flag and declaring their Britishness and their pride in being British. Don't let the Tories define patriotism as being sticking it to Europe. Cool Britannia might make us cringe now, but in that era, Labour took patriotism from the Tories - the Tories were backwards looking and reactionary and New Labour defined the optimism and open outlook that defined the new Britain (at least, that's how it felt to a young lad about to go off to uni). When Blair won, the crowds were all waving union flags. Now most Labour MPs seem embarassed/awkward to talk about Britishness because they think it might be a wee bit racist or xenophobic or - shudder - white working class.
*and pretty shocked by the moment - Portillo was my pick as a young, euro-sceptic Tory-supporter (don't blame me, I was raised on the Daily Mail and then the Telegraph!) to take over after the election defeat and give Labour a good kicking at the next election.
I remember thinking Brown was the real deal. Dour and trustworthy. Blair was always the exact opposite in my opinion. Then again, I was poisoned by the Kinnock years.
Coming soon to an episode of Can't Pay We'll Take It Away...
Given the value of most goods when seized for auction and it's things you own that can be seized - I do wonder what would be seizible to recover the debt.
Why hasn't he asked a Tory donor to pay off his CCJ debt?
I fall, just about, on the opposition side to voter ID as I agree that at present the fraud doesn't seem to be serious enough to warrant it.
But I do think OGH might be mistaken in using figures for known voter ID fraud as a measure of the problem. The reason I say this is because, as he mentions, detection seems to rely primarily on people turning up at polling stations to find they have already voted.
But there is another clear way in which this fraud can be achieved without much fear of detection.
All it would need is for canvassers to note which households have said they do not intend to vote. This means that any fraud operation could then pretty safely claim to be those people with little fear of being detected. Is this a real problem? Who knows. But it is certainly a way in which it could be in issue that circumvents the evidence that OGH is relying on to say there is no real fraud issue.
Of course the answer to this is not to insist on voter ID which has other drawbacks, but to educate people not to tell canvassers that they do not intend to vote.
Hi Richard, I covered this the other day. This is a very inefficient way of committing voter id fraud. I covered the 2 methods of doing so yesterday. I am aware of one case decades ago. I suspect it was more prevalent in the distant past. It is very difficult to pull off as you need a lot of people, who are unknown, to go vote pretending to be those who are absent. So the fraud is usually only a handful of votes and you are likely to get caught (already voted, person you are pretending to be is known) as you have to take the risk for each vote and you have to use a different person to cast the vote so a team of 20 will only garner 20 votes and if you have 20 people doing it soon becomes apparent to others what is going on. There is a mechanism of allowing parties to put an agent in the polling station and challenge voters. We were aware of this likely to happen at a particular polling station. 2 voters were challenged. One did a runner, but the police were not interested as they didn't get a chance to vote. The other was genuine, but who said they were going to be away to our canvassers.
One of the biggest problems was the police not being interested. The Sheerwater and then later Maybury and Sheerwater example was well known to everyone. It had been going on for years. None of it condoned by the parties. All parties had won it at some stage. I suspect the result in each case was due to the efficiency of deception, but all the later examples were not a case of voter id at the polling station and lack of police interest. Eventually they did something.
I don't think your numbers add up.
In any given constituency there may be dozens of polling stations. I just checked and in the London borough of Lambeth for the recent local and mayoral elections there were 135 polling stations. So a single person could be a different voter at each station. All that matters is that they known the details of someone who should be using that polling station but will not vote.
So in theory - indeed quite easily - half a dozen people, each visiting, say 30 polling stations could produce 180 false votes in a constituency very easily. And that is only using a small number of the available polling stations.
I'm not sure I buy the "vote suppression" suspicions.
On one hand I'm always surprised that when I vote I just say who I am and they believe me. Taking I.D. isn't unreasonable. But on the other do we have a problem that actually needs solving? Dunno.
I'm far more concerned about the rise of postal voting. I think on balance I'd prefer to see postal voting reined in and make voting at polling stations as easy as possible.
I fall, just about, on the opposition side to voter ID as I agree that at present the fraud doesn't seem to be serious enough to warrant it.
But I do think OGH might be mistaken in using figures for known voter ID fraud as a measure of the problem. The reason I say this is because, as he mentions, detection seems to rely primarily on people turning up at polling stations to find they have already voted.
But there is another clear way in which this fraud can be achieved without much fear of detection.
All it would need is for canvassers to note which households have said they do not intend to vote. This means that any fraud operation could then pretty safely claim to be those people with little fear of being detected. Is this a real problem? Who knows. But it is certainly a way in which it could be in issue that circumvents the evidence that OGH is relying on to say there is no real fraud issue.
Of course the answer to this is not to insist on voter ID which has other drawbacks, but to educate people not to tell canvassers that they do not intend to vote.
Hi Richard, I covered this the other day. This is a very inefficient way of committing voter id fraud. I covered the 2 methods of doing so yesterday. I am aware of one case decades ago. I suspect it was more prevalent in the distant past. It is very difficult to pull off as you need a lot of people, who are unknown, to go vote pretending to be those who are absent. So the fraud is usually only a handful of votes and you are likely to get caught (already voted, person you are pretending to be is known) as you have to take the risk for each vote and you have to use a different person to cast the vote so a team of 20 will only garner 20 votes and if you have 20 people doing it soon becomes apparent to others what is going on. There is a mechanism of allowing parties to put an agent in the polling station and challenge voters. We were aware of this likely to happen at a particular polling station. 2 voters were challenged. One did a runner, but the police were not interested as they didn't get a chance to vote. The other was genuine, but who said they were going to be away to our canvassers.
One of the biggest problems was the police not being interested. The Sheerwater and then later Maybury and Sheerwater example was well known to everyone. It had been going on for years. None of it condoned by the parties. All parties had won it at some stage. I suspect the result in each case was due to the efficiency of deception, but all the later examples were not a case of voter id at the polling station and lack of police interest. Eventually they did something.
I don't think your numbers add up.
In any given constituency there may be dozens of polling stations. I just checked and in the London borough of Lambeth for the recent local and mayoral elections there were 135 polling stations. So a single person could be a different voter at each station. All that matters is that they known the details of someone who should be using that polling station but will not vote.
So in theory - indeed quite easily - half a dozen people, each visiting, say 30 polling stations could produce 180 false votes in a constituency very easily. And that is only using a small number of the available polling stations.
Indeed, in theory a gang of 15 people each casting a dodgy vote just once per station apart from their own could in theory cast over 2000 dodgy votes. While only visiting each polling station once.
On Starmer, I'm laying him like there's no tomorrow now.
His authority has been shot, and he's had to backtrack on Rayner, who's now out-of-control and doing her own thing. Even Tony Blair has criticised him in the New Statesman today. He's obliged to genuflect to all wings of his party, not lead it, just to survive in office; he's being attacked from all sides.
I think he'll be out within 18 months. Possibly sooner.
I'm not yet certain that he's doomed as leader, but he has kind of Mayed himself. From his weedy little boxing stunt a few days ago to this sad picture drawn by Michael Deacon in the Telegraph:
Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
It’s not all ‘independent SAGE’ however
“Given that so much of our plans for unlocking rely on the protection afforded by vaccination my main concern is that we do not yet know the extent to which many variants escape either naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity,” said Andrew Hayward, Sage member and director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
“We know that the vaccine is very effective against the B.1.1.7 [Kent] strain … but we also know that the vaccine is less effective at protecting against the variant originating in South Africa. For the variants arising in India … we have no real-world data and relatively little laboratory data to assess whether it is likely to evade immunity.”
Not entirely reassuring. Let’s hope you’re right.
It's one of those statements where you really need to delve into the "less effective..." bit to found out what he means.
If (as I suspect it does) it means you may still catch it but the impact is no longer serious enough to place you in hospital - it's not perfect but that is no reason to lock down again.
The issue really is - make sure people don't get ill enough that they end up in hospital and ideally not ill long term. We can't hope for much more than that really.
This bit is also mildly concerning
‘Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said he and his colleagues are very worried.
“There are still many people, especially the young, those in disadvantaged areas, and those from ethnic minorities that are still unvaccinated. I am less concerned about meetings out of doors, as the risks there are low, but I will personally continue to avoid indoor meetings, such as restaurants, even though I am fully vaccinated.”’
What is the informed layman to think? These are senior scientists saying ‘eating in a restaurant’ is too risky, even for the fully vaccinated. Either this man is an idiot sending out irresponsible alarm calls, or there is reason to be anxious, despite the vaccines
A short read of Mr. Mckees Twitter feed gives some idea of his political perspective that may drive his position on this.
On the import/export numbers - I see the fucking idiots (you know who you are) are saying - aha! The EU have imported less from the UK so they must be hurting...who's laughing now...etc.
Just like we did when we were members and we compared our trade figures with those of Germany and Spain. ie never.
"The EU" is 27 countries so individually the increase or decrease in trade terms with the UK is barely a rounding error.
I haven't seen a single person make that remark, who are you referring to.
I have seen people remark on the improvement on the UK's Balance of Payments. That's purely from the UK's perspective not the EU's - whether 27 on 1.
"I wonder, which side of the Channel is looking at those numbers and gnashing its teeth more?"
Mons Macaron seems to be throwing the most tantrums.
Worth deploying ring-vaccination in and around clusters? There seem to be some very defined local outbreaks which will spread over time. Vaccinate everyone above 16 in those areas in priority over people in their 30s in Devon or Dorset for example?
Oh, I see from the article they're already thinking of doing that. They should just do it - makes basic mathematical sense.
Britons will have to show photo ID to vote in future general elections, it is expected to be confirmed this week. We found previously that the majority of the public (61%) would support such a move
Was an interesting story in The Guardian that Labour are considering picking Kim Leadbitter (Jo Cox's sister) as their candidate for Batley & Spen. Tracy Brabin was of course a close friend of Jo Cox too.
I'm not sure if the correct route to go down is to rely on voters sympathy for the events of 2016 in order to try and keep the seat.
Nah, load of bollocks. The Indian variant may actually have better binding efficiency to antibodies than the existing Kent one. In a vaccinated country this variant is not going to cause a surge in hospitalisations, and that's the ultimate justification for lockdowns being extended. This is zero COVID chumps trying to have one final push.
Also independent SAGE. Lol. They're literally zero COVID zealots who would have everyone locked away forever in case some 97 year old dies a year after getting COVID.
It’s not all ‘independent SAGE’ however
“Given that so much of our plans for unlocking rely on the protection afforded by vaccination my main concern is that we do not yet know the extent to which many variants escape either naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity,” said Andrew Hayward, Sage member and director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
“We know that the vaccine is very effective against the B.1.1.7 [Kent] strain … but we also know that the vaccine is less effective at protecting against the variant originating in South Africa. For the variants arising in India … we have no real-world data and relatively little laboratory data to assess whether it is likely to evade immunity.”
Not entirely reassuring. Let’s hope you’re right.
It's one of those statements where you really need to delve into the "less effective..." bit to found out what he means.
If (as I suspect it does) it means you may still catch it but the impact is no longer serious enough to place you in hospital - it's not perfect but that is no reason to lock down again.
The issue really is - make sure people don't get ill enough that they end up in hospital and ideally not ill long term. We can't hope for much more than that really.
This bit is also mildly concerning
‘Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said he and his colleagues are very worried.
“There are still many people, especially the young, those in disadvantaged areas, and those from ethnic minorities that are still unvaccinated. I am less concerned about meetings out of doors, as the risks there are low, but I will personally continue to avoid indoor meetings, such as restaurants, even though I am fully vaccinated.”’
What is the informed layman to think? These are senior scientists saying ‘eating in a restaurant’ is too risky, even for the fully vaccinated. Either this man is an idiot sending out irresponsible alarm calls, or there is reason to be anxious, despite the vaccines
A short read of Mr. Mckees Twitter feed gives some idea of his political perspective that may drive his position on this.
I see he retweets Jolyon Maugham and ‘led by donkeys’. Clearly not happy with Brexit. However he doesn’t seem entirely deranged. If he’s got Strasbourg Syndrome it’s a mild case.
Was an interesting story in The Guardian that Labour are considering picking Kim Leadbitter (Jo Cox's sister) as their candidate for Batley & Spen. Tracy Brabin was of course a close friend of Jo Cox too.
I'm not sure if the correct route to go down is to rely on voters sympathy for the events of 2016 in order to try and keep the seat.
Also smacks of nepotism....i thought Labour were all up in arms about such things, or is it only when the Tories do it.
Coming soon to an episode of Can't Pay We'll Take It Away...
Given the value of most goods when seized for auction and it's things you own that can be seized - I do wonder what would be seizible to recover the debt.
A couple of spare rolls of wallpaper should cover it.
I fall, just about, on the opposition side to voter ID as I agree that at present the fraud doesn't seem to be serious enough to warrant it.
But I do think OGH might be mistaken in using figures for known voter ID fraud as a measure of the problem. The reason I say this is because, as he mentions, detection seems to rely primarily on people turning up at polling stations to find they have already voted.
But there is another clear way in which this fraud can be achieved without much fear of detection.
All it would need is for canvassers to note which households have said they do not intend to vote. This means that any fraud operation could then pretty safely claim to be those people with little fear of being detected. Is this a real problem? Who knows. But it is certainly a way in which it could be in issue that circumvents the evidence that OGH is relying on to say there is no real fraud issue.
Of course the answer to this is not to insist on voter ID which has other drawbacks, but to educate people not to tell canvassers that they do not intend to vote.
Hi Richard, I covered this the other day. This is a very inefficient way of committing voter id fraud. I covered the 2 methods of doing so yesterday. I am aware of one case decades ago. I suspect it was more prevalent in the distant past. It is very difficult to pull off as you need a lot of people, who are unknown, to go vote pretending to be those who are absent. So the fraud is usually only a handful of votes and you are likely to get caught (already voted, person you are pretending to be is known) as you have to take the risk for each vote and you have to use a different person to cast the vote so a team of 20 will only garner 20 votes and if you have 20 people doing it soon becomes apparent to others what is going on. There is a mechanism of allowing parties to put an agent in the polling station and challenge voters. We were aware of this likely to happen at a particular polling station. 2 voters were challenged. One did a runner, but the police were not interested as they didn't get a chance to vote. The other was genuine, but who said they were going to be away to our canvassers.
One of the biggest problems was the police not being interested. The Sheerwater and then later Maybury and Sheerwater example was well known to everyone. It had been going on for years. None of it condoned by the parties. All parties had won it at some stage. I suspect the result in each case was due to the efficiency of deception, but all the later examples were not a case of voter id at the polling station and lack of police interest. Eventually they did something.
I don't think your numbers add up.
In any given constituency there may be dozens of polling stations. I just checked and in the London borough of Lambeth for the recent local and mayoral elections there were 135 polling stations. So a single person could be a different voter at each station. All that matters is that they known the details of someone who should be using that polling station but will not vote.
So in theory - indeed quite easily - half a dozen people, each visiting, say 30 polling stations could produce 180 false votes in a constituency very easily. And that is only using a small number of the available polling stations.
Indeed, in theory a gang of 15 people each casting a dodgy vote just once per station apart from their own could in theory cast over 2000 dodgy votes. While only visiting each polling station once.
Yep, but they require some data on likely non-voters to evade detection (and the data have to be increasingly certain as the number of likely non-voters increases to avoid getting rumbled).
At that level, we're talking a fairly serious operation, either doing fake canvassing to find non-voters or, indeed, embedded in a local party and using their canvassing data - or registering fake voters to start with. Would that kind of operation have any trouble kitting its team of 15 out with the required sets of fake photo ID? Given that a wide range of ID will be accepted, some probably quite easily faked?
Was an interesting story in The Guardian that Labour are considering picking Kim Leadbitter (Jo Cox's sister) as their candidate for Batley & Spen. Tracy Brabin was of course a close friend of Jo Cox too.
I'm not sure if the correct route to go down is to rely on voters sympathy for the events of 2016 in order to try and keep the seat.
It doesn't work. We had a by-election in Stockton a little while back. Husband and wife team are sitting councillors. Well respected and hard working. He dies. Their daughter - who had been visible in the community doing things with her parents - is selected as the new candidate.
Campaign builds on the achievements to date and talks about how it will be continued with the daughter taking over. Knock out the vote, yes its awful that he died, yes he did a brilliant job, no of course I'm not voting for her.
And so in comes a Tory, who gets roundly attacked on social media for not doing anything and not responding to residents and literally being not there. He does of course get re-elected with a thumping majority.
It doesn't matter if you are a good or bad MP / Councillor. If your party colour is no longer in fashion you are Out. If your party colour is in fashion you are In.
Coming soon to an episode of Can't Pay We'll Take It Away...
Given the value of most goods when seized for auction and it's things you own that can be seized - I do wonder what would be seizible to recover the debt.
Why hasn't he asked a Tory donor to pay off his CCJ debt?
Because he knows Starmer would be on to it and it would damage him as much as wallpapergate?
It is extraordinary though, isn't it? Can't even imagine this happening to any other prime minister in my living memory, it's jt absurd. But Johnson, even I just shrug, it's all priced in. It's a few good jokes potential for Starmer at next PMQs and that's about it.
Referencing our prior discussion of architecture. If we’re going to rebuild our city centres like the Germans - restoring them completely to pre-war beauty - we could start with Birmingham.
WTF is that big red brick building? How did that land in the middle of one of our great cities?
It’s like we abandoned all notions of beauty and harmony after 1945. It’s like we tried to make our towns as hideous as possible
‘The Bull Ring in Birmingham, 1931 and today. Chatwin's great church still stands, but all around lies folly and disaster.’
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/tony-blair-without-total-change-labour-will-die Don't know if anyone has posted this (saw it on a Labour subreddit, which are both currently cosplaying as political toilets) but I thought it was spot on at identifying some of the problems of the left/progressive movements. Does the left, in general, have the ideological flexibility to adjust to the modern world? I remain to be convinced, but am optimistic.
I think the article also shows the magic of Blair, which as a child in the 90s and during the Iraq War kind of passed me by. His ability to articulate a problem and produce a bold, clear response is something yet to be replicated fully in the current generation of British leadership. Some seem to be speculating that this is Blair making a push to return to politics. Again, I'm not sure he would want to demote himself in that way and I think it would be a mistake (he remains a deeply unpopular individual desire his previous popularity) The 90s are long gone and the world has moved on a lot since then, but Blair's ambition to make Labour the natural party of Government for the 21st Century contained more than the aspiration to liberalise Old Labour and, I imagine, included a future Labour party, able to readily reinvent itself to face new challenges. Instead it is stuck in a tug of war between the 80s and 90s.
Aye, interesting piece. I'm old enough to remember Blair's ascendancy - I was just becoming politically aware and that wsa the first GE I watched; I was there for Portillo.* I was growing up in a decidedly Tory household (despite being working class - down south and a strong distrust of socialism) but even my dad was a bit excited by Brown and Blair (I remember him calling Brown "the acceptable face of Labour" during/shortly after the 92 election). Blair was special, there's no denying it. As Thatcher was special, in different ways. Both could speak of a vision that could resonate with people beyond their party's natural support.
One big problem Labour has is patriotism, particularly in England. They - largely due to Corbyn, although it also happened under Miliband (Thornberry...) and still under Starmer - have let the Tories define patriotism and make themselves the 'patriotic' party. Gardenwalker was bemoaning death of the more inclusive ideas of patriotism and Philip's shopping list of English identity are things that Labour could and should embrace and get behind. Celebrate the diversity of England/UK. Do a campaign with Brits of all colours and backgounds - ideally famous ones if they can be found and are not all 'luvvies' - wrapped in the union flag and declaring their Britishness and their pride in being British. Don't let the Tories define patriotism as being sticking it to Europe. Cool Britannia might make us cringe now, but in that era, Labour took patriotism from the Tories - the Tories were backwards looking and reactionary and New Labour defined the optimism and open outlook that defined the new Britain (at least, that's how it felt to a young lad about to go off to uni). When Blair won, the crowds were all waving union flags. Now most Labour MPs seem embarassed/awkward to talk about Britishness because they think it might be a wee bit racist or xenophobic or - shudder - white working class.
*and pretty shocked by the moment - Portillo was my pick as a young, euro-sceptic Tory-supporter (don't blame me, I was raised on the Daily Mail and then the Telegraph!) to take over after the election defeat and give Labour a good kicking at the next election.
I agree on the patriotism aspect. Coming across as vaguely embarrassed to be British is not a good look for a politician. I vaguely recall the notion that Miliband was keen on defining a sort of One Nation Labourism, which could have been pretty popular and a good start to building an inclusive patriotic vision. The Conservatives quickly squashed that and the Labour Party helpfully hoisted it into the grave for them. Now we only remember Thornberry.I mean, there's a lot to go for in this area. It's not patriotic to ruin or standing in the world, it's not patriotic to cut the military to the bone, etc. But I feel a lot on the Labour left will not stand for an articulation of a new patriotism. Labour need to frame things in the language of the right, but in a time when (some on) the left have appointed themselves the guardians of language, such things are an anathema. UK defund the police was a particularly stupid idea in the UK context, and loud voices on the left adopting the ACAB mentality wholesale from the states was bizarre and damaging. Labour should be challenging Conservative claims to being tough on crime, and for law and order, because they're not those things. Huge police cuts, terrible delays in the justice system. All these things were happening and Labour is like 'police are bad, actually'. I'm getting worked up so I should stop there 😂 Oh Labour, with your with your Trots and your Len, you will be good but I don't know when...
On Starmer, I'm laying him like there's no tomorrow now.
His authority has been shot, and he's had to backtrack on Rayner, who's now out-of-control and doing her own thing. Even Tony Blair has criticised him in the New Statesman today. He's obliged to genuflect to all wings of his party, not lead it, just to survive in office; he's being attacked from all sides.
I think he'll be out within 18 months. Possibly sooner.
Was an interesting story in The Guardian that Labour are considering picking Kim Leadbitter (Jo Cox's sister) as their candidate for Batley & Spen. Tracy Brabin was of course a close friend of Jo Cox too.
I'm not sure if the correct route to go down is to rely on voters sympathy for the events of 2016 in order to try and keep the seat.
It doesn't work. We had a by-election in Stockton a little while back. Husband and wife team are sitting councillors. Well respected and hard working. He dies. Their daughter - who had been visible in the community doing things with her parents - is selected as the new candidate.
Campaign builds on the achievements to date and talks about how it will be continued with the daughter taking over. Knock out the vote, yes its awful that he died, yes he did a brilliant job, no of course I'm not voting for her.
And so in comes a Tory, who gets roundly attacked on social media for not doing anything and not responding to residents and literally being not there. He does of course get re-elected with a thumping majority.
It doesn't matter if you are a good or bad MP / Councillor. If your party colour is no longer in fashion you are Out. If your party colour is in fashion you are In.
Yes and obviously it happened in Dover where it worked (safe seat) but did not in Crewe & Nantwich (marginal). Not sure we want political dynasties and nepotism to dominate constituencies.
I'll wait for the Tory candidate selection process before dipping into the market.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/tony-blair-without-total-change-labour-will-die Don't know if anyone has posted this (saw it on a Labour subreddit, which are both currently cosplaying as political toilets) but I thought it was spot on at identifying some of the problems of the left/progressive movements. Does the left, in general, have the ideological flexibility to adjust to the modern world? I remain to be convinced, but am optimistic.
I think the article also shows the magic of Blair, which as a child in the 90s and during the Iraq War kind of passed me by. His ability to articulate a problem and produce a bold, clear response is something yet to be replicated fully in the current generation of British leadership. Some seem to be speculating that this is Blair making a push to return to politics......
That is a very good article indeed, which, if not bylined T. Blair, might get the attention it deserves.
Referencing our prior discussion of architecture. If we’re going to rebuild our city centres like the Germans - restoring them completely to pre-war beauty - we could start with Birmingham.
WTF is that big red brick building? How did that land in the middle of one of our great cities?
It’s like we abandoned all notions of beauty and harmony after 1945. It’s like we tried to make our towns as hideous as possible
‘The Bull Ring in Birmingham, 1931 and today. Chatwin's great church still stands, but all around lies folly and disaster.’
Referencing our prior discussion of architecture. If we’re going to rebuild our city centres like the Germans - restoring them completely to pre-war beauty - we could start with Birmingham.
WTF is that big red brick building? How did that land in the middle of one of our great cities?
It’s like we abandoned all notions of beauty and harmony after 1945. It’s like we tried to make our towns as hideous as possible
‘The Bull Ring in Birmingham, 1931 and today. Chatwin's great church still stands, but all around lies folly and disaster.’
A ghastly thing hated by locals (and bewildered passers by on the M1) when it was built in 1980. Terry Wogan always used to rip the piss out of Northampton over it when he was on R2.
Over time, people have learned to love it. The lift company left it and it became used as a fun feature for abseilers. There is a Christmas tree on the top every year. In the late 1990s the "monstrosity" was listed!
There would likely be protests if it was removed now.
Referencing our prior discussion of architecture. If we’re going to rebuild our city centres like the Germans - restoring them completely to pre-war beauty - we could start with Birmingham.
WTF is that big red brick building? How did that land in the middle of one of our great cities?
It’s like we abandoned all notions of beauty and harmony after 1945. It’s like we tried to make our towns as hideous as possible
‘The Bull Ring in Birmingham, 1931 and today. Chatwin's great church still stands, but all around lies folly and disaster.’
Referencing our prior discussion of architecture. If we’re going to rebuild our city centres like the Germans - restoring them completely to pre-war beauty - we could start with Birmingham.
WTF is that big red brick building? How did that land in the middle of one of our great cities?
It’s like we abandoned all notions of beauty and harmony after 1945. It’s like we tried to make our towns as hideous as possible
‘The Bull Ring in Birmingham, 1931 and today. Chatwin's great church still stands, but all around lies folly and disaster.’
Referencing our prior discussion of architecture. If we’re going to rebuild our city centres like the Germans - restoring them completely to pre-war beauty - we could start with Birmingham.
WTF is that big red brick building? How did that land in the middle of one of our great cities?
It’s like we abandoned all notions of beauty and harmony after 1945. It’s like we tried to make our towns as hideous as possible
‘The Bull Ring in Birmingham, 1931 and today. Chatwin's great church still stands, but all around lies folly and disaster.’
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/tony-blair-without-total-change-labour-will-die Don't know if anyone has posted this (saw it on a Labour subreddit, which are both currently cosplaying as political toilets) but I thought it was spot on at identifying some of the problems of the left/progressive movements. Does the left, in general, have the ideological flexibility to adjust to the modern world? I remain to be convinced, but am optimistic.
I think the article also shows the magic of Blair, which as a child in the 90s and during the Iraq War kind of passed me by. His ability to articulate a problem and produce a bold, clear response is something yet to be replicated fully in the current generation of British leadership. Some seem to be speculating that this is Blair making a push to return to politics......
That is a very good article indeed, which, if not bylined T. Blair, might get the attention it deserves.
Yes, it’s excellent. I see that, like me, he is sensibly aware of the technological revolution - including, yes, driverless cars.
This sentence rings very true:
‘Progressive folk tend to wince at terms such as “woke” and “political correctness”, but the normal public knows exactly what they mean.’
Referencing our prior discussion of architecture. If we’re going to rebuild our city centres like the Germans - restoring them completely to pre-war beauty - we could start with Birmingham.
WTF is that big red brick building? How did that land in the middle of one of our great cities?
It’s like we abandoned all notions of beauty and harmony after 1945. It’s like we tried to make our towns as hideous as possible
‘The Bull Ring in Birmingham, 1931 and today. Chatwin's great church still stands, but all around lies folly and disaster.’
O/T but DPD were due to deliver a time sensitive package this morning. Sent a message saying “you weren’t in. We will try tomorrow”. We respond “yes we were”. They send picture of property to prove they knocked. Not only not our property, the picture has the door with the wrong number on it. How fucking stupid can their employees be?
Referencing our prior discussion of architecture. If we’re going to rebuild our city centres like the Germans - restoring them completely to pre-war beauty - we could start with Birmingham.
WTF is that big red brick building? How did that land in the middle of one of our great cities?
It’s like we abandoned all notions of beauty and harmony after 1945. It’s like we tried to make our towns as hideous as possible
‘The Bull Ring in Birmingham, 1931 and today. Chatwin's great church still stands, but all around lies folly and disaster.’
The issue of debt when it comes to the Prime Minister is whatever debt of gratitude Boris Johnson owes to the Tory donor who paid to renovate his flat, and what this donor or donors were promised or expected in return for their generosity.
https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1392416320042504197 That debt is more important than @BorisJohnson’s personal finances, his record speaks for itself that he has already broken the rules on declaring his financial interests, and he is already under investigation regarding potentially illegal wrongdoing.
Comments
"I'm not voting for any of them, they are all bloody useless".
"I don't bother voting, it makes no difference".
My experience of campaigning is people like to let you know when they are not going to vote. They wear it as a badge of honour. That is the problem. They don't realise it can be used against them.
That said, the government does need to get in front of the messaging on the Indian variant –– I have heard a few people say that it's vaccine resistant, when the evidence points to the contrary. It risks becoming another pervasive myth of the pandemic.
“No, that site shut down ages ago”.
“Oh right well that’s what’s on my appointment card. What would have happened if I hadn’t phoned to change it?”
“Nothing to do with me, bye”.
Why are GP receptionists so rude and unhelpful?
1) Person turns up at polling station to find they have already voted
2) Person doesn't just write this off as a mere accident on the part of the tellers
3) Person goes to the trouble of making a formal complaint to the police
4) Police don't persuade the person to write the incident off
5) Police actively investigate crime rather than letting it languish unsolved
6) Police succesfully catch criminal
7) CPS take criminal to court
8) CPS successfully prosecute criminal.
That's an awfully long distance between prevalence and conviction.
Exports are outside our control which means the French / whoever can use whatever barriers they want to stop our goods being imported into France.
Don't know if anyone has posted this (saw it on a Labour subreddit, which are both currently cosplaying as political toilets) but I thought it was spot on at identifying some of the problems of the left/progressive movements. Does the left, in general, have the ideological flexibility to adjust to the modern world? I remain to be convinced, but am optimistic.
I think the article also shows the magic of Blair, which as a child in the 90s and during the Iraq War kind of passed me by. His ability to articulate a problem and produce a bold, clear response is something yet to be replicated fully in the current generation of British leadership. Some seem to be speculating that this is Blair making a push to return to politics. Again, I'm not sure he would want to demote himself in that way and I think it would be a mistake (he remains a deeply unpopular individual desire his previous popularity) The 90s are long gone and the world has moved on a lot since then, but Blair's ambition to make Labour the natural party of Government for the 21st Century contained more than the aspiration to liberalise Old Labour and, I imagine, included a future Labour party, able to readily reinvent itself to face new challenges. Instead it is stuck in a tug of war between the 80s and 90s.
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1392401330715742210
Import substitution can just about work if the country's government is not corrupt, if it has a population with the right skills mix, if it has the right infrastructure to support the industry, and if the necessary capital is made available. Many East Asian countries have developed world-beating industries that way, though they've also had failures. But in Africa or Latin America it usually fails, and its record in Europe is very spotty.
Tariffs, quotas etc aren't allowed and non-tariff barriers nowadays are quite regulated too.
Hence why are exports (barring January's disruption) are barely affected.
Remember that the target for finishing first vaccines is 31 July officially; if on 14 June the government says with regret they can't remove all restrictions yet and are delaying it by a month or two to allow more time for vaccinations, then the R&A wouldn't have seen all restrictions lifted in time for their preparations they're making in July.
Post 21 June the only legal restrictions should be international travel, everything else should be advisory.
In Quarter 1 2021, trade in service imports were £13.4 billion (27.9%) lower than Quarter 1 2020, while exports were £10.4 billion (14.0%) lower.
Anything else different than in 2021 to Quarter 1 2020? Like a global pandemic going on?
Quite remarkable that the EU's loss of exports to the EU are more than double the percentage of the other way around - and even more gross than percentage, considering this is the one area we already had a surplus, our surplus has grown not shrank (!)
If the government says 21 June is not viable (extremely unlikely, but if) then that's consistent with saying "no earlier than".
“Given that so much of our plans for unlocking rely on the protection afforded by vaccination my main concern is that we do not yet know the extent to which many variants escape either naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity,” said Andrew Hayward, Sage member and director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
“We know that the vaccine is very effective against the B.1.1.7 [Kent] strain … but we also know that the vaccine is less effective at protecting against the variant originating in South Africa. For the variants arising in India … we have no real-world data and relatively little laboratory data to assess whether it is likely to evade immunity.”
Not entirely reassuring. Let’s hope you’re right.
All the govt website says is “outside gatherings of 30 people permitted”, nothing directly about hospitality.
One big problem Labour has is patriotism, particularly in England. They - largely due to Corbyn, although it also happened under Miliband (Thornberry...) and still under Starmer - have let the Tories define patriotism and make themselves the 'patriotic' party. Gardenwalker was bemoaning death of the more inclusive ideas of patriotism and Philip's shopping list of English identity are things that Labour could and should embrace and get behind. Celebrate the diversity of England/UK. Do a campaign with Brits of all colours and backgounds - ideally famous ones if they can be found and are not all 'luvvies' - wrapped in the union flag and declaring their Britishness and their pride in being British. Don't let the Tories define patriotism as being sticking it to Europe. Cool Britannia might make us cringe now, but in that era, Labour took patriotism from the Tories - the Tories were backwards looking and reactionary and New Labour defined the optimism and open outlook that defined the new Britain (at least, that's how it felt to a young lad about to go off to uni). When Blair won, the crowds were all waving union flags. Now most Labour MPs seem embarassed/awkward to talk about Britishness because they think it might be a wee bit racist or xenophobic or - shudder - white working class.
*and pretty shocked by the moment - Portillo was my pick as a young, euro-sceptic Tory-supporter (don't blame me, I was raised on the Daily Mail and then the Telegraph!) to take over after the election defeat and give Labour a good kicking at the next election.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/further-easing-of-covid-restrictions-confirmed-for-17-may
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-response-spring-2021/covid-19-response-spring-2021-summary
That is different to the impression dear leader gave us on Monday and how it therefore has been reported in the press. Hopefully it is just the govt websites being slow to update.
If (as I suspect it does) it means you may still catch it but the impact is no longer serious enough to place you in hospital - it's not perfect but that is no reason to lock down again.
The issue really is - make sure people don't get ill enough that they end up in hospital and ideally not ill long term. We can't hope for much more than that really.
‘Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said he and his colleagues are very worried.
“There are still many people, especially the young, those in disadvantaged areas, and those from ethnic minorities that are still unvaccinated. I am less concerned about meetings out of doors, as the risks there are low, but I will personally continue to avoid indoor meetings, such as restaurants, even though I am fully vaccinated.”’
What is the informed layman to think? These are senior scientists saying ‘eating in a restaurant’ is too risky, even for the fully vaccinated. Either this man is an idiot sending out irresponsible alarm calls, or there is reason to be anxious, despite the vaccines
Which seems to be part of the problem.
And the R&A aren't signalling anything, they're just following the government's signal which is that there are no guarantees yet.
S Korea and Japan were at a different earlier stage of the cycle, rather like China a decade ago, and made a lot of use of - shall we say - a liberal approach to IP rights in order to build up a manufacturing base. Obviously if you "borrow" other people's technology and copy it you don't get quite the same loss of innovative advantage than if you stick hard and fast to IP norms. Korea also bet big on shipbuilding. In both cases the countries were not trying to do everything, they were picking specific industries to build up behind a barrier. So the risk of spreading talent and effort too thinly and not focusing on strengths is less pronounced.
His authority has been shot, and he's had to backtrack on Rayner, who's now out-of-control and doing her own thing. Even Tony Blair has criticised him in the New Statesman today. He's obliged to genuflect to all wings of his party, not lead it, just to survive in office; he's being attacked from all sides.
I think he'll be out within 18 months. Possibly sooner.
-----
Or if China had just been honest.....
However Howard did not lead the Tories to victory either in 2005 although he gained a few seats and just replacing Starmer is not going to solve Labour's problem, which is basically they need a leader who was more accepting of Brexit to win back the Red Wall Leave seats (even if they backed Remain pre referendum as long as they were not pushing for EUref2 after it) and who is ideally from the North or Midlands. Remain areas outside London and the big cities (which are still solid Labour anyway) will look to the LDs rather than Labour to take on the Tories so the Red Wall should be the target, not Remain areas in the South, Labour should mostly leave them to the LDs.
So unless Burnham gets into parliament and replaces Starmer I doubt a new leader would make much difference at all
You seem to have missed the part where he only saw fit to criticise Israel.
Unless you think only Israel is doing wrong?
Something is definitely up with this variant. It seems to be making very rapid progress and the zoe app trend seems clear. Feels a bit like last November with Kent. But unlike in November our most vulnerable people are now vaccinated.
The Indian variant feels like the V2 campaign in 1944. We had Nazi Germany on the run - they’d been retreating since 1942, then at the last moment they launched those damn rockets. A scary moment in history, right on the edge of victory
I have zero sympathy for the Israeli Government in this. They went looking for trouble and are now taking full advantage of it.
https://tinyurl.com/stzjjmun
Keir Starmer once looked a serious threat to Boris Johnson. Now he’s the PM’s hapless punchbag
Now that's what I call punching down...
https://twitter.com/marcuscarslaw1/status/1392164668458819589?s=21
Germany definitely had a big technical advantage given its education system and the grants given to it by the Government. Ironically, the UK didn't do too badly in responding and it is what led to then likes of Imperial College and UMIST, together with the pushing of the Red Brick universities.
Blair was always the exact opposite in my opinion. Then again, I was poisoned by the Kinnock years.
In any given constituency there may be dozens of polling stations. I just checked and in the London borough of Lambeth for the recent local and mayoral elections there were 135 polling stations. So a single person could be a different voter at each station. All that matters is that they known the details of someone who should be using that polling station but will not vote.
So in theory - indeed quite easily - half a dozen people, each visiting, say 30 polling stations could produce 180 false votes in a constituency very easily. And that is only using a small number of the available polling stations.
I'm not sure I buy the "vote suppression" suspicions.
On one hand I'm always surprised that when I vote I just say who I am and they believe me. Taking I.D. isn't unreasonable. But on the other do we have a problem that actually needs solving? Dunno.
I'm far more concerned about the rise of postal voting. I think on balance I'd prefer to see postal voting reined in and make voting at polling stations as easy as possible.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1391664685825544193
Britons will have to show photo ID to vote in future general elections, it is expected to be confirmed this week. We found previously that the majority of the public (61%) would support such a move
I'm not sure if the correct route to go down is to rely on voters sympathy for the events of 2016 in order to try and keep the seat.
Hmmm
No PMQs but Boris is giving a Covid statement - probably because this is the first chance to do so in the past fortnight.
At that level, we're talking a fairly serious operation, either doing fake canvassing to find non-voters or, indeed, embedded in a local party and using their canvassing data - or registering fake voters to start with. Would that kind of operation have any trouble kitting its team of 15 out with the required sets of fake photo ID? Given that a wide range of ID will be accepted, some probably quite easily faked?
Campaign builds on the achievements to date and talks about how it will be continued with the daughter taking over. Knock out the vote, yes its awful that he died, yes he did a brilliant job, no of course I'm not voting for her.
And so in comes a Tory, who gets roundly attacked on social media for not doing anything and not responding to residents and literally being not there. He does of course get re-elected with a thumping majority.
It doesn't matter if you are a good or bad MP / Councillor. If your party colour is no longer in fashion you are Out. If your party colour is in fashion you are In.
It is extraordinary though, isn't it? Can't even imagine this happening to any other prime minister in my living memory, it's jt absurd. But Johnson, even I just shrug, it's all priced in. It's a few good jokes potential for Starmer at next PMQs and that's about it.
WTF is that big red brick building? How did that land in the middle of one of our great cities?
It’s like we abandoned all notions of beauty and harmony after 1945. It’s like we tried to make our towns as hideous as possible
‘The Bull Ring in Birmingham, 1931 and today. Chatwin's great church still stands, but all around lies folly and disaster.’
https://twitter.com/scp_hughes/status/1392428776609492993?s=21
I'm getting worked up so I should stop there 😂 Oh Labour, with your with your Trots and your Len, you will be good but I don't know when...
As there are Ministerial questions first (as there would be on PMQ days) that statement is probably at 12 or soon afterwards.
Never challenge death to a pillow-fight.
....
...
..
.
Unless you are prepared to deal with the reaper cushions.
(Is there a when out one ?)
I'll wait for the Tory candidate selection process before dipping into the market.
See the express lift building in my nearest large town, Northampton:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lift_Tower
A ghastly thing hated by locals (and bewildered passers by on the M1) when it was built in 1980. Terry Wogan always used to rip the piss out of Northampton over it when he was on R2.
Over time, people have learned to love it. The lift company left it and it became used as a fun feature for abseilers. There is a Christmas tree on the top every year. In the late 1990s the "monstrosity" was listed!
There would likely be protests if it was removed now.
Boris Has Court Judgement Against Him for Unpaid Debt https://order-order.com/2021/05/12/boris-has-court-judgement-against-him-for-unpaid-debt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg4nFmPMc0w
James Fox Time Traveller series are brilliant. There is a great one of Nottingham as well.
This sentence rings very true:
‘Progressive folk tend to wince at terms such as “woke” and “political correctness”, but the normal public knows exactly what they mean.’
https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1392416320042504197
That debt is more important than @BorisJohnson’s personal finances, his record speaks for itself that he has already broken the rules on declaring his financial interests, and he is already under investigation regarding potentially illegal wrongdoing.
https://twitter.com/AngelaRayner/status/1392439473728806918