The sun is shining and I have just been asked, by the Flint Knappers Gazette, to do a mid-June foodie road trip along the coast of East Anglia, from the oysters of Mersea to the eels of Orford to the lobsters of Brancaster Staithe
Is this actually..... over? Is winter done?
*looks at dashboard nervously*
Wrong time of year for Mersea oysters. You'll only get rocks.
Once again it seems to me that the "tens of thousand died that didn't need to die" is a complete illusion. If we had locked down sooner we would have deferred some cases and some deaths. But unless we were to live in lockdown for the last 18 months it would only be a deferral. Those that died were the most vulnerable to this pernicious disease. As a generality they would have caught it and died whenever we opened up. Significant numbers of old, vulnerable people in care homes were always going to die of this. Its simply naive to claim otherwise.
So individual mistakes such as the care homes fiasco where hospitals were cleared of bed blockers or the unending failure to secure borders or the fiasco of the early T&T changed the shape of our death toll but I remain to be convinced that it affected the final result. The brutal truth was that pre vaccines somewhere between 0.5 and 1% of us were going to die of this disease, mainly the old, the obese and those with impaired immune systems with the odd unlucky other as well. This is the reality and pretending that this could be magicked away by some clever policy is delusional.
We still have a real problem in recognising that we are vulnerable to nature, that there are things that we simply cannot prevent. Its a bit weird.
You are correct, however the mortality rate in the UK (127,000 deaths) seems very high compared to say Germany or France (both similar sized countries with comparable demographics)....
They don't have remotely comparable demographics.
The three major factors affecting spreads and death are: obesity rates, population density and rate of intergenerational households.
What other European countries would you suggest are more similar in size and demographic to the UK than Germany & France?
I think -- if you want to carry out this kind of comparison -- it should not be at the national level, as there are too many changing variables.
But, I think you could compare mortality rate from COVID in regions in France, Germany and the UK with similar population density/demography (eg Greater Birmingham with parts of the Ruhr, etc). I am sure these studies will be done. The results will be interesting.
But, I suspect none of the UK, Italy, Spain, France & Germany have much to brag about. These countries have all done pretty much the same. About 6 months ago, I would have said Germany was doing markedly better, but no longer.
In retrospect, I think the major mistake that the Government made was lateness in the first/second lockdowns. In the case of the first lockdown, it is clear that this mistake arose from modelling errors in SAGE. The modellers originally though the disease would spread more slowly than it actually did, so the first wave would peak later.
The borders I think are more arguable -- it is noticeable on pb.com that it is often the same people shrieking about the borders who can't wait to travel (@Leon). I think it is a lose-lose situation for any Government.
I would have done more to shut the borders, but there would have been the inevitable shrieks and hollers ... especially from the ranting hypocrites in the press.
Fifth in the World for deaths. Top in Europe. Well done guys
Top for fraud , graft and enriching friends and family as well
You've never lived in Italy I take it?
This lot make the Italians look like angels.
What's your evidence that we're more corrupt than Italy?
Where is your evidence that Italy is more corrupt smarty pants.
Once again it seems to me that the "tens of thousand died that didn't need to die" is a complete illusion. If we had locked down sooner we would have deferred some cases and some deaths. But unless we were to live in lockdown for the last 18 months it would only be a deferral. Those that died were the most vulnerable to this pernicious disease. As a generality they would have caught it and died whenever we opened up. Significant numbers of old, vulnerable people in care homes were always going to die of this. Its simply naive to claim otherwise.
So individual mistakes such as the care homes fiasco where hospitals were cleared of bed blockers or the unending failure to secure borders or the fiasco of the early T&T changed the shape of our death toll but I remain to be convinced that it affected the final result. The brutal truth was that pre vaccines somewhere between 0.5 and 1% of us were going to die of this disease, mainly the old, the obese and those with impaired immune systems with the odd unlucky other as well. This is the reality and pretending that this could be magicked away by some clever policy is delusional.
We still have a real problem in recognising that we are vulnerable to nature, that there are things that we simply cannot prevent. Its a bit weird.
You are correct, however the mortality rate in the UK (127,000 deaths) seems very high compared to say Germany or France (both similar sized countries with comparable demographics)....
They don't have remotely comparable demographics.
The three major factors affecting spreads and death are: obesity rates, population density and rate of intergenerational households.
What other European countries would you suggest are more similar in size and demographic to the UK than Germany & France?
I think -- if you want to carry out this kind of comparison -- it should not be at the national level, as there are too many changing variables.
But, I think you could compare mortality rate from COVID in regions in France, Germany and the UK with similar population density/demography (eg Greater Birmingham with parts of the Ruhr, etc). I am sure these studies will be done. The results will be interesting.
But, I suspect none of the UK, Italy, Spain, France & Germany have much to brag about. These countries have all done pretty much the same. About 6 months ago, I would have said Germany was doing markedly better, but no longer.
In retrospect, I think the major mistake that the Government made was lateness in the first/second lockdowns. In the case of the first lockdown, it is clear that this mistake arose from modelling errors in SAGE. The modellers originally though the disease would spread more slowly than it actually did, so the first wave would peak later.
The borders I think are more arguable -- it is noticeable on pb.com that it is often the same people shrieking about the borders who can't wait to travel (@Leon). I think it is a lose-lose situation for any Government.
I would have done more to shut the borders, but there would have been the inevitable shrieks and hollers ... especially from the ranting hypocrites in the press.
Fifth in the World for deaths. Top in Europe. Well done guys
Top for fraud , graft and enriching friends and family as well
You've never lived in Italy I take it?
This lot make the Italians look like angels.
What's your evidence that we're more corrupt than Italy?
I was specifically talking about the Tories that are running the country, though you could add the fact we have the most tax havens and we launder all dirty money from Russia et al. Where is your evidence that Italy is more corrupt smarty pants.
The Transparency International index says that Italy is more corrupt than the UK in its annual ranking. New Zealand and Denmark share top spot as least corrupt, the UK is joint 11th with Canada and Australia. Italy is in joint 52nd place.
Hancock still refusing to answer the question on social care and testing . So we can take from that the allegations are true and patients were shipped into care homes without being tested .
We know its true. Its been known to be true for a year now.
What was an unsubstantiated claim is that Hancock was lying and claiming people were being tested when they weren't.
the shredders will have been working overtime , files deleted , etc. These nasty gits will never admit to anything.
Cover ups is where you get caught. You mess up, or people notice gaps, it creates a thread to pull. You bury and obfuscate.
Bernard: Shall I file it? Hacker: Shall you file it? Shred it! No one must ever be able to find it again. Bernard: In that case, Minister, I think it's best I file it.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
Hancock still refusing to answer the question on social care and testing . So we can take from that the allegations are true and patients were shipped into care homes without being tested .
We know its true. Its been known to be true for a year now.
What was an unsubstantiated claim is that Hancock was lying and claiming people were being tested when they weren't.
Well you are kind of screwed in that case aren't you.
Because your choices are:
Hancock, based on no evidence at all and contrary to what is said in the PHE documentation and guidance, thought everyone was being tested before going back into the homes. In which case he is criminally incompetent
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and at the same time lied about it to his cabinet colleagues and the PM
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and told his cabinet colleagues and the PM in which case they are equally guilty and moreover lied about it themselves.
SAGE - or perhaps more effectively the processes above SAGE - would probably benefit from a group of scientificly literate but non-specialists for an outside view - for example, bring in some physicists, engineers etc to sense check what the epidemiologists etc are saying and how the politicians/civil servants etc are understanding that.
yes. sorta like getting Feynman in to look at the Challenger, right?
Using a different vernacular, red team the crap out of the plans. Maybe harder to justify in the middle of a pandemic, but that's what 'following the science' would actually look like.
This is where Dom was absolutely nailed on correct - the structure and the normal working processes of government were not fit for purpose before Feb 2020. Its easy to laff at his 'freaks and wierdoes' advert, but that's basically what's been suggested above.
Yep. The other thing is that "the science" was actually pretty non-existent early on. Models of NPIs, sure. But very little on how the thing was actually spreading, when people were infectious. Lots of tiny studies (as those are what can be done quickly) but - not surprisingly - conflicting with each other. So many of the assumptions in the models were little more than guesses.
Part of the problem was that the scientists used the Scientists Syllogism
1) We need a model and a theory 2) This is a model and a theory 3) Therefore this is the model and theory we need.
This comes from a variant of the "face" issue - standing up and saying "I don't know" is a career ending in politics. And some other fields. It takes great self confidence and eminence to get away with that.
What is a shame is that the good answer that should be used but isn't often enough is "I will look into this and get back to you."
I actually use that quite a lot (and hear it quite a lot). Or the simpler "I don't know". It's one of the things I like about academia that bulshitting is not really encouraged.
(Students rarely say it - I rarely did when I was a student; post-docs often reluctant too - but beyond that it does happen a lot, even in meetings with external stakeholders).
I my professional world, consulting, I often say, "Good question, I don't know. Not my field, but I know an expert in that field and will get you an answer." It goes down very well with clients, some of whom say that they don't hear words to that effect very often.
But, in fact, saying "I don't know" should be absolutely fundamental to any learning organization - and in a rapidly changing world, pretty much every organization should be constantly learning and adapting.
If the Tories aren’t hurt in the polls by headlines like these, what headlines would it take to do it?
“Inflation hits 10%”
As @Philip_Thompson keeps telling me an increase in money supply is no longer inflationary, and if we do get some inflation it is "good". I can't recall why.
So no, Boris just keeps rolling along.
I have never said that!
I have said that it is inflationary but it doesn't automatically mean inflation because we also have deflationary pressures to take into account.
If the inflationary pressures and deflationary ones cancel each other out then the net result is no inflation. As we've seen for the past decade.
What part of that are you struggling with? Do you need smaller words? 🤦♂️
I can't be arsed to find your response but you stated that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to be inflationary. You said the 1980s notion that there was a correlation between an increase in money supply and inflation had been debunked 20 years ago. It is 40 years since I studied economics, so I am taking you at your word.
That's not what I said.
What I said is that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to result in inflation because there is greater awareness of deflationary pressures now. And I provided the data to back that up.
Like Japan in 1990 the west now is now very heavily indebted which can mean that people's available cash to spend can be contracting due to credit issues etc even when the money supply is officially increasing.
Increasing money supply is still inflationary but inflationary pressures alone are not sufficient to cause inflation if deflationary pressures exist too.
One way to think about it is how uniquitous credit cards are used nowadays compared to 40 years ago. Having £1000 available to spend in your bank account and having nothing in your bank account but a £1000 credit limit are not the same thing, even if they both permit expenditure.
Credit cards terrify me. Especially as I am now on a fixed income. I haven’t had one for a very long time. They are a way of telling future you to go fuck yourself.
Precisely! They're great if you're conscientious to pay them off in full every month so you just get an extra 50 days to pay but its paid in full.
But fail to pay in full, pay interest only, and you're f***ed. And there's far more people in that situation today than there were in the 70s or 80s and it doesn't show properly in money supply which is why the textbooks from the 70s and 80s aren't suitable for today.
When my father died my mum was told that she no longer qualified for the platinum credit card. She went to see her bank manager to complain explaining that they had been loyal and good customers paying off their entire bill every month for more than 40 years. The manager gently tried to explain to her that that meant that the bank hadn't actually made any money off them in all that time. She didn't really get it.
I remember explaining to my confused gf (now wife, who is very smart - evidence: she has a PhD and married me ) that she would get charged interest on her credit card unless she paid off the full amount. She couldn't understand why the bank would want to charge her money if she was doing as they asked and paying at least the minimum amount each month - she saw interest charges as a punishment/fine only appropriate if she missed a payment.
Not sure about your second adminicle of evidence. Of course you having married her might earn you a plus point on the smartness scales.
Hancock still refusing to answer the question on social care and testing . So we can take from that the allegations are true and patients were shipped into care homes without being tested .
We know its true. Its been known to be true for a year now.
What was an unsubstantiated claim is that Hancock was lying and claiming people were being tested when they weren't.
Well you are kind of screwed in that case aren't you.
Because your choices are:
Hancock, based on no evidence at all and contrary to what is said in the PHE documentation and guidance, thought everyone was being tested before going back into the homes. In which case he is criminally incompetent
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and at the same time lied about it to his cabinet colleagues and the PM
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and told his cabinet colleagues and the PM in which case they are equally guilty and moreover lied about it themselves.
Your choice. But none of them are good.
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and be returned to care homes because that was the best scientific advice at the time (and the testing capacity didn't exist at the time, but Hancock was driving that forwards with his 100k stretch goal he made).
Hancock still refusing to answer the question on social care and testing . So we can take from that the allegations are true and patients were shipped into care homes without being tested .
We know its true. Its been known to be true for a year now.
What was an unsubstantiated claim is that Hancock was lying and claiming people were being tested when they weren't.
Well you are kind of screwed in that case aren't you.
Because your choices are:
Hancock, based on no evidence at all and contrary to what is said in the PHE documentation and guidance, thought everyone was being tested before going back into the homes. In which case he is criminally incompetent
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and at the same time lied about it to his cabinet colleagues and the PM
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and told his cabinet colleagues and the PM in which case they are equally guilty and moreover lied about it themselves.
Your choice. But none of them are good.
Incompetence is almost always the answer before malice. It's also the last desperate defence used if there was actual malice. Because it at least can be spread around to dull the impact of the accusation.
If the Tories aren’t hurt in the polls by headlines like these, what headlines would it take to do it?
“Inflation hits 10%”
As @Philip_Thompson keeps telling me an increase in money supply is no longer inflationary, and if we do get some inflation it is "good". I can't recall why.
So no, Boris just keeps rolling along.
I have never said that!
I have said that it is inflationary but it doesn't automatically mean inflation because we also have deflationary pressures to take into account.
If the inflationary pressures and deflationary ones cancel each other out then the net result is no inflation. As we've seen for the past decade.
What part of that are you struggling with? Do you need smaller words? 🤦♂️
I can't be arsed to find your response but you stated that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to be inflationary. You said the 1980s notion that there was a correlation between an increase in money supply and inflation had been debunked 20 years ago. It is 40 years since I studied economics, so I am taking you at your word.
That's not what I said.
What I said is that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to result in inflation because there is greater awareness of deflationary pressures now. And I provided the data to back that up.
Like Japan in 1990 the west now is now very heavily indebted which can mean that people's available cash to spend can be contracting due to credit issues etc even when the money supply is officially increasing.
Increasing money supply is still inflationary but inflationary pressures alone are not sufficient to cause inflation if deflationary pressures exist too.
One way to think about it is how uniquitous credit cards are used nowadays compared to 40 years ago. Having £1000 available to spend in your bank account and having nothing in your bank account but a £1000 credit limit are not the same thing, even if they both permit expenditure.
Credit cards terrify me. Especially as I am now on a fixed income. I haven’t had one for a very long time. They are a way of telling future you to go fuck yourself.
Precisely! They're great if you're conscientious to pay them off in full every month so you just get an extra 50 days to pay but its paid in full.
But fail to pay in full, pay interest only, and you're f***ed. And there's far more people in that situation today than there were in the 70s or 80s and it doesn't show properly in money supply which is why the textbooks from the 70s and 80s aren't suitable for today.
When my father died my mum was told that she no longer qualified for the platinum credit card. She went to see her bank manager to complain explaining that they had been loyal and good customers paying off their entire bill every month for more than 40 years. The manager gently tried to explain to her that that meant that the bank hadn't actually made any money off them in all that time. She didn't really get it.
Technically that's not true as they do get part of the credit card transaction fee - but that isn't worth anything like what it used to be thanks to the EU..
I don't know the exact figures but I was willing to believe (unlike my mum) that that did no more than cover their admin costs.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Has Hancock just misled the Commons whilst defending accusations that he misled the Commons?
Ben Kentish @BenKentish Matt Hancock tells the Commons: “The number of vaccinations happening in Bolton right now is phenomenal - tens of thousands every single day”. Which sounded a lot for a population of less than 300,000 people and, well, here’s the official data for Bolton....
According to official data, Bolton’s vaccination rate averages 2,605 doses a day over the last week and 3,073 a day over the last fortnight. According to this data, the most doses given in one day was not “tens of thousands” but 4,905.
From Unherd: We have yet to collectively dream about the awful events of 2020. The history of how Boris Johnson handled Covid is still to be written, and today’s opinion polls tell us little. For that reason, I’d be wary of dismissing too quickly the impact of Dominic Cummings’s testimony yesterday.
Most people don’t seem to mind that the Prime Minister is lazy and dishonest, and none of yesterday’s revelations will “cut through” to ordinary voters, at least immediately.
And yet, the Johnson Government’s raison d’etre seems to be that, so long as it has the support of the people, aka the median voter or Red Wall, that’s enough. Which is not the way we end up with good government.
The norms of British public life stated that you didn’t lie and cheat, but once that norm was broken, it was impossible to put back together. Norms are far easier to destroy than to build.
Few blame the Government right now for how they dealt with Covid, just as few in 1919 doubted the wisdom of fighting Germany. But history hasn’t been written yet, and when it is, historians won’t be as forgiving to Boris Johnson as “the people”.
He can certainly try! Though as was already known and firmly highlighted by DomCum yesterday, once commissioned the Kate Bingham unit was completely detached from government. ManCock can try to hide behind the work of others and claim credit, but it won't do him any good.
The sun is shining and I have just been asked, by the Flint Knappers Gazette, to do a mid-June foodie road trip along the coast of East Anglia, from the oysters of Mersea to the eels of Orford to the lobsters of Brancaster Staithe
Is this actually..... over? Is winter done?
*looks at dashboard nervously*
Wrong time of year for Mersea oysters. You'll only get rocks.
Indeed, but right now the idea of sitting in the sun at the Company Shed gazing out at the Blackwater, eating Mersea rocks and spicy lobster soup with a glass of cold Albarino seems so intoxicatingly wonderful I will probably get over the lack of natives
I reckon this is going to be a thing. Fallen standards. A couple of years ago a lunch on the breezy coast of Essex would not have me daydreaming for weeks beforehand. Now it seems borderline miraculous.
SAGE - or perhaps more effectively the processes above SAGE - would probably benefit from a group of scientificly literate but non-specialists for an outside view - for example, bring in some physicists, engineers etc to sense check what the epidemiologists etc are saying and how the politicians/civil servants etc are understanding that.
yes. sorta like getting Feynman in to look at the Challenger, right?
Using a different vernacular, red team the crap out of the plans. Maybe harder to justify in the middle of a pandemic, but that's what 'following the science' would actually look like.
This is where Dom was absolutely nailed on correct - the structure and the normal working processes of government were not fit for purpose before Feb 2020. Its easy to laff at his 'freaks and wierdoes' advert, but that's basically what's been suggested above.
Yep. The other thing is that "the science" was actually pretty non-existent early on. Models of NPIs, sure. But very little on how the thing was actually spreading, when people were infectious. Lots of tiny studies (as those are what can be done quickly) but - not surprisingly - conflicting with each other. So many of the assumptions in the models were little more than guesses.
Part of the problem was that the scientists used the Scientists Syllogism
1) We need a model and a theory 2) This is a model and a theory 3) Therefore this is the model and theory we need.
This comes from a variant of the "face" issue - standing up and saying "I don't know" is a career ending in politics. And some other fields. It takes great self confidence and eminence to get away with that.
What is a shame is that the good answer that should be used but isn't often enough is "I will look into this and get back to you."
I actually use that quite a lot (and hear it quite a lot). Or the simpler "I don't know". It's one of the things I like about academia that bulshitting is not really encouraged.
(Students rarely say it - I rarely did when I was a student; post-docs often reluctant too - but beyond that it does happen a lot, even in meetings with external stakeholders).
I my professional world, consulting, I often say, "Good question, I don't know. Not my field, but I know an expert in that field and will get you an answer." It goes down very well with clients, some of whom say that they don't hear words to that effect very often.
But, in fact, saying "I don't know" should be absolutely fundamental to any learning organization - and in a rapidly changing world, pretty much every organization should be constantly learning and adapting.
For a young lawyer the ability to say I don't know and keep the confidence of the client is an absolutely key stage in development. Some never make it.
From Unherd: We have yet to collectively dream about the awful events of 2020. The history of how Boris Johnson handled Covid is still to be written, and today’s opinion polls tell us little. For that reason, I’d be wary of dismissing too quickly the impact of Dominic Cummings’s testimony yesterday.
Most people don’t seem to mind that the Prime Minister is lazy and dishonest, and none of yesterday’s revelations will “cut through” to ordinary voters, at least immediately.
And yet, the Johnson Government’s raison d’etre seems to be that, so long as it has the support of the people, aka the median voter or Red Wall, that’s enough. Which is not the way we end up with good government.
The norms of British public life stated that you didn’t lie and cheat, but once that norm was broken, it was impossible to put back together. Norms are far easier to destroy than to build.
Few blame the Government right now for how they dealt with Covid, just as few in 1919 doubted the wisdom of fighting Germany. But history hasn’t been written yet, and when it is, historians won’t be as forgiving to Boris Johnson as “the people”.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
I refer to my previous answer. Winning elections is not an end in itself ,though I guess it was a sort of outcome in terms of keeping Corbyn out.
Imagine it was you being successful in an interview that you are not really qualified to do and then being crap at the job. No-one in the company would say: "You know what, that HYUFD chap is pretty shit at this job, but just look how well he did at interview. Impressive!"
He can certainly try! Though as was already known and firmly highlighted by DomCum yesterday, once commissioned the Kate Bingham unit was completely detached from government. ManCock can try to hide behind the work of others and claim credit, but it won't do him any good.
Not true...every Friday evening vaccine task force met with Hancock, in which he effectively had to sign off various parts of the strategy.
It was in the Ch4 documentary on vaccine roll out.
Cases up 18% Hospital admissions up 11% Deaths flat
Unlocking too soon?
Most thought that any unlocking (e.g. Mar 12 etc) would lead to a rise in cases -it didn't. We are now 10 days past May 17th further opening and cases have risen, but it is really interesting to see where. There are broad swathes of the country where the trend in cases is still down, as shown by the increase in yellow areas on the MSOA data of the dashboard. Most of the new cases are clearly in a very few areas, and combined with relatively low cases overall, the rise looks worse than it is. We still need to keep vaccinating the lower ages, but we are probably seeing more unvaccinated adults going in and then coming out of hospital, rather than oldies dying. The rise in admissions is against a tiny level. Many hospitals have 0 (zero) covid patients currently.
This is why the 5 week period was incorporated. I have railed against the slowness of opening, and still believe we could go faster, but it is wise to watch the data to be sure. Don't forget that there are no local restrictions in England, not even in Bolton, other than the national ones, so you can go to Wetherspoons etc. And the cases in Bolton have peaked and are coming down. I do not expect the cases to go out of control because we now have 80%+ of adults with antibodies.
SAGE - or perhaps more effectively the processes above SAGE - would probably benefit from a group of scientificly literate but non-specialists for an outside view - for example, bring in some physicists, engineers etc to sense check what the epidemiologists etc are saying and how the politicians/civil servants etc are understanding that.
yes. sorta like getting Feynman in to look at the Challenger, right?
Using a different vernacular, red team the crap out of the plans. Maybe harder to justify in the middle of a pandemic, but that's what 'following the science' would actually look like.
This is where Dom was absolutely nailed on correct - the structure and the normal working processes of government were not fit for purpose before Feb 2020. Its easy to laff at his 'freaks and wierdoes' advert, but that's basically what's been suggested above.
Yep. The other thing is that "the science" was actually pretty non-existent early on. Models of NPIs, sure. But very little on how the thing was actually spreading, when people were infectious. Lots of tiny studies (as those are what can be done quickly) but - not surprisingly - conflicting with each other. So many of the assumptions in the models were little more than guesses.
Part of the problem was that the scientists used the Scientists Syllogism
1) We need a model and a theory 2) This is a model and a theory 3) Therefore this is the model and theory we need.
This comes from a variant of the "face" issue - standing up and saying "I don't know" is a career ending in politics. And some other fields. It takes great self confidence and eminence to get away with that.
What is a shame is that the good answer that should be used but isn't often enough is "I will look into this and get back to you."
I actually use that quite a lot (and hear it quite a lot). Or the simpler "I don't know". It's one of the things I like about academia that bulshitting is not really encouraged.
(Students rarely say it - I rarely did when I was a student; post-docs often reluctant too - but beyond that it does happen a lot, even in meetings with external stakeholders).
I my professional world, consulting, I often say, "Good question, I don't know. Not my field, but I know an expert in that field and will get you an answer." It goes down very well with clients, some of whom say that they don't hear words to that effect very often.
But, in fact, saying "I don't know" should be absolutely fundamental to any learning organization - and in a rapidly changing world, pretty much every organization should be constantly learning and adapting.
100%. I’m in IT, and there’s always some obscure question you don’t know the answer to from the top of your head.
Always better to go away, research and come back with an answer, tha to try and bullcrap your way through. The subject is constantly changing, and no-one can know all of it. Continual research is an important part of the job.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
They were effectively a double act and both needed each other for the campaign to work. It was Gove who fronted the main head-to-head debates.
I wonder how much further Cummings would have got in life if he had a winning smile and a cheeky glint in his eye - rather than a face like a smacked arse.
He is clearly smart, well read, promotes ideas. But his mien leaves you running for the door.
The winning traits of both Boris and Cummings would be a ferocious political beast.
Cases up 18% Hospital admissions up 11% Deaths flat
Unlocking too soon?
Most thought that any unlocking (e.g. Mar 12 etc) would lead to a rise in cases -it didn't. We are now 10 days past May 17th further opening and cases have risen, but it is really interesting to see where. There are broad swathes of the country where the trend in cases is still down, as shown by the increase in yellow areas on the MSOA data of the dashboard. Most of the new cases are clearly in a very few areas, and combined with relatively low cases overall, the rise looks worse than it is. We still need to keep vaccinating the lower ages, but we are probably seeing more unvaccinated adults going in and then coming out of hospital, rather than oldies dying. The rise in admissions is against a tiny level. Many hospitals have 0 (zero) covid patients currently.
This is why the 5 week period was incorporated. I have railed against the slowness of opening, and still believe we could go faster, but it is wise to watch the data to be sure. Don't forget that there are no local restrictions in England, not even in Bolton, other than the national ones, so you can go to Wetherspoons etc. And the cases in Bolton have peaked and are coming down. I do not expect the cases to go out of control because we now have 80%+ of adults with antibodies.
I was moaning about the speed of the opening up only a few days ago. I am now trying to come to terms with the idea that Whitty & Co may just know a bit more about this than this keyboard warrior. Don't worry though, this moment of insight will soon pass.
BREAK: TV host Dr Christian Jessen will have to pay damages of £125,000 to Arlene Foster @DUPLeader for posting an “outrageous” defamatory tweet which made unfounded claims that the First Minister of Northern Ireland was having an affair
It is bloody annoying that PHE grouped the admissions data using 18-64... anyway
The cases and admissions are rising in the unvaccinated, younger groups. The vaccinated groups are static or falling.
Hmm... I'm not convinced. We have vaccinated most of the 18 - 64 group at least once, and those younger cohorts within that age group are less likely to be hospitalized... so I think we must be seeing an increase in hospitalization amongst those with only 1 dose?
Do not forget those who have turned down the vaccine.
I've been pecking away at the 4.7 available with Smarkets for Hancock to be the next cabinet minister to leave, but there's some left if anyone is interested.
He can certainly try! Though as was already known and firmly highlighted by DomCum yesterday, once commissioned the Kate Bingham unit was completely detached from government. ManCock can try to hide behind the work of others and claim credit, but it won't do him any good.
Not true...every Friday evening vaccine task force met with Hancock, in which he effectively had to sign off various parts of the strategy.
It was in the Ch4 documentary on vaccine roll out.
The truth doesn't matter when you're trying to attack the government.
BREAK: TV host Dr Christian Jessen will have to pay damages of £125,000 to Arlene Foster @DUPLeader for posting an “outrageous” defamatory tweet which made unfounded claims that the First Minister of Northern Ireland was having an affair
I wonder how much further Cummings would have got in life if he had a winning smile and a cheeky glint in his eye - rather than a face like a smacked arse.
He is clearly smart, well read, promotes ideas. But his mien leaves you running for the door.
The winning traits of both Boris and Cummings would be a ferocious political beast.
Charisma, knowledge and judgement - it'd be nice for leaders to have all three, but we're usually lucky if they have even two.
As an adviser, not a leader, Cummings, annoying a person as he comes across, can at least be forgiven to a degree for lacking at least two of them, though not where he did seek to take leads.
Boris, Hancock and the rest of the Government doing their best to deal with the pandemic.
LAB just want to play politics.
That will be the govt message. And it will come across.
And it will still be bollocks whether it comes directly from the Government or from their apologists.
And there are a few apologists on here. Nay, not just apologists, but blind, uncritical worshippers at the altar of "Boris". People who would give a senior apparatchik in the Chinese Communist Party a run for their money in braindead allegiance to the Party and The Leader.
I mean just how strong do the questions of leadership capability have to be before such people think it might be time to not post remarks that underline how unquestioning and incapable of critical questioning they are? My Party right or wrong. My leader, right or wrong. Where does this lead us?
If we are not careful then to a lot more dead people. One might almost say - callous as it might seem - that ONLY having lost 125,000 people in spite of the Governments many failings we have been lucky.
Had this disease been rather more virulent - and there is nothing to stop a future strain being just that - then the idiocy that Cummings claims would have killed, and could in the future kill, a lot more people.
And based on what has happened rather than just on Cummings evidence, I have no faith at all that the Government has learnt any lessons.
It has always been my concern for my erstwhile party. In their desperation to have a leader that was popular, they overlooked whether he was up to the job that he would eventually need to do. All the evidence was there that he was not, but they still pushed on. You know my views on Brexit (which is now no longer relevant), but I would rather have Gove or even Raab. Both have demonstrated a reasonable modicum of competence in their departments. Johnson is a fucking walking disaster area.
The counterpoint is that any not-Boris leader of the Conservatives would have had Boris undermining them for denying him his birthright. At some point, this became inevitable.
Did a multiple choice test for a job earlier in the week. I chose 'I don't know but I will try to find out for you and get back to you," as my answer. Am now fretting I failed...
He can certainly try! Though as was already known and firmly highlighted by DomCum yesterday, once commissioned the Kate Bingham unit was completely detached from government. ManCock can try to hide behind the work of others and claim credit, but it won't do him any good.
Not true...every Friday evening vaccine task force met with Hancock, in which he effectively had to sign off various parts of the strategy.
It was in the Ch4 documentary on vaccine roll out.
The truth doesn't matter when you're trying to attack the government.
Ironic, hey?
Apparently there was a running joke about JVT failure to wear proper dress for the meeting, with them guessing what he was wearing on his bottom half...which he admits wasn't always office appropriate.
I've been pecking away at the 4.7 available with Smarkets for Hancock to be the next cabinet minister to leave, but there's some left if anyone is interested.
Why? Hancock knows where the bodies are buried so will be off to Education - remember there are far worse cabinet ministers that Boris needs to bin first.
I wonder how much further Cummings would have got in life if he had a winning smile and a cheeky glint in his eye - rather than a face like a smacked arse.
He is clearly smart, well read, promotes ideas. But his mien leaves you running for the door.
The winning traits of both Boris and Cummings would be a ferocious political beast.
I find him smart, engaging and likeable. He thinks well outside the box, so he is always interesting to hear. It's a failure of our system that a brain like his can't be profitably employed by the government.
That said, Chief Aide to the PM was probably not the ideal role. He should be in charge of a new Department for Mad Ideas, where he can pump out brilliant schemes but a more sober character can weed out the feasible from the lunatic
If the Tories aren’t hurt in the polls by headlines like these, what headlines would it take to do it?
“Inflation hits 10%”
As @Philip_Thompson keeps telling me an increase in money supply is no longer inflationary, and if we do get some inflation it is "good". I can't recall why.
So no, Boris just keeps rolling along.
I have never said that!
I have said that it is inflationary but it doesn't automatically mean inflation because we also have deflationary pressures to take into account.
If the inflationary pressures and deflationary ones cancel each other out then the net result is no inflation. As we've seen for the past decade.
What part of that are you struggling with? Do you need smaller words? 🤦♂️
I can't be arsed to find your response but you stated that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to be inflationary. You said the 1980s notion that there was a correlation between an increase in money supply and inflation had been debunked 20 years ago. It is 40 years since I studied economics, so I am taking you at your word.
That's not what I said.
What I said is that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to result in inflation because there is greater awareness of deflationary pressures now. And I provided the data to back that up.
Like Japan in 1990 the west now is now very heavily indebted which can mean that people's available cash to spend can be contracting due to credit issues etc even when the money supply is officially increasing.
Increasing money supply is still inflationary but inflationary pressures alone are not sufficient to cause inflation if deflationary pressures exist too.
One way to think about it is how uniquitous credit cards are used nowadays compared to 40 years ago. Having £1000 available to spend in your bank account and having nothing in your bank account but a £1000 credit limit are not the same thing, even if they both permit expenditure.
Credit cards terrify me. Especially as I am now on a fixed income. I haven’t had one for a very long time. They are a way of telling future you to go fuck yourself.
Precisely! They're great if you're conscientious to pay them off in full every month so you just get an extra 50 days to pay but its paid in full.
But fail to pay in full, pay interest only, and you're f***ed. And there's far more people in that situation today than there were in the 70s or 80s and it doesn't show properly in money supply which is why the textbooks from the 70s and 80s aren't suitable for today.
When my father died my mum was told that she no longer qualified for the platinum credit card. She went to see her bank manager to complain explaining that they had been loyal and good customers paying off their entire bill every month for more than 40 years. The manager gently tried to explain to her that that meant that the bank hadn't actually made any money off them in all that time. She didn't really get it.
Like going to a bookies saying I'm a loyal and regular customer that only ever places winning bets.
I have used 0% credit cards and balance transfer cards when there is a 0% transfer fee. In the past when I could get a decent return on it I built upto £100k on them. The more I did the more credit they gave me. As per your example I was obviously a rubbish customer in terms of profit for them. Fortunately their systems are so generic l didn't get rejected. Getting more difficult now I have retired but that seems to be more because I don't take my pension yet so have negligible income. Assets don't seem to count.
Sorry should say I always pay them off or transfer before the deadline.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Pure simplistic speculation old chap! Too many variables to know without a parallel universe available. It is history now, whoever, whatever tipped the balance is immaterial.
The question at the moment is not whether people are gullible enough to fall for an old Etonians charms and fibs, it is whether there is evidence that said Old Etonian is so incompetent that he cost a lot of families their loved ones.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
They were effectively a double act and both needed each other for the campaign to work. It was Gove who fronted the main head-to-head debates.
Boris coming out for Leave was one of the pivotal moments of the campaign, Gove and Cummings' brains helped too but they needed Boris as the Leave frontman with the broad appeal and charisma to take on Cameron who was leading the Remain campaign
More ultra vires from the Nats - duplicating the work done by the UK govt:
Bizarre to see a party actively campaign against stronger trade links with Europe & the rest of the world. Wrecking Scottish businesses' access to the EU single market isn't damaging enough for these Scot Tories. Now they want to stop all Scottish efforts to promote int'l trade.
Lots of Big Doms comments were cherry picking...he basically argued well if I was in charge we would have closed the borders, had a South Korean trace system and a far more targeted testing.
That's broadly my view as well, cherry picked comments with no context.
Interestingly a member of the SAGE behavioural science committee was on the radio this morning, and she was quite explicit that they never even considered some of the things Dom said they had made recommendations about. She was not impressed at all by Dom's statements about her part of SAGE. I suspect she won't be the only person to take issue with his recall of events.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Pure simplistic speculation old chap! Too many variables to know without a parallel universe available. It is history now, whoever, whatever tipped the balance is immaterial.
The question at the moment is not whether people are gullible enough to fall for an old Etonians charms and fibs, it is whether there is evidence that said Old Etonian is so incompetent that he cost a lot of families their loved ones.
Apologies to all PB pedants on my lack of apostrophe. I was not referring to Old Etonians in the plural!
I wonder how much further Cummings would have got in life if he had a winning smile and a cheeky glint in his eye - rather than a face like a smacked arse.
He is clearly smart, well read, promotes ideas. But his mien leaves you running for the door.
The winning traits of both Boris and Cummings would be a ferocious political beast.
I find him smart, engaging and likeable. He thinks well outside the box, so he is always interesting to hear. It's a failure of our system that a brain like his can't be profitably employed by the government.
That said, Chief Aide to the PM was probably not the ideal role. He should be in charge of a new Department for Mad Ideas, where he can pump out brilliant schemes but a more sober character can weed out the feasible from the lunatic
I think that's right. He could run a really interesting think tank but probably not a department.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Given you voted Remain as you love to keep telling us - and I suspect are rather far removed from being 'working class' - I would suggest you are hardly in a position to judge who was the most persuasive.
Once again it seems to me that the "tens of thousand died that didn't need to die" is a complete illusion. If we had locked down sooner we would have deferred some cases and some deaths. But unless we were to live in lockdown for the last 18 months it would only be a deferral. Those that died were the most vulnerable to this pernicious disease. As a generality they would have caught it and died whenever we opened up. Significant numbers of old, vulnerable people in care homes were always going to die of this. Its simply naive to claim otherwise.
So individual mistakes such as the care homes fiasco where hospitals were cleared of bed blockers or the unending failure to secure borders or the fiasco of the early T&T changed the shape of our death toll but I remain to be convinced that it affected the final result. The brutal truth was that pre vaccines somewhere between 0.5 and 1% of us were going to die of this disease, mainly the old, the obese and those with impaired immune systems with the odd unlucky other as well. This is the reality and pretending that this could be magicked away by some clever policy is delusional.
We still have a real problem in recognising that we are vulnerable to nature, that there are things that we simply cannot prevent. Its a bit weird.
You are correct, however the mortality rate in the UK (127,000 deaths) seems very high compared to say Germany or France (both similar sized countries with comparable demographics)....
They don't have remotely comparable demographics.
The three major factors affecting spreads and death are: obesity rates, population density and rate of intergenerational households.
What other European countries would you suggest are more similar in size and demographic to the UK than Germany & France?
I think -- if you want to carry out this kind of comparison -- it should not be at the national level, as there are too many changing variables.
But, I think you could compare mortality rate from COVID in regions in France, Germany and the UK with similar population density/demography (eg Greater Birmingham with parts of the Ruhr, etc). I am sure these studies will be done. The results will be interesting.
But, I suspect none of the UK, Italy, Spain, France & Germany have much to brag about. These countries have all done pretty much the same. About 6 months ago, I would have said Germany was doing markedly better, but no longer.
In retrospect, I think the major mistake that the Government made was lateness in the first/second lockdowns. In the case of the first lockdown, it is clear that this mistake arose from modelling errors in SAGE. The modellers originally though the disease would spread more slowly than it actually did, so the first wave would peak later.
The borders I think are more arguable -- it is noticeable on pb.com that it is often the same people shrieking about the borders who can't wait to travel (@Leon). I think it is a lose-lose situation for any Government.
I would have done more to shut the borders, but there would have been the inevitable shrieks and hollers ... especially from the ranting hypocrites in the press.
Fifth in the World for deaths. Top in Europe. Well done guys
Top for fraud , graft and enriching friends and family as well
You've never lived in Italy I take it?
This lot make the Italians look like angels.
What's your evidence that we're more corrupt than Italy?
I was specifically talking about the Tories that are running the country, though you could add the fact we have the most tax havens and we launder all dirty money from Russia et al. Where is your evidence that Italy is more corrupt smarty pants.
The Transparency International index says that Italy is more corrupt than the UK in its annual ranking. New Zealand and Denmark share top spot as least corrupt, the UK is joint 11th with Canada and Australia. Italy is in joint 52nd place.
Hancock still refusing to answer the question on social care and testing . So we can take from that the allegations are true and patients were shipped into care homes without being tested .
We know its true. Its been known to be true for a year now.
What was an unsubstantiated claim is that Hancock was lying and claiming people were being tested when they weren't.
Well you are kind of screwed in that case aren't you.
Because your choices are:
Hancock, based on no evidence at all and contrary to what is said in the PHE documentation and guidance, thought everyone was being tested before going back into the homes. In which case he is criminally incompetent
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and at the same time lied about it to his cabinet colleagues and the PM
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and told his cabinet colleagues and the PM in which case they are equally guilty and moreover lied about it themselves.
Your choice. But none of them are good.
All excellent options. People want incompetent liars in office - they voted for them remember! Yet as DomCum pointed out the choice in the 2019 election was proof that the system has failed and utterly collapsed. Because no matter how bad this government is the alternative was Corbyn, Abbott, Burgon, Pidcock etc with UNITE directing the PPE contracts.
The Tories are in power, are remaining in power and are not under any threat from Labour. So why so many PB Tories are literally applauding lies, incompetence and open corruption from their own is baffling. Surely the aim is *good* Tory governance, not the very incompetent shower of money-wasting wazzocks they would absolutely scream condemnation at if it was Labour.
Lots of Big Doms comments were cherry picking...he basically argued well if I was in charge we would have closed the borders, had a South Korean trace system and a far more targeted testing.
That's broadly my view as well, cherry picked comments with no context.
Interestingly a member of the SAGE behavioural science committee was on the radio this morning, and she was quite explicit that they never even considered some of the things Dom said they had made recommendations about. She was not impressed at all by Dom's statements about her part of SAGE. I suspect she won't be the only person to take issue with his recall of events.
Well we know this is the man who went back and editted his blog to make it seem like he predicted the pandemic.
It is bloody annoying that PHE grouped the admissions data using 18-64... anyway
The cases and admissions are rising in the unvaccinated, younger groups. The vaccinated groups are static or falling.
Hmm... I'm not convinced. We have vaccinated most of the 18 - 64 group at least once, and those younger cohorts within that age group are less likely to be hospitalized... so I think we must be seeing an increase in hospitalization amongst those with only 1 dose?
Do not forget those who have turned down the vaccine.
Cases up 18% Hospital admissions up 11% Deaths flat
Unlocking too soon?
Most thought that any unlocking (e.g. Mar 12 etc) would lead to a rise in cases -it didn't. We are now 10 days past May 17th further opening and cases have risen, but it is really interesting to see where. There are broad swathes of the country where the trend in cases is still down, as shown by the increase in yellow areas on the MSOA data of the dashboard. Most of the new cases are clearly in a very few areas, and combined with relatively low cases overall, the rise looks worse than it is. We still need to keep vaccinating the lower ages, but we are probably seeing more unvaccinated adults going in and then coming out of hospital, rather than oldies dying. The rise in admissions is against a tiny level. Many hospitals have 0 (zero) covid patients currently.
This is why the 5 week period was incorporated. I have railed against the slowness of opening, and still believe we could go faster, but it is wise to watch the data to be sure. Don't forget that there are no local restrictions in England, not even in Bolton, other than the national ones, so you can go to Wetherspoons etc. And the cases in Bolton have peaked and are coming down. I do not expect the cases to go out of control because we now have 80%+ of adults with antibodies.
I was moaning about the speed of the opening up only a few days ago. I am now trying to come to terms with the idea that Whitty & Co may just know a bit more about this than this keyboard warrior. Don't worry though, this moment of insight will soon pass.
I think the Indian variant has genuinely thrown a spanner into the works, but not necessarily because it is more transmissible. I think we have seen a massive seeding episode in lots of vulnerable families from travel to India, and return to multigenerational environments. Its spread is strikingly different to the how the Kent variant raged from November onwards.
Lots of Big Doms comments were cherry picking...he basically argued well if I was in charge we would have closed the borders, had a South Korean trace system and a far more targeted testing.
That's broadly my view as well, cherry picked comments with no context.
Interestingly a member of the SAGE behavioural science committee was on the radio this morning, and she was quite explicit that they never even considered some of the things Dom said they had made recommendations about. She was not impressed at all by Dom's statements about her part of SAGE. I suspect she won't be the only person to take issue with his recall of events.
Given that the SAGE meetings were minuted, it will be quite easy to see who was telling the truth. When we get the minutes.
Hancock still refusing to answer the question on social care and testing . So we can take from that the allegations are true and patients were shipped into care homes without being tested .
We know its true. Its been known to be true for a year now.
What was an unsubstantiated claim is that Hancock was lying and claiming people were being tested when they weren't.
Well you are kind of screwed in that case aren't you.
Because your choices are:
Hancock, based on no evidence at all and contrary to what is said in the PHE documentation and guidance, thought everyone was being tested before going back into the homes. In which case he is criminally incompetent
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and at the same time lied about it to his cabinet colleagues and the PM
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and told his cabinet colleagues and the PM in which case they are equally guilty and moreover lied about it themselves.
Your choice. But none of them are good.
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and be returned to care homes because that was the best scientific advice at the time (and the testing capacity didn't exist at the time, but Hancock was driving that forwards with his 100k stretch goal he made).
LOL. If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you.
I wonder how much further Cummings would have got in life if he had a winning smile and a cheeky glint in his eye - rather than a face like a smacked arse.
He is clearly smart, well read, promotes ideas. But his mien leaves you running for the door.
The winning traits of both Boris and Cummings would be a ferocious political beast.
That is the sort of genetic engineering project for which Kate Bingham might be headhunted [edit] to run the lab. Slight problem about the underfall in X chromosomes though.
Lots of Big Doms comments were cherry picking...he basically argued well if I was in charge we would have closed the borders, had a South Korean trace system and a far more targeted testing.
That's broadly my view as well, cherry picked comments with no context.
Interestingly a member of the SAGE behavioural science committee was on the radio this morning, and she was quite explicit that they never even considered some of the things Dom said they had made recommendations about. She was not impressed at all by Dom's statements about her part of SAGE. I suspect she won't be the only person to take issue with his recall of events.
Given that the SAGE meetings were minuted, it will be quite easy to see who was telling the truth. When we get the minutes.
The thing is and why i have always been slightly uncomfortable about knowing all.about what was discussed as part of SAGE, if they are doing their job properly they would be discussing some very unpalatable options...the problem is then anybody can take parts of that and say see they really wanted to do x...not for example they discussed 5 different options, one of which was to get a handle of thr magnitude of things would we save lives overall if we just let all the grannies die, not that we want to do that, but lets see the difference, could it save x10 lives?
Cases up 18% Hospital admissions up 11% Deaths flat
Unlocking too soon?
Most thought that any unlocking (e.g. Mar 12 etc) would lead to a rise in cases -it didn't. We are now 10 days past May 17th further opening and cases have risen, but it is really interesting to see where. There are broad swathes of the country where the trend in cases is still down, as shown by the increase in yellow areas on the MSOA data of the dashboard. Most of the new cases are clearly in a very few areas, and combined with relatively low cases overall, the rise looks worse than it is. We still need to keep vaccinating the lower ages, but we are probably seeing more unvaccinated adults going in and then coming out of hospital, rather than oldies dying. The rise in admissions is against a tiny level. Many hospitals have 0 (zero) covid patients currently.
This is why the 5 week period was incorporated. I have railed against the slowness of opening, and still believe we could go faster, but it is wise to watch the data to be sure. Don't forget that there are no local restrictions in England, not even in Bolton, other than the national ones, so you can go to Wetherspoons etc. And the cases in Bolton have peaked and are coming down. I do not expect the cases to go out of control because we now have 80%+ of adults with antibodies.
I was moaning about the speed of the opening up only a few days ago. I am now trying to come to terms with the idea that Whitty & Co may just know a bit more about this than this keyboard warrior. Don't worry though, this moment of insight will soon pass.
I think the Indian variant has genuinely thrown a spanner into the works, but not necessarily because it is more transmissible. I think we have seen a massive seeding episode in lots of vulnerable families from travel to India, and return to multigenerational environments. Its spread is strikingly different to the how the Kent variant raged from November onwards.
The data is lumpy. It is not evenly spread accross generations or geographical areas. Look at the difference between Bolton and areas on Merseyside. This is what one can expect as we get closer to herd immunity threshold, some areas will be above and some below, and hence will respond very differently to opening up / new variants etc. The five week gap is there for a reason and we are not even two weeks into stage 3 yet.
BREAK: TV host Dr Christian Jessen will have to pay damages of £125,000 to Arlene Foster @DUPLeader for posting an “outrageous” defamatory tweet which made unfounded claims that the First Minister of Northern Ireland was having an affair
Of course its outrageous! Who would want to shag that?
I don't believe in flagging or off topic but that is really not nice.
I know it isn't nice - hardly a comment explicitly on Arlene though. The more awful the politician both morally and/or physically the more likely they have been at it. John Prescott had an office affair. Prescott! Ewwww - and some try to claim that power isn't an aphrodisiac.
I've been pecking away at the 4.7 available with Smarkets for Hancock to be the next cabinet minister to leave, but there's some left if anyone is interested.
Why? Hancock knows where the bodies are buried so will be off to Education - remember there are far worse cabinet ministers that Boris needs to bin first.
You're probably right - I just saw the 4.7 as value in the circs - the odds haven't wavered since before Dom's grenades.
I think there is a danger of overthinking and over interpreting statements that are basically saying "we need to wait a bit longer, gather as much evidence as possible, then make a call". I believe the plan is three weeks of data, a week to analyse and plan, then announce with a weeks notice. We are not at the end of the three weeks yet.
Cases up 18% Hospital admissions up 11% Deaths flat
Unlocking too soon?
Most thought that any unlocking (e.g. Mar 12 etc) would lead to a rise in cases -it didn't. We are now 10 days past May 17th further opening and cases have risen, but it is really interesting to see where. There are broad swathes of the country where the trend in cases is still down, as shown by the increase in yellow areas on the MSOA data of the dashboard. Most of the new cases are clearly in a very few areas, and combined with relatively low cases overall, the rise looks worse than it is. We still need to keep vaccinating the lower ages, but we are probably seeing more unvaccinated adults going in and then coming out of hospital, rather than oldies dying. The rise in admissions is against a tiny level. Many hospitals have 0 (zero) covid patients currently.
This is why the 5 week period was incorporated. I have railed against the slowness of opening, and still believe we could go faster, but it is wise to watch the data to be sure. Don't forget that there are no local restrictions in England, not even in Bolton, other than the national ones, so you can go to Wetherspoons etc. And the cases in Bolton have peaked and are coming down. I do not expect the cases to go out of control because we now have 80%+ of adults with antibodies.
I was moaning about the speed of the opening up only a few days ago. I am now trying to come to terms with the idea that Whitty & Co may just know a bit more about this than this keyboard warrior. Don't worry though, this moment of insight will soon pass.
I think the Indian variant has genuinely thrown a spanner into the works, but not necessarily because it is more transmissible. I think we have seen a massive seeding episode in lots of vulnerable families from travel to India, and return to multigenerational environments. Its spread is strikingly different to the how the Kent variant raged from November onwards.
The rise in cases started around May 17th. Since takes time to turn an infection into a case, so it wasn't trigged by the unlocking.
In a way, the Indian variant is stress testing the idea that the vaccinations (with a local surge testing and other measures) can hold the line. As opposed to lockdowns.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Given you voted Remain as you love to keep telling us - and I suspect are rather far removed from being 'working class' - I would suggest you are hardly in a position to judge who was the most persuasive.
The sun is shining and I have just been asked, by the Flint Knappers Gazette, to do a mid-June foodie road trip along the coast of East Anglia, from the oysters of Mersea to the eels of Orford to the lobsters of Brancaster Staithe
Is this actually..... over? Is winter done?
*looks at dashboard nervously*
Since you’ve just come back from Primrose Hill forlornly dragging your toboggan behind you, you should know the answer already.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Pure simplistic speculation old chap! Too many variables to know without a parallel universe available. It is history now, whoever, whatever tipped the balance is immaterial.
The question at the moment is not whether people are gullible enough to fall for an old Etonians charms and fibs, it is whether there is evidence that said Old Etonian is so incompetent that he cost a lot of families their loved ones.
I am not arguing about Boris' competence in power so much as his campaigning skills, I agree Boris could have locked down earlier even if the vaccination campaign is now going well
Lots of Big Doms comments were cherry picking...he basically argued well if I was in charge we would have closed the borders, had a South Korean trace system and a far more targeted testing.
That's broadly my view as well, cherry picked comments with no context.
Interestingly a member of the SAGE behavioural science committee was on the radio this morning, and she was quite explicit that they never even considered some of the things Dom said they had made recommendations about. She was not impressed at all by Dom's statements about her part of SAGE. I suspect she won't be the only person to take issue with his recall of events.
Given that the SAGE meetings were minuted, it will be quite easy to see who was telling the truth. When we get the minutes.
The thing is and why i have always been slightly uncomfortable about knowing all.about what was discussed as part of SAGE, if they are doing their job properly they would be discussing some very unpalatable options...the problem is then anybody can take parts of that and say see they really wanted to do x...not for example they discussed 5 different options, one of which was to get a handle of thr magnitude of things would we save lives overall if we just let all the grannies die, not that we want to do that, but lets see the difference, could it save x10 lives?
Yes, it takes a brave person to go Full Hermann Kahn* in public
talkRADIO @talkRADIO · 1h Professor of Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, Carl Heneghan: "Dominic Cummings was fundamentally incorrect when claiming that myself and Sunetra Gupta suggested enough herd immunity had been built up to avoid a further Lockdown."
Heneghan says Cummings was entirely wrong in what he said about their meetings in front of select committee.
Is this the same Sunetra Gupta who said we could unlock in May 2020 with no ill effect? The same Heneghan who said in late September that there was no evidence of a second wave in September?
Heneghan and Gupta should shut up and link away into the shadows.
The guy on TV today, is that the same Ferguson who was sh8gging some bloke's missus whilst recommending house arrest for the rest of us?
The sun is shining and I have just been asked, by the Flint Knappers Gazette, to do a mid-June foodie road trip along the coast of East Anglia, from the oysters of Mersea to the eels of Orford to the lobsters of Brancaster Staithe
Is this actually..... over? Is winter done?
*looks at dashboard nervously*
Wrong time of year for Mersea oysters. You'll only get rocks.
Indeed, but right now the idea of sitting in the sun at the Company Shed gazing out at the Blackwater, eating Mersea rocks and spicy lobster soup with a glass of cold Albarino seems so intoxicatingly wonderful I will probably get over the lack of natives
I reckon this is going to be a thing. Fallen standards. A couple of years ago a lunch on the breezy coast of Essex would not have me daydreaming for weeks beforehand. Now it seems borderline miraculous.
Boris, Hancock and the rest of the Government doing their best to deal with the pandemic.
LAB just want to play politics.
That will be the govt message. And it will come across.
And it will still be bollocks whether it comes directly from the Government or from their apologists.
And there are a few apologists on here. Nay, not just apologists, but blind, uncritical worshippers at the altar of "Boris". People who would give a senior apparatchik in the Chinese Communist Party a run for their money in braindead allegiance to the Party and The Leader.
I mean just how strong do the questions of leadership capability have to be before such people think it might be time to not post remarks that underline how unquestioning and incapable of critical questioning they are? My Party right or wrong. My leader, right or wrong. Where does this lead us?
If we are not careful then to a lot more dead people. One might almost say - callous as it might seem - that ONLY having lost 125,000 people in spite of the Governments many failings we have been lucky.
Had this disease been rather more virulent - and there is nothing to stop a future strain being just that - then the idiocy that Cummings claims would have killed, and could in the future kill, a lot more people.
And based on what has happened rather than just on Cummings evidence, I have no faith at all that the Government has learnt any lessons.
It has always been my concern for my erstwhile party. In their desperation to have a leader that was popular, they overlooked whether he was up to the job that he would eventually need to do. All the evidence was there that he was not, but they still pushed on. You know my views on Brexit (which is now no longer relevant), but I would rather have Gove or even Raab. Both have demonstrated a reasonable modicum of competence in their departments. Johnson is a fucking walking disaster area.
The counterpoint is that any not-Boris leader of the Conservatives would have had Boris undermining them for denying him his birthright. At some point, this became inevitable.
Yes, an interesting point. What did make this incompetent think it was his birth right? Some might say his school, but there are many well balanced individuals who come from Eton. The extraordinary skill that he does have is the ability to convince others to support him in spite of the evidence of his limited ability. Demagogues the world over will definitely want to study him. He has no genuine gravitas, but does have plenty of charisma. Quite fascinating really in a disturbing way.
Boris, Hancock and the rest of the Government doing their best to deal with the pandemic.
LAB just want to play politics.
That will be the govt message. And it will come across.
And it will still be bollocks whether it comes directly from the Government or from their apologists.
And there are a few apologists on here. Nay, not just apologists, but blind, uncritical worshippers at the altar of "Boris". People who would give a senior apparatchik in the Chinese Communist Party a run for their money in braindead allegiance to the Party and The Leader.
I mean just how strong do the questions of leadership capability have to be before such people think it might be time to not post remarks that underline how unquestioning and incapable of critical questioning they are? My Party right or wrong. My leader, right or wrong. Where does this lead us?
If we are not careful then to a lot more dead people. One might almost say - callous as it might seem - that ONLY having lost 125,000 people in spite of the Governments many failings we have been lucky.
Had this disease been rather more virulent - and there is nothing to stop a future strain being just that - then the idiocy that Cummings claims would have killed, and could in the future kill, a lot more people.
And based on what has happened rather than just on Cummings evidence, I have no faith at all that the Government has learnt any lessons.
It has always been my concern for my erstwhile party. In their desperation to have a leader that was popular, they overlooked whether he was up to the job that he would eventually need to do. All the evidence was there that he was not, but they still pushed on. You know my views on Brexit (which is now no longer relevant), but I would rather have Gove or even Raab. Both have demonstrated a reasonable modicum of competence in their departments. Johnson is a fucking walking disaster area.
The counterpoint is that any not-Boris leader of the Conservatives would have had Boris undermining them for denying him his birthright. At some point, this became inevitable.
Yes, an interesting point. What did make this incompetent think it was his birth right? Some might say his school, but there are many well balanced individuals who come from Eton. The extraordinary skill that he does have is the ability to convince others to support him in spite of the evidence of his limited ability. Demagogues the world over will definitely want to study him. He has no genuine gravitas, but does have plenty of charisma. Quite fascinating really in a disturbing way.
The 3 most charismatic UK party leaders and effective votewinners of my lifetime are Thatcher, Blair and Boris, nobody else comes close
Just noticed there is not one SNP member on the green benches
Of course Sturgeon has her own questions to answer
I hope she's asked the basis for her claim that Scotland would have done as well out of the UK for vaccines as in it.
Just the same way a small country like Israel beat the crap out of the UK on vaccines smart arse.
Do you seriously believe that Nicola would have done a Netanyahu and arranged her own vaccines?
Or do you think that Nicola would have joined in the EU scheme?
I know Boris is a lying toerag along with his sockpuppet Hancock, I don't know what she would have done. However I do believe she is a lying toerag and would probably have done worse but that would be a guess. Carlotta slavering at thought of her being asked a question is unedifying and especially given the question is pure fantasy as it was impossible given Scotland is a colony and can only do as its masters allow. So we will never know if Scotland would have done as well as many other small countries as they had to do what Westminster ordered.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Pure simplistic speculation old chap! Too many variables to know without a parallel universe available. It is history now, whoever, whatever tipped the balance is immaterial.
The question at the moment is not whether people are gullible enough to fall for an old Etonians charms and fibs, it is whether there is evidence that said Old Etonian is so incompetent that he cost a lot of families their loved ones.
I am not arguing about Boris' competence in power so much as his campaigning skills, I agree Boris could have locked down earlier even if the vaccination campaign is now going well
Yes, but you have fallen into the trap of discussing his apparent electioneering ability when clearly the topic of the day is his being fit or unfit for office. That seems to be the default position for his apologists.
Kind of "Oh he might be shit as PM, but he is good at elections", to which those of us who have raised questions are meant to say: "oh, that's OK then. Here I was thinking that being PM was about being a good chief executive of the UK, but in fact the most important thing is winning elections. Sorry I got that bit wrong. Carry on Boris"
The thing is and why i have always been slightly uncomfortable about knowing all.about what was discussed as part of SAGE, if they are doing their job properly they would be discussing some very unpalatable options...the problem is then anybody can take parts of that and say see they really wanted to do x...not for example they discussed 5 different options, one of which was to get a handle of thr magnitude of things would we save lives overall if we just let all the grannies die, not that we want to do that, but lets see the difference, could it save x10 lives?
It's illogical to recommend a plan of action if you don't consider the option of doing nothing. Any competent person should have considered the "let it rip" scenario.
I wonder how much further Cummings would have got in life if he had a winning smile and a cheeky glint in his eye - rather than a face like a smacked arse.
He is clearly smart, well read, promotes ideas. But his mien leaves you running for the door.
The winning traits of both Boris and Cummings would be a ferocious political beast.
I find him smart, engaging and likeable. He thinks well outside the box, so he is always interesting to hear. It's a failure of our system that a brain like his can't be profitably employed by the government.
That said, Chief Aide to the PM was probably not the ideal role. He should be in charge of a new Department for Mad Ideas, where he can pump out brilliant schemes but a more sober character can weed out the feasible from the lunatic
I think that's right. He could run a really interesting think tank but probably not a department.
The PM isn’t the first person to make the mistake of thinking that someone having the skills to diagnose what is wrong necessarily equips them also with the skills to be able to put things right.
Once again it seems to me that the "tens of thousand died that didn't need to die" is a complete illusion. If we had locked down sooner we would have deferred some cases and some deaths. But unless we were to live in lockdown for the last 18 months it would only be a deferral. Those that died were the most vulnerable to this pernicious disease. As a generality they would have caught it and died whenever we opened up. Significant numbers of old, vulnerable people in care homes were always going to die of this. Its simply naive to claim otherwise.
So individual mistakes such as the care homes fiasco where hospitals were cleared of bed blockers or the unending failure to secure borders or the fiasco of the early T&T changed the shape of our death toll but I remain to be convinced that it affected the final result. The brutal truth was that pre vaccines somewhere between 0.5 and 1% of us were going to die of this disease, mainly the old, the obese and those with impaired immune systems with the odd unlucky other as well. This is the reality and pretending that this could be magicked away by some clever policy is delusional.
We still have a real problem in recognising that we are vulnerable to nature, that there are things that we simply cannot prevent. Its a bit weird.
You are correct, however the mortality rate in the UK (127,000 deaths) seems very high compared to say Germany or France (both similar sized countries with comparable demographics)....
They don't have remotely comparable demographics.
The three major factors affecting spreads and death are: obesity rates, population density and rate of intergenerational households.
What other European countries would you suggest are more similar in size and demographic to the UK than Germany & France?
I think -- if you want to carry out this kind of comparison -- it should not be at the national level, as there are too many changing variables.
But, I think you could compare mortality rate from COVID in regions in France, Germany and the UK with similar population density/demography (eg Greater Birmingham with parts of the Ruhr, etc). I am sure these studies will be done. The results will be interesting.
But, I suspect none of the UK, Italy, Spain, France & Germany have much to brag about. These countries have all done pretty much the same. About 6 months ago, I would have said Germany was doing markedly better, but no longer.
In retrospect, I think the major mistake that the Government made was lateness in the first/second lockdowns. In the case of the first lockdown, it is clear that this mistake arose from modelling errors in SAGE. The modellers originally though the disease would spread more slowly than it actually did, so the first wave would peak later.
The borders I think are more arguable -- it is noticeable on pb.com that it is often the same people shrieking about the borders who can't wait to travel (@Leon). I think it is a lose-lose situation for any Government.
I would have done more to shut the borders, but there would have been the inevitable shrieks and hollers ... especially from the ranting hypocrites in the press.
Fifth in the World for deaths. Top in Europe. Well done guys
Top for fraud , graft and enriching friends and family as well
You've never lived in Italy I take it?
This lot make the Italians look like angels.
What's your evidence that we're more corrupt than Italy?
I was specifically talking about the Tories that are running the country, though you could add the fact we have the most tax havens and we launder all dirty money from Russia et al. Where is your evidence that Italy is more corrupt smarty pants.
The Transparency International index says that Italy is more corrupt than the UK in its annual ranking. New Zealand and Denmark share top spot as least corrupt, the UK is joint 11th with Canada and Australia. Italy is in joint 52nd place.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Given you voted Remain as you love to keep telling us - and I suspect are rather far removed from being 'working class' - I would suggest you are hardly in a position to judge who was the most persuasive.
Leave was always going to have the Faragist anti immigration vote and the libertarian single market vote.
It was Boris who convinced enough waverers to shift the result from a narrow Remain to a narrow Leave win
LOL. That is awesome cherry picking.
Look I can do it too using your own link:
Boris backed Leave on 21st February 2016.
The Yougov poll on 3rd-4th February had Leave ahead by 9% The next Yougov poll the day after Johnson backed Leave had that lead down to 1% And the following 6 Yougov polls after Johnson backed Leave all had Leave losing by up to 5%.
Cherry picking polls to suit your view is not advancing your cause at all.
From Unherd: We have yet to collectively dream about the awful events of 2020. The history of how Boris Johnson handled Covid is still to be written, and today’s opinion polls tell us little. For that reason, I’d be wary of dismissing too quickly the impact of Dominic Cummings’s testimony yesterday.
Most people don’t seem to mind that the Prime Minister is lazy and dishonest, and none of yesterday’s revelations will “cut through” to ordinary voters, at least immediately.
And yet, the Johnson Government’s raison d’etre seems to be that, so long as it has the support of the people, aka the median voter or Red Wall, that’s enough. Which is not the way we end up with good government.
The norms of British public life stated that you didn’t lie and cheat, but once that norm was broken, it was impossible to put back together. Norms are far easier to destroy than to build.
Few blame the Government right now for how they dealt with Covid, just as few in 1919 doubted the wisdom of fighting Germany. But history hasn’t been written yet, and when it is, historians won’t be as forgiving to Boris Johnson as “the people”.
"History will be kind to me because I intend to write it"
Latest: Russia has again refused to allow today’s Air France flight (Paris-Moscow) to enter its airspace because the flight would have avoided Belarus’ airspace, in line with EU directives. #Belarus
Lots of Big Doms comments were cherry picking...he basically argued well if I was in charge we would have closed the borders, had a South Korean trace system and a far more targeted testing.
That's broadly my view as well, cherry picked comments with no context.
Interestingly a member of the SAGE behavioural science committee was on the radio this morning, and she was quite explicit that they never even considered some of the things Dom said they had made recommendations about. She was not impressed at all by Dom's statements about her part of SAGE. I suspect she won't be the only person to take issue with his recall of events.
Well we know this is the man who went back and editted his blog to make it seem like he predicted the pandemic.
Did a multiple choice test for a job earlier in the week. I chose 'I don't know but I will try to find out for you and get back to you," as my answer. Am now fretting I failed...
Well I hope they do, get back to you I mean.
I would certainly consider such an answer a positive for a potential employee and it would make me a shade more relaxed about my PI Insurance.
The sun is shining and I have just been asked, by the Flint Knappers Gazette, to do a mid-June foodie road trip along the coast of East Anglia, from the oysters of Mersea to the eels of Orford to the lobsters of Brancaster Staithe
Is this actually..... over? Is winter done?
*looks at dashboard nervously*
Wrong time of year for Mersea oysters. You'll only get rocks.
Indeed, but right now the idea of sitting in the sun at the Company Shed gazing out at the Blackwater, eating Mersea rocks and spicy lobster soup with a glass of cold Albarino seems so intoxicatingly wonderful I will probably get over the lack of natives
I reckon this is going to be a thing. Fallen standards. A couple of years ago a lunch on the breezy coast of Essex would not have me daydreaming for weeks beforehand. Now it seems borderline miraculous.
AND I get to stay in actual.... hotels?! REALLY?
You not abroad yet? Booked anything?
Portugal is on the horizon. A walk along the Costa Vicentina. One of my favourite corners of Europe. Please let this wretched bug F Off, for good, so it happens
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Pure simplistic speculation old chap! Too many variables to know without a parallel universe available. It is history now, whoever, whatever tipped the balance is immaterial.
The question at the moment is not whether people are gullible enough to fall for an old Etonians charms and fibs, it is whether there is evidence that said Old Etonian is so incompetent that he cost a lot of families their loved ones.
I am not arguing about Boris' competence in power so much as his campaigning skills, I agree Boris could have locked down earlier even if the vaccination campaign is now going well
Yes, but you have fallen into the trap of discussing his apparent electioneering ability when clearly the topic of the day is his being fit or unfit for office. That seems to be the default position for his apologists.
Kind of "Oh he might be shit as PM, but he is good at elections", to which those of us who have raised questions are meant to say: "oh, that's OK then. Here I was thinking that being PM was about being a good chief executive of the UK, but in fact the most important thing is winning elections. Sorry I got that bit wrong. Carry on Boris"
Yes but you need to win elections to become PM or stay in the role (much as you need the support of your shareholders to stay ceo).
Plus Boris is getting more competent as the vaccination rollout shows
Cases up 18% Hospital admissions up 11% Deaths flat
Unlocking too soon?
Most thought that any unlocking (e.g. Mar 12 etc) would lead to a rise in cases -it didn't. We are now 10 days past May 17th further opening and cases have risen, but it is really interesting to see where. There are broad swathes of the country where the trend in cases is still down, as shown by the increase in yellow areas on the MSOA data of the dashboard. Most of the new cases are clearly in a very few areas, and combined with relatively low cases overall, the rise looks worse than it is. We still need to keep vaccinating the lower ages, but we are probably seeing more unvaccinated adults going in and then coming out of hospital, rather than oldies dying. The rise in admissions is against a tiny level. Many hospitals have 0 (zero) covid patients currently.
This is why the 5 week period was incorporated. I have railed against the slowness of opening, and still believe we could go faster, but it is wise to watch the data to be sure. Don't forget that there are no local restrictions in England, not even in Bolton, other than the national ones, so you can go to Wetherspoons etc. And the cases in Bolton have peaked and are coming down. I do not expect the cases to go out of control because we now have 80%+ of adults with antibodies.
I was moaning about the speed of the opening up only a few days ago. I am now trying to come to terms with the idea that Whitty & Co may just know a bit more about this than this keyboard warrior. Don't worry though, this moment of insight will soon pass.
I think the Indian variant has genuinely thrown a spanner into the works, but not necessarily because it is more transmissible. I think we have seen a massive seeding episode in lots of vulnerable families from travel to India, and return to multigenerational environments. Its spread is strikingly different to the how the Kent variant raged from November onwards.
I would agree with that. The point is that Whitty & Co anticipated such hiccups when I assumed plain sailing from this point forward.
talkRADIO @talkRADIO · 1h Professor of Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, Carl Heneghan: "Dominic Cummings was fundamentally incorrect when claiming that myself and Sunetra Gupta suggested enough herd immunity had been built up to avoid a further Lockdown."
Heneghan says Cummings was entirely wrong in what he said about their meetings in front of select committee.
Is this the same Sunetra Gupta who said we could unlock in May 2020 with no ill effect? The same Heneghan who said in late September that there was no evidence of a second wave in September?
Heneghan and Gupta should shut up and link away into the shadows.
The guy on TV today, is that the same Ferguson who was sh8gging some bloke's missus whilst recommending house arrest for the rest of us?
BREAK: TV host Dr Christian Jessen will have to pay damages of £125,000 to Arlene Foster @DUPLeader for posting an “outrageous” defamatory tweet which made unfounded claims that the First Minister of Northern Ireland was having an affair
Of course its outrageous! Who would want to shag that?
I don't believe in flagging or off topic but that is really not nice.
I know it isn't nice - hardly a comment explicitly on Arlene though. The more awful the politician both morally and/or physically the more likely they have been at it. John Prescott had an office affair. Prescott! Ewwww - and some try to claim that power isn't an aphrodisiac.
Even our political class is human.
*thinks"
Yep, I am sure they are. Apart from the lizards natch.
Boris, Hancock and the rest of the Government doing their best to deal with the pandemic.
LAB just want to play politics.
That will be the govt message. And it will come across.
And it will still be bollocks whether it comes directly from the Government or from their apologists.
And there are a few apologists on here. Nay, not just apologists, but blind, uncritical worshippers at the altar of "Boris". People who would give a senior apparatchik in the Chinese Communist Party a run for their money in braindead allegiance to the Party and The Leader.
I mean just how strong do the questions of leadership capability have to be before such people think it might be time to not post remarks that underline how unquestioning and incapable of critical questioning they are? My Party right or wrong. My leader, right or wrong. Where does this lead us?
If we are not careful then to a lot more dead people. One might almost say - callous as it might seem - that ONLY having lost 125,000 people in spite of the Governments many failings we have been lucky.
Had this disease been rather more virulent - and there is nothing to stop a future strain being just that - then the idiocy that Cummings claims would have killed, and could in the future kill, a lot more people.
And based on what has happened rather than just on Cummings evidence, I have no faith at all that the Government has learnt any lessons.
It has always been my concern for my erstwhile party. In their desperation to have a leader that was popular, they overlooked whether he was up to the job that he would eventually need to do. All the evidence was there that he was not, but they still pushed on. You know my views on Brexit (which is now no longer relevant), but I would rather have Gove or even Raab. Both have demonstrated a reasonable modicum of competence in their departments. Johnson is a fucking walking disaster area.
The counterpoint is that any not-Boris leader of the Conservatives would have had Boris undermining them for denying him his birthright. At some point, this became inevitable.
Yes, an interesting point. What did make this incompetent think it was his birth right? Some might say his school, but there are many well balanced individuals who come from Eton. The extraordinary skill that he does have is the ability to convince others to support him in spite of the evidence of his limited ability. Demagogues the world over will definitely want to study him. He has no genuine gravitas, but does have plenty of charisma. Quite fascinating really in a disturbing way.
The 3 most charismatic UK party leaders and effective votewinners of my lifetime are Thatcher, Blair and Boris, nobody else comes close
The important difference being that the first two were competent executives as well as being charismatic.
Imagine you had a surgeon who was incompetent and amputated the wrong testicle. Would you say: "Oh well, doc never mind", and afterwards you would say to your friends: "You know what, that Mr Johnson, he is a pretty shit surgeon, but my goodness, he is charismatic!"
Boris, Hancock and the rest of the Government doing their best to deal with the pandemic.
LAB just want to play politics.
That will be the govt message. And it will come across.
And it will still be bollocks whether it comes directly from the Government or from their apologists.
And there are a few apologists on here. Nay, not just apologists, but blind, uncritical worshippers at the altar of "Boris". People who would give a senior apparatchik in the Chinese Communist Party a run for their money in braindead allegiance to the Party and The Leader.
I mean just how strong do the questions of leadership capability have to be before such people think it might be time to not post remarks that underline how unquestioning and incapable of critical questioning they are? My Party right or wrong. My leader, right or wrong. Where does this lead us?
If we are not careful then to a lot more dead people. One might almost say - callous as it might seem - that ONLY having lost 125,000 people in spite of the Governments many failings we have been lucky.
Had this disease been rather more virulent - and there is nothing to stop a future strain being just that - then the idiocy that Cummings claims would have killed, and could in the future kill, a lot more people.
And based on what has happened rather than just on Cummings evidence, I have no faith at all that the Government has learnt any lessons.
It has always been my concern for my erstwhile party. In their desperation to have a leader that was popular, they overlooked whether he was up to the job that he would eventually need to do. All the evidence was there that he was not, but they still pushed on. You know my views on Brexit (which is now no longer relevant), but I would rather have Gove or even Raab. Both have demonstrated a reasonable modicum of competence in their departments. Johnson is a fucking walking disaster area.
The counterpoint is that any not-Boris leader of the Conservatives would have had Boris undermining them for denying him his birthright. At some point, this became inevitable.
Yes, an interesting point. What did make this incompetent think it was his birth right? Some might say his school, but there are many well balanced individuals who come from Eton. The extraordinary skill that he does have is the ability to convince others to support him in spite of the evidence of his limited ability. Demagogues the world over will definitely want to study him. He has no genuine gravitas, but does have plenty of charisma. Quite fascinating really in a disturbing way.
The 3 most charismatic UK party leaders and effective votewinners of my lifetime are Thatcher, Blair and Boris, nobody else comes close
The important difference being that the first two were competent executives as well as being charismatic.
Imagine you had a surgeon who was incompetent and amputated the wrong testicle. Would you say: "Oh well, doc never mind", and afterwards you would say to your friends: "You know what, that Mr Johnson, he is a pretty shit surgeon, but my goodness, he is charismatic!"
My observation is that people regularly get appointed to jobs because they tell a good story, in the absence of actual evidence that they can do a good job. Hopefully however not in surgery.
Hancock still refusing to answer the question on social care and testing . So we can take from that the allegations are true and patients were shipped into care homes without being tested .
We know its true. Its been known to be true for a year now.
What was an unsubstantiated claim is that Hancock was lying and claiming people were being tested when they weren't.
Well you are kind of screwed in that case aren't you.
Because your choices are:
Hancock, based on no evidence at all and contrary to what is said in the PHE documentation and guidance, thought everyone was being tested before going back into the homes. In which case he is criminally incompetent
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and at the same time lied about it to his cabinet colleagues and the PM
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and told his cabinet colleagues and the PM in which case they are equally guilty and moreover lied about it themselves.
Your choice. But none of them are good.
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and be returned to care homes because that was the best scientific advice at the time (and the testing capacity didn't exist at the time, but Hancock was driving that forwards with his 100k stretch goal he made).
LOL. If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you.
Which bit do you not believe?
That the testing capacity didn't exist at the time is a matter of fact. That Hancock did the 100k stretch goal to get the country from 5k tests to tests being available en-mass is true too. That the best scientific advice at the time said to discharge from hospitals is true - which is why Scotland, Wales, NI and other nations all did the same thing at the the same time.
In a parallel universe where people didn't get discharged and we had Italian style collapse of hospitals then people in hindsight would be saying why people who didn't need hospital treatment were kept in hospitals against the scientific advice at the time rather than being discharged - and that those who needed the beds and needed treatment were being turned away from hospitals.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
It's terrible to be accused of being unfit for office. What makes it worse is being so accused by someone as unfit for office as D Cummings. What makes it even worse is knowing, deep down, that he's right. What's worst of all is demonstrating your unfitness for office by avoiding questions about your unfitness for office.
The only possible comfort he can take from all that is the near-14 million people who don't give a shiny shit, as they voted for him and his 80 seat majority.
Boo-hoo....
Yes, but as I just put in another post. Being PM is not just about winning elections. It is about governing. Let us allow him the fact that he appears good at winning elections. The reality is he is an incompetent PM. A bullshitter journalist with nothing to bring to the table with respect to executive leadership.
I genuinely despair at where this country has got to politically. I just watched Angela Rayner on TV this morning. This hopeless lightweight is the second most powerful person in the Labour Party. She makes Prescot look like an articulate statesman!
The local elections say people are happy with the way he is governing. The people who are unhappy with the way he is governing very largely overlap with those who were happy how the EU governed us...
Well that is a predictable response but is clearly rubbish. Are you saying Cummings is now a "remainer" because he recognises Johnson is unfit for office?
I have come to terms with Brexit, I think it was pointless, but we are where we are, and it may turn out to be less damaging than I feared. We are now talking about something much more important: a global pandemic with a PM who won't fire a Sec of State for Health who has probably lied and mismanaged, and may have caused the untimely death of thousands. And here is the crux as to why many of us who believe in more honest politics think Johnson is a liability: he thinks lying is OK! It is his main modus operandi. Those that think lying is OK in politics on both left and right need to reflect on this.
I must be a Remainer in that case. I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am with Johnson and how unfit he is to govern since long before Cummings gave his evidence.
If Gove had been the frontman for the Leave campaign rather than Boris, Leave may not have won given it only narrowly won with 52% of the vote. Not much gratitude from Cummings for Boris there.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
It was Cummings strategy that won the referendum not Boris. That is why Remainers hate Cummings so much.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Cummings is overrated.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Pure simplistic speculation old chap! Too many variables to know without a parallel universe available. It is history now, whoever, whatever tipped the balance is immaterial.
The question at the moment is not whether people are gullible enough to fall for an old Etonians charms and fibs, it is whether there is evidence that said Old Etonian is so incompetent that he cost a lot of families their loved ones.
I am not arguing about Boris' competence in power so much as his campaigning skills, I agree Boris could have locked down earlier even if the vaccination campaign is now going well
Yes, but you have fallen into the trap of discussing his apparent electioneering ability when clearly the topic of the day is his being fit or unfit for office. That seems to be the default position for his apologists.
Kind of "Oh he might be shit as PM, but he is good at elections", to which those of us who have raised questions are meant to say: "oh, that's OK then. Here I was thinking that being PM was about being a good chief executive of the UK, but in fact the most important thing is winning elections. Sorry I got that bit wrong. Carry on Boris"
Yes but you need to win elections to become PM or stay in the role (much as you need the support of your shareholders to stay ceo).
Plus Boris is getting more competent as the vaccination rollout shows
An amateur incompetent, learning as he goes eh? I refer to my previous comment regarding testicle removing surgeons!
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
I do like these sorts of lines. Allows you to pirouette whichever way you wish.
If Boris did stand up and address it all head on, Waugh would be there going "look! he's taking it very seriously! there is some truth to it"
The best response is to treat it with cool, calm contempt and not to give them the oxygen. The public forget the details, the press move on to their next feeding frenzy.
By next week, they will be desperate for knowledge of whether they can still go on their holibobs from June 21st....
A cynical person might expect the Government to still be a bit "ooh - you'll have to wait and see....!" Even though they know full well 21st June is set in stone.
Can we stop with the holibobs thing: is there a more annoying word on PB? It implies holidays are unimportant. Yet they are very important to millions of people.
Comments
UK: #11
Italy: #52
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#1998–2020
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020/index/nzl#
Bernard: Shall I file it?
Hacker: Shall you file it? Shred it! No one must ever be able to find it again.
Bernard: In that case, Minister, I think it's best I file it.
Similarly it is only Boris who has managed to finally deliver the Tories a big Commons majority, something no other Tory leader has managed since Thatcher
Because your choices are:
Hancock, based on no evidence at all and contrary to what is said in the PHE documentation and guidance, thought everyone was being tested before going back into the homes. In which case he is criminally incompetent
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and at the same time lied about it to his cabinet colleagues and the PM
or
Hancock knew that people were not being tested but let them go ahead and infect the care homes anyway and told his cabinet colleagues and the PM in which case they are equally guilty and moreover lied about it themselves.
Your choice. But none of them are good.
But, in fact, saying "I don't know" should be absolutely fundamental to any learning organization - and in a rapidly changing world, pretty much every organization should be constantly learning and adapting.
And I don't care about the Tories and their majorities. True I would have preferred not to have Corbyn for purely selfish reasons but my attitude is generally one of a plague on both your houses. Johnson is just as unfit to be PM as Corbyn would have been.
Another thing Cummings was right about.
Ben Kentish
@BenKentish
Matt Hancock tells the Commons: “The number of vaccinations happening in Bolton right now is phenomenal - tens of thousands every single day”. Which sounded a lot for a population of less than 300,000 people and, well, here’s the official data for Bolton....
According to official data, Bolton’s vaccination rate averages 2,605 doses a day over the last week and 3,073 a day over the last fortnight. According to this data, the most doses given in one day was not “tens of thousands” but 4,905.
https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1397857619029774336
Most people don’t seem to mind that the Prime Minister is lazy and dishonest, and none of yesterday’s revelations will “cut through” to ordinary voters, at least immediately.
And yet, the Johnson Government’s raison d’etre seems to be that, so long as it has the support of the people, aka the median voter or Red Wall, that’s enough. Which is not the way we end up with good government.
The norms of British public life stated that you didn’t lie and cheat, but once that norm was broken, it was impossible to put back together. Norms are far easier to destroy than to build.
Few blame the Government right now for how they dealt with Covid, just as few in 1919 doubted the wisdom of fighting Germany. But history hasn’t been written yet, and when it is, historians won’t be as forgiving to Boris Johnson as “the people”.
I reckon this is going to be a thing. Fallen standards. A couple of years ago a lunch on the breezy coast of Essex would not have me daydreaming for weeks beforehand. Now it seems borderline miraculous.
AND I get to stay in actual.... hotels?! REALLY?
Imagine it was you being successful in an interview that you are not really qualified to do and then being crap at the job. No-one in the company would say: "You know what, that HYUFD chap is pretty shit at this job, but just look how well he did at interview. Impressive!"
It was in the Ch4 documentary on vaccine roll out.
This is why the 5 week period was incorporated. I have railed against the slowness of opening, and still believe we could go faster, but it is wise to watch the data to be sure. Don't forget that there are no local restrictions in England, not even in Bolton, other than the national ones, so you can go to Wetherspoons etc. And the cases in Bolton have peaked and are coming down. I do not expect the cases to go out of control because we now have 80%+ of adults with antibodies.
Always better to go away, research and come back with an answer, tha to try and bullcrap your way through. The subject is constantly changing, and no-one can know all of it. Continual research is an important part of the job.
https://twitter.com/RobDotHutton/status/1397858122396573696
Tory MPs heaping so much praise on Hancock that it's clear they think he could only have done better by sending twice as many people with Covid into care homes.
Had it been Gove + Cummings running the Leave campaign v Cameron leading the Remain campaign and Boris reluctantly had backed Remain I suspect Remain would narrowly have won. It was only Boris who won over enough working class voters to get Leave narrowly over the line.
Boris then repeated that appeal in 2019 to win the Tory landslide that December
Good to know.
"Cases of Yorkshire coronavirus variant double as scientists detect 25 mutations"
:eyeroll:
He is clearly smart, well read, promotes ideas. But his mien leaves you running for the door.
The winning traits of both Boris and Cummings would be a ferocious political beast.
Still a Tory lead of 9%
https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1397833126043324417?s=20
Ironic, hey?
As an adviser, not a leader, Cummings, annoying a person as he comes across, can at least be forgiven to a degree for lacking at least two of them, though not where he did seek to take leads.
https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1397807217454288897?s=20
At some point, this became inevitable.
I chose 'I don't know but I will try to find out for you and get back to you," as my answer.
Am now fretting I failed...
That said, Chief Aide to the PM was probably not the ideal role. He should be in charge of a new Department for Mad Ideas, where he can pump out brilliant schemes but a more sober character can weed out the feasible from the lunatic
Sorry should say I always pay them off or transfer before the deadline.
The question at the moment is not whether people are gullible enough to fall for an old Etonians charms and fibs, it is whether there is evidence that said Old Etonian is so incompetent that he cost a lot of families their loved ones.
Bizarre to see a party actively campaign against stronger trade links with Europe & the rest of the world. Wrecking Scottish businesses' access to the EU single market isn't damaging enough for these Scot Tories. Now they want to stop all Scottish efforts to promote int'l trade.
https://twitter.com/_KateForbes/status/1397653579532492816?s=20
If only they'd spent the money Westminster sent for supporting business on supporting business....
Interestingly a member of the SAGE behavioural science committee was on the radio this morning, and she was quite explicit that they never even considered some of the things Dom said they had made recommendations about. She was not impressed at all by Dom's statements about her part of SAGE. I suspect she won't be the only person to take issue with his recall of events.
The Tories are in power, are remaining in power and are not under any threat from Labour. So why so many PB Tories are literally applauding lies, incompetence and open corruption from their own is baffling. Surely the aim is *good* Tory governance, not the very incompetent shower of money-wasting wazzocks they would absolutely scream condemnation at if it was Labour.
Unvaccinated
0-44 16,908,941
45-64 4,537,066
65-74 418,129
75-84 101,661
85+ 142,568
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1397876449613385728?s=20
In a way, the Indian variant is stress testing the idea that the vaccinations (with a local surge testing and other measures) can hold the line. As opposed to lockdowns.
A BMG Research poll which began on 17th February for instance had Remain ahead by 2%, the next BMG Research poll which came out in March had Leave 4% ahead ie the final winning margin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum
Leave was always going to have the Faragist anti immigration vote and the libertarian single market vote.
It was Boris who convinced enough waverers to shift the result from a narrow Remain to a narrow Leave win
*Never go Full Hermann Kahn!
Carlotta slavering at thought of her being asked a question is unedifying and especially given the question is pure fantasy as it was impossible given Scotland is a colony and can only do as its masters allow.
So we will never know if Scotland would have done as well as many other small countries as they had to do what Westminster ordered.
Kind of "Oh he might be shit as PM, but he is good at elections", to which those of us who have raised questions are meant to say: "oh, that's OK then. Here I was thinking that being PM was about being a good chief executive of the UK, but in fact the most important thing is winning elections. Sorry I got that bit wrong. Carry on Boris"
Look I can do it too using your own link:
Boris backed Leave on 21st February 2016.
The Yougov poll on 3rd-4th February had Leave ahead by 9%
The next Yougov poll the day after Johnson backed Leave had that lead down to 1%
And the following 6 Yougov polls after Johnson backed Leave all had Leave losing by up to 5%.
Cherry picking polls to suit your view is not advancing your cause at all.
Latest: Russia has again refused to allow today’s Air France flight (Paris-Moscow) to enter its airspace because the flight would have avoided Belarus’ airspace, in line with EU directives. #Belarus
https://twitter.com/AlexInAir/status/1397882307680378881?s=20
I would certainly consider such an answer a positive for a potential employee and it would make me a shade more relaxed about my PI Insurance.
Plus Boris is getting more competent as the vaccination rollout shows
Possibly a new record.
*thinks"
Yep, I am sure they are. Apart from the lizards natch.
Imagine you had a surgeon who was incompetent and amputated the wrong testicle. Would you say: "Oh well, doc never mind", and afterwards you would say to your friends: "You know what, that Mr Johnson, he is a pretty shit surgeon, but my goodness, he is charismatic!"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9622767/Emails-reveal-Joe-Biden-DID-meet-Hunters-business-partners-VP.html
That the testing capacity didn't exist at the time is a matter of fact.
That Hancock did the 100k stretch goal to get the country from 5k tests to tests being available en-mass is true too.
That the best scientific advice at the time said to discharge from hospitals is true - which is why Scotland, Wales, NI and other nations all did the same thing at the the same time.
In a parallel universe where people didn't get discharged and we had Italian style collapse of hospitals then people in hindsight would be saying why people who didn't need hospital treatment were kept in hospitals against the scientific advice at the time rather than being discharged - and that those who needed the beds and needed treatment were being turned away from hospitals.
Hindsight is 2020.