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After the Portugal decision the front pages are entirely predictable – politicalbetting.com

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  • LeonLeon Posts: 54,677
    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Having been woken up by the factory manager of one of my clients reporting stupidity which I have now had to manage to their expectant UK customer and try and save them some face, I may be on here today a bit more than recent days. For some reason I am less motivated than I have been, perhaps I'll do work for the other client instead and enjoy the debate on here instead.

    As a complete aside I am seriously loving this house we bought in February. The ghosts are quite entertaining - an upstairs storeroom in the bank (attached to the house and now my office) appears to be the domain of a banker who died here at work in 1891. And the house part has a ghost who keeps presenting us with metal objects (screws etc) and last night had fun with the power.

    Making tea for the kids (6pm). Downstairs power trips off. Head upstairs to the laundry room where the fuse box is. Tripped. Return partway along the upstairs corridor to shout downstairs to Mrs RP to check nothing had been plugged in that may have caused the trip. Turned back towards the room with the fuses which is literally at the end of the corridor which has 4 bedrooms off it to the right. See one of the kids going into the room, shout "oi!" and of course when I get there the room is empty and the switch has been reset!

    Mrs RP has seen a figure in the house, my Sis-in-law who is sensitive to these things has seen and heard from them, this was the first time I had seen an actual ghost. In broad daylight whilst sober. It was triffic.

    I'm very jealous. I've always wanted to see something like that, and never have.
    I've always had a belief there was something like ghosts - too much evidence from too many people. Have seen some seriously weird shit since we moved in (and my brother / sis-in-law's house is older and "really busy").

    Upstairs storeroom is not a happy place, have seen objects placed (most notably a red ribbon which wasn't on the floor at the foot of the stairs when I took a group up there but was in the middle of the floor as we came back down. EDIT - this storeroom is in the same building as the house but can't be accessed indoors - the connection between the (former bank manager's) house and the bank which share the same building is behind my desk as I type but bricked up decades ago.

    Mrs RP has seen a figure walk past her downstairs out the corner of her eye. I had see *something* previously at the end of the corridor upstairs but at an oblique angle. This though was a figure of perhaps 5 foot 5, wearing a light coloured shirt - so just like my 13 year old son in a school shirt. Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). My son's bedroom is to the right, the laundry room with fuse box directly in front and the bathroom to the left.

    I saw the back of them crossing from my son's bedroom into the laundry room at an angle from a distance of perhaps 10 feet. As the door to the laundry room opens that way the angles walk made sense. It was a split second glimpse but I shouted "oi" wondering why he had gone in there.

    As I got in there and find there is noone there, my son of course is still in his room, the door is shut and anyway he is wearing a black hoody as no school yesterday so no white school shirt...

    They don't scare me. Its quite comforting actually that death isn't the end. Though I do agree with the comment that I wouldn't want to leave even part of me to haunt work. Screw that...
    Fascinating!

    Tell us more, seriously. I love ghost stories. There is definitely *something* out there: too many people see too many ghosts. But that's a long way from saying they are intelligent phantoms of the dead

    I note this in your story:

    "Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). "


    Here is one theory I have read which might explain this. I love this theory because it is so ingenious

    Apparently big old buildings with long corridors with rooms off can create unusual vibrations in the air. These vibrations are not immediately apparent, because they are subsonic: too low frequency for us to consciously hear, but we still sense them, subconsciously

    And they induce a terrible dread, which can in turn make the brain create ghosts, to explain the nameless fear to itself

    Why the dread? Because large predators like big cats - lions, leopards, sabre-tooth tigers - emit a subsonic growl as they attack, to paralyse their prey with fear. Tens of thousand of years of evolution on the African plains has given us this same fear, so when we hear it in old rectories, we think we are about to die

    I believe experiments have been done: where people are subjected to subsonic noises without warning, and they basically crap themselves and see ghosts

    Of course one might ask why predators use subsonic growls, and why do they cause fear in the first place? Perhaps it is because they mimic the sounds of ghosts in rambling English castles

    Yes, I've heard that theory. Half remembered detail: frequency of 19 cycles per second cause a sense of distinct unease and also 'smudges' in the vision which the brain interprets as human (because that is the most expected cause of the eye seeing movement), then ghost (when human turns out not to be there).

    Interestingly, based on this theory, researchers were able to 'create' ghosts - or the experience of seeing a ghost - in a distinctly humdrum and unthreatening research facility in Coventry.

    These frequencies are more common in old buildings because poor insulation, or something.

    As I said, a half-remembered bit of info I saw once, 20-odd years ago. So may be nonsense.
    There's also the well known propensity not to see (the basketball gorilla video).
    Human perception is extremely unreliable in particular circumstances.
    For unseen gorillas on a basketball court, CF aliens in spacecraft, and leaks from labs
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,609

    Selebian said:

    Selebian said:

    DavidL said:

    Alistair said:

    Scottish Government not mentioning Oxford in relation to Astra Zeneca - a litany of failure.


    You will see that is published in January. When my wife got AZ in March and again this week there has been no mention of Oxford anywhere. If there are nutters like the author of that tweet about it is sensible enough.
    To be fair, I've hardly heard anyone refer to the Oxford vaccine (nor the BioNTech vaccine). Just AstraZeneca and Pfizer. Even my mum, who is something of an English nationalist, when I asked which she'd had, couldn't quite remember the name ("the Astra something one") but didn't mention Oxford.

    Mind you, might just be because those of us who studied/work at scumbag college or Fenland Poly are jealous :wink:
    I thought Fenland Poly was Anglia Ruskin...... Almost a Real University.
    I must admit, I thought Chelmsford's elevation to city status was - on the traditional criteria of a cathedral and a university - slightly tenuous. Neither are, perhaps, exemplars of their type.

    (I don't actually know much about ARU nowadays, it might be very good - when I was there it was still APU).
    Wow, another alumnus!

    Both it, and it's predecessor college were very good for Law, I believe. Friend of mine did his solicitors course there.

    And Almost a Proper University, another friend, who at one time lectured there, told me.
    Ah, sorry to disappoint, but by 'there' I meant Chelmsford (growing up) not APU. I have a couple of friends who went there (ARU, by then, I think) for surveying (of the building type) degrees and now both doing very nicely.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Sometimes you've got to admire the First Minister's chutzpah. The woman who says we need independence because the UK Government makes bad decisions for Scotland was not only taking the same bad decisions but making a virtue of it.

    https://stephendaisley.substack.com/p/nicola-sturgeon-wants-to-be-friends
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,690
    edited June 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    .

    MaxPB said:

    malcolmg said:

    MaxPB said:

    DavidL said:

    Of course the very slow rate of vaccination is not willfulness by the government. What has happened is that after a period where we almost took it for granted that they would roll a 6 every time on vaccinations they have come up with a couple of 1s in that large volumes of vaccine that they expected to have has not arrived. I suppose statistically this was likely to happen at some point but the timing is seriously disappointing and I find it bizarre that we can have front pages like those in the thread header with so little discussion of it.

    Supply is higher than the rate of vaccination currently. We've now tipped into demand issues as 30-39 year olds are busier and more difficult to book into the available daytime slots. The government should really just open up to all 18+ ASAP so capacity utilisation hits close to 100% again. A friend of mine has booked her first dose for next weekend as it was the first evening/weekend slot available. She did this last week.

    It's really frustrating because we could potentially double the first dose rate with more evening appointment availablity but the government is just ignoring this need and trying to cram busy under 40s into the 6pm-8pm and reduced weekend capacity appointments.
    What bollox, they cannot be so busy that if they want a vaccine they can make time during the day or go at the weekend. What you really mean is that they are selfish morons and want it on tap to suit them and their pathetic social lives..
    Old man, speaks like an old man. Big surprise. Idiot.
    I am not an old man but side with Malc here. I know people in their 30s who are unvaccinated who start off by saying they’ve been two busy tk organise it. And after a few drinks start talking about Pfizer changing your dna and making you infertile.

    There are two groups who might get a bit more latitude in being slow. The self employed. And single parents, given you are prohibited from taking children with you to the vaccine site. Anyone else is getting a free pass from their employer to disappear and have a vaccine when they need to.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,609
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Having been woken up by the factory manager of one of my clients reporting stupidity which I have now had to manage to their expectant UK customer and try and save them some face, I may be on here today a bit more than recent days. For some reason I am less motivated than I have been, perhaps I'll do work for the other client instead and enjoy the debate on here instead.

    As a complete aside I am seriously loving this house we bought in February. The ghosts are quite entertaining - an upstairs storeroom in the bank (attached to the house and now my office) appears to be the domain of a banker who died here at work in 1891. And the house part has a ghost who keeps presenting us with metal objects (screws etc) and last night had fun with the power.

    Making tea for the kids (6pm). Downstairs power trips off. Head upstairs to the laundry room where the fuse box is. Tripped. Return partway along the upstairs corridor to shout downstairs to Mrs RP to check nothing had been plugged in that may have caused the trip. Turned back towards the room with the fuses which is literally at the end of the corridor which has 4 bedrooms off it to the right. See one of the kids going into the room, shout "oi!" and of course when I get there the room is empty and the switch has been reset!

    Mrs RP has seen a figure in the house, my Sis-in-law who is sensitive to these things has seen and heard from them, this was the first time I had seen an actual ghost. In broad daylight whilst sober. It was triffic.

    I'm very jealous. I've always wanted to see something like that, and never have.
    I've always had a belief there was something like ghosts - too much evidence from too many people. Have seen some seriously weird shit since we moved in (and my brother / sis-in-law's house is older and "really busy").

    Upstairs storeroom is not a happy place, have seen objects placed (most notably a red ribbon which wasn't on the floor at the foot of the stairs when I took a group up there but was in the middle of the floor as we came back down. EDIT - this storeroom is in the same building as the house but can't be accessed indoors - the connection between the (former bank manager's) house and the bank which share the same building is behind my desk as I type but bricked up decades ago.

    Mrs RP has seen a figure walk past her downstairs out the corner of her eye. I had see *something* previously at the end of the corridor upstairs but at an oblique angle. This though was a figure of perhaps 5 foot 5, wearing a light coloured shirt - so just like my 13 year old son in a school shirt. Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). My son's bedroom is to the right, the laundry room with fuse box directly in front and the bathroom to the left.

    I saw the back of them crossing from my son's bedroom into the laundry room at an angle from a distance of perhaps 10 feet. As the door to the laundry room opens that way the angles walk made sense. It was a split second glimpse but I shouted "oi" wondering why he had gone in there.

    As I got in there and find there is noone there, my son of course is still in his room, the door is shut and anyway he is wearing a black hoody as no school yesterday so no white school shirt...

    They don't scare me. Its quite comforting actually that death isn't the end. Though I do agree with the comment that I wouldn't want to leave even part of me to haunt work. Screw that...
    Fascinating!

    Tell us more, seriously. I love ghost stories. There is definitely *something* out there: too many people see too many ghosts. But that's a long way from saying they are intelligent phantoms of the dead

    I note this in your story:

    "Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). "


    Here is one theory I have read which might explain this. I love this theory because it is so ingenious

    Apparently big old buildings with long corridors with rooms off can create unusual vibrations in the air. These vibrations are not immediately apparent, because they are subsonic: too low frequency for us to consciously hear, but we still sense them, subconsciously

    And they induce a terrible dread, which can in turn make the brain create ghosts, to explain the nameless fear to itself

    Why the dread? Because large predators like big cats - lions, leopards, sabre-tooth tigers - emit a subsonic growl as they attack, to paralyse their prey with fear. Tens of thousand of years of evolution on the African plains has given us this same fear, so when we hear it in old rectories, we think we are about to die

    I believe experiments have been done: where people are subjected to subsonic noises without warning, and they basically crap themselves and see ghosts

    Of course one might ask why predators use subsonic growls, and why do they cause fear in the first place? Perhaps it is because they mimic the sounds of ghosts in rambling English castles

    Yes, I've heard that theory. Half remembered detail: frequency of 19 cycles per second cause a sense of distinct unease and also 'smudges' in the vision which the brain interprets as human (because that is the most expected cause of the eye seeing movement), then ghost (when human turns out not to be there).

    Interestingly, based on this theory, researchers were able to 'create' ghosts - or the experience of seeing a ghost - in a distinctly humdrum and unthreatening research facility in Coventry.

    These frequencies are more common in old buildings because poor insulation, or something.

    As I said, a half-remembered bit of info I saw once, 20-odd years ago. So may be nonsense.
    There's also the well known propensity not to see (the basketball gorilla video).
    Human perception is extremely unreliable in particular circumstances.
    For unseen gorillas on a basketball court, CF aliens in spacecraft, and leaks from labs
    Or, indeed, being so busy counting lab leaks, we fail to see the bats and pangolins dancing past. :wink:
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 59,994
    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Having been woken up by the factory manager of one of my clients reporting stupidity which I have now had to manage to their expectant UK customer and try and save them some face, I may be on here today a bit more than recent days. For some reason I am less motivated than I have been, perhaps I'll do work for the other client instead and enjoy the debate on here instead.

    As a complete aside I am seriously loving this house we bought in February. The ghosts are quite entertaining - an upstairs storeroom in the bank (attached to the house and now my office) appears to be the domain of a banker who died here at work in 1891. And the house part has a ghost who keeps presenting us with metal objects (screws etc) and last night had fun with the power.

    Making tea for the kids (6pm). Downstairs power trips off. Head upstairs to the laundry room where the fuse box is. Tripped. Return partway along the upstairs corridor to shout downstairs to Mrs RP to check nothing had been plugged in that may have caused the trip. Turned back towards the room with the fuses which is literally at the end of the corridor which has 4 bedrooms off it to the right. See one of the kids going into the room, shout "oi!" and of course when I get there the room is empty and the switch has been reset!

    Mrs RP has seen a figure in the house, my Sis-in-law who is sensitive to these things has seen and heard from them, this was the first time I had seen an actual ghost. In broad daylight whilst sober. It was triffic.

    I'm very jealous. I've always wanted to see something like that, and never have.
    I've always had a belief there was something like ghosts - too much evidence from too many people. Have seen some seriously weird shit since we moved in (and my brother / sis-in-law's house is older and "really busy").

    Upstairs storeroom is not a happy place, have seen objects placed (most notably a red ribbon which wasn't on the floor at the foot of the stairs when I took a group up there but was in the middle of the floor as we came back down. EDIT - this storeroom is in the same building as the house but can't be accessed indoors - the connection between the (former bank manager's) house and the bank which share the same building is behind my desk as I type but bricked up decades ago.

    Mrs RP has seen a figure walk past her downstairs out the corner of her eye. I had see *something* previously at the end of the corridor upstairs but at an oblique angle. This though was a figure of perhaps 5 foot 5, wearing a light coloured shirt - so just like my 13 year old son in a school shirt. Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). My son's bedroom is to the right, the laundry room with fuse box directly in front and the bathroom to the left.

    I saw the back of them crossing from my son's bedroom into the laundry room at an angle from a distance of perhaps 10 feet. As the door to the laundry room opens that way the angles walk made sense. It was a split second glimpse but I shouted "oi" wondering why he had gone in there.

    As I got in there and find there is noone there, my son of course is still in his room, the door is shut and anyway he is wearing a black hoody as no school yesterday so no white school shirt...

    They don't scare me. Its quite comforting actually that death isn't the end. Though I do agree with the comment that I wouldn't want to leave even part of me to haunt work. Screw that...
    Fascinating!

    Tell us more, seriously. I love ghost stories. There is definitely *something* out there: too many people see too many ghosts. But that's a long way from saying they are intelligent phantoms of the dead

    I note this in your story:

    "Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). "


    Here is one theory I have read which might explain this. I love this theory because it is so ingenious

    Apparently big old buildings with long corridors with rooms off can create unusual vibrations in the air. These vibrations are not immediately apparent, because they are subsonic: too low frequency for us to consciously hear, but we still sense them, subconsciously

    And they induce a terrible dread, which can in turn make the brain create ghosts, to explain the nameless fear to itself

    Why the dread? Because large predators like big cats - lions, leopards, sabre-tooth tigers - emit a subsonic growl as they attack, to paralyse their prey with fear. Tens of thousand of years of evolution on the African plains has given us this same fear, so when we hear it in old rectories, we think we are about to die

    I believe experiments have been done: where people are subjected to subsonic noises without warning, and they basically crap themselves and see ghosts

    Of course one might ask why predators use subsonic growls, and why do they cause fear in the first place? Perhaps it is because they mimic the sounds of ghosts in rambling English castles

    Yes, I've heard that theory. Half remembered detail: frequency of 19 cycles per second cause a sense of distinct unease and also 'smudges' in the vision which the brain interprets as human (because that is the most expected cause of the eye seeing movement), then ghost (when human turns out not to be there).

    Interestingly, based on this theory, researchers were able to 'create' ghosts - or the experience of seeing a ghost - in a distinctly humdrum and unthreatening research facility in Coventry.

    These frequencies are more common in old buildings because poor insulation, or something.

    As I said, a half-remembered bit of info I saw once, 20-odd years ago. So may be nonsense.
    There's also the well known propensity not to see (the basketball gorilla video).
    Human perception is extremely unreliable in particular circumstances.
    For unseen gorillas on a basketball court, CF aliens in spacecraft, and leaks from labs
    Or, indeed, being so busy counting lab leaks, we fail to see the bats and pangolins dancing past. :wink:
    We're one step away from Handjob Cabin here.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    I think we definitely need another thread on how well SKS is doing and how good he looked in the Piers Morgan interview.

    16 points behind after 11+ years of a Tory Government. I doubt this has ever happened before
    The politically engaged liked the interview, but the general public didn’t watch. YouGov filter out the politically engaged so I’d expect other polls to be closer
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,795

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    I'm expecting Boris to announce 'Stage 3.5' for 21 June - some further relaxations, but not all. And no more green countries.
    When do you see 4.0 coming then? I know some people need or very much want to travel, but really green countries abroad can wait until this one is green.
    Possibly 2 August for 4.0 ie +6 weeks from 21 June, schools will then be closed for a month so this may give the Government some additional room for relaxation, vaccines will be further progressed and come 1 September when the schools reopen, the vaccines injected by 31 July will be in full effect.

    Masks will continue to be required on public transport, in shops and when not seated in hospitality venues.

    Not expecting any significant relaxation on foreign travel this year, however.
    Yes I expect masks to stay for an indefinite period, especially with various Greek letter pox strains tearing about the place.

    Sadly. I absolutely despise wearing a mask. It triggers my claustrophobia.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,609

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Having been woken up by the factory manager of one of my clients reporting stupidity which I have now had to manage to their expectant UK customer and try and save them some face, I may be on here today a bit more than recent days. For some reason I am less motivated than I have been, perhaps I'll do work for the other client instead and enjoy the debate on here instead.

    As a complete aside I am seriously loving this house we bought in February. The ghosts are quite entertaining - an upstairs storeroom in the bank (attached to the house and now my office) appears to be the domain of a banker who died here at work in 1891. And the house part has a ghost who keeps presenting us with metal objects (screws etc) and last night had fun with the power.

    Making tea for the kids (6pm). Downstairs power trips off. Head upstairs to the laundry room where the fuse box is. Tripped. Return partway along the upstairs corridor to shout downstairs to Mrs RP to check nothing had been plugged in that may have caused the trip. Turned back towards the room with the fuses which is literally at the end of the corridor which has 4 bedrooms off it to the right. See one of the kids going into the room, shout "oi!" and of course when I get there the room is empty and the switch has been reset!

    Mrs RP has seen a figure in the house, my Sis-in-law who is sensitive to these things has seen and heard from them, this was the first time I had seen an actual ghost. In broad daylight whilst sober. It was triffic.

    I'm very jealous. I've always wanted to see something like that, and never have.
    I've always had a belief there was something like ghosts - too much evidence from too many people. Have seen some seriously weird shit since we moved in (and my brother / sis-in-law's house is older and "really busy").

    Upstairs storeroom is not a happy place, have seen objects placed (most notably a red ribbon which wasn't on the floor at the foot of the stairs when I took a group up there but was in the middle of the floor as we came back down. EDIT - this storeroom is in the same building as the house but can't be accessed indoors - the connection between the (former bank manager's) house and the bank which share the same building is behind my desk as I type but bricked up decades ago.

    Mrs RP has seen a figure walk past her downstairs out the corner of her eye. I had see *something* previously at the end of the corridor upstairs but at an oblique angle. This though was a figure of perhaps 5 foot 5, wearing a light coloured shirt - so just like my 13 year old son in a school shirt. Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). My son's bedroom is to the right, the laundry room with fuse box directly in front and the bathroom to the left.

    I saw the back of them crossing from my son's bedroom into the laundry room at an angle from a distance of perhaps 10 feet. As the door to the laundry room opens that way the angles walk made sense. It was a split second glimpse but I shouted "oi" wondering why he had gone in there.

    As I got in there and find there is noone there, my son of course is still in his room, the door is shut and anyway he is wearing a black hoody as no school yesterday so no white school shirt...

    They don't scare me. Its quite comforting actually that death isn't the end. Though I do agree with the comment that I wouldn't want to leave even part of me to haunt work. Screw that...
    Fascinating!

    Tell us more, seriously. I love ghost stories. There is definitely *something* out there: too many people see too many ghosts. But that's a long way from saying they are intelligent phantoms of the dead

    I note this in your story:

    "Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). "


    Here is one theory I have read which might explain this. I love this theory because it is so ingenious

    Apparently big old buildings with long corridors with rooms off can create unusual vibrations in the air. These vibrations are not immediately apparent, because they are subsonic: too low frequency for us to consciously hear, but we still sense them, subconsciously

    And they induce a terrible dread, which can in turn make the brain create ghosts, to explain the nameless fear to itself

    Why the dread? Because large predators like big cats - lions, leopards, sabre-tooth tigers - emit a subsonic growl as they attack, to paralyse their prey with fear. Tens of thousand of years of evolution on the African plains has given us this same fear, so when we hear it in old rectories, we think we are about to die

    I believe experiments have been done: where people are subjected to subsonic noises without warning, and they basically crap themselves and see ghosts

    Of course one might ask why predators use subsonic growls, and why do they cause fear in the first place? Perhaps it is because they mimic the sounds of ghosts in rambling English castles

    Yes, I've heard that theory. Half remembered detail: frequency of 19 cycles per second cause a sense of distinct unease and also 'smudges' in the vision which the brain interprets as human (because that is the most expected cause of the eye seeing movement), then ghost (when human turns out not to be there).

    Interestingly, based on this theory, researchers were able to 'create' ghosts - or the experience of seeing a ghost - in a distinctly humdrum and unthreatening research facility in Coventry.

    These frequencies are more common in old buildings because poor insulation, or something.

    As I said, a half-remembered bit of info I saw once, 20-odd years ago. So may be nonsense.
    There's also the well known propensity not to see (the basketball gorilla video).
    Human perception is extremely unreliable in particular circumstances.
    For unseen gorillas on a basketball court, CF aliens in spacecraft, and leaks from labs
    Or, indeed, being so busy counting lab leaks, we fail to see the bats and pangolins dancing past. :wink:
    We're one step away from Handjob Cabin here.
    Being presently on a work VPN, I don't think I dare google that for enlightenment!
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    I'm expecting Boris to announce 'Stage 3.5' for 21 June - some further relaxations, but not all. And no more green countries.
    When do you see 4.0 coming then? I know some people need or very much want to travel, but really green countries abroad can wait until this one is green.
    Possibly 2 August for 4.0 ie +6 weeks from 21 June, schools will then be closed for a month so this may give the Government some additional room for relaxation, vaccines will be further progressed and come 1 September when the schools reopen, the vaccines injected by 31 July will be in full effect.

    Masks will continue to be required on public transport, in shops and when not seated in hospitality venues.

    Not expecting any significant relaxation on foreign travel this year, however.
    Yes I expect masks to stay for an indefinite period, especially with various Greek letter pox strains tearing about the place.

    Sadly. I absolutely despise wearing a mask. It triggers my claustrophobia.
    Imagine how those ghosts in your house feel with sheets over their heads!
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    I think we definitely need another thread on how well SKS is doing and how good he looked in the Piers Morgan interview.

    16 points behind after 11+ years of a Tory Government. I doubt this has ever happened before
    And we wonder why the govt is making "extreme caution" and "just in case" noises.

    The people are lapping it up. The govt would be bonkers to change and bonkers also to open up fully on June 21st as people would then not need their guiding hand as much.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,585
    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    But we don't care about cases. We care about hospitalisations and deaths. Supposedly.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,344
    edited June 2021
    Selebian said:

    Selebian said:

    Selebian said:

    DavidL said:

    Alistair said:

    Scottish Government not mentioning Oxford in relation to Astra Zeneca - a litany of failure.


    You will see that is published in January. When my wife got AZ in March and again this week there has been no mention of Oxford anywhere. If there are nutters like the author of that tweet about it is sensible enough.
    To be fair, I've hardly heard anyone refer to the Oxford vaccine (nor the BioNTech vaccine). Just AstraZeneca and Pfizer. Even my mum, who is something of an English nationalist, when I asked which she'd had, couldn't quite remember the name ("the Astra something one") but didn't mention Oxford.

    Mind you, might just be because those of us who studied/work at scumbag college or Fenland Poly are jealous :wink:
    I thought Fenland Poly was Anglia Ruskin...... Almost a Real University.
    I must admit, I thought Chelmsford's elevation to city status was - on the traditional criteria of a cathedral and a university - slightly tenuous. Neither are, perhaps, exemplars of their type.

    (I don't actually know much about ARU nowadays, it might be very good - when I was there it was still APU).
    Wow, another alumnus!

    Both it, and it's predecessor college were very good for Law, I believe. Friend of mine did his solicitors course there.

    And Almost a Proper University, another friend, who at one time lectured there, told me.
    Ah, sorry to disappoint, but by 'there' I meant Chelmsford (growing up) not APU. I have a couple of friends who went there (ARU, by then, I think) for surveying (of the building type) degrees and now both doing very nicely.
    Not a bad place to grow up, I suspect. Green space in the middle of the city and plenty of open country around.
    And the cricket ground right in the middle.

    I did a part-time MA as a mature student.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    I'm expecting Boris to announce 'Stage 3.5' for 21 June - some further relaxations, but not all. And no more green countries.
    When do you see 4.0 coming then? I know some people need or very much want to travel, but really green countries abroad can wait until this one is green.
    It really doesn't matter right now what people want.

    They still haven't worked out that, to get what you want, you have to stop supporting those people who are denying it to you. On whatever pretext.

    Maybe one day they will. But that day is clearly not today.
    He will quite possibly lift all restrictions and maintain government guidance on working from home. And will go up 10% in the polls for allowing everyone to party whilst not allowing them to be pushed around by their bosses.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    Don't be silly. The ones that are stupid are those who secretly disagree with the government but profess they agree with it and vote for it anyway, because its their party so is never wrong.

    Why do you condemn people who aren't party loyalists always towing the party line? It shows an independence of thought that in my opinion should always be to people's credit. Unless you're a party hack loyalist no individual voter will ever agree with 100% of what any party, any government, is doing and a failure to say what you disagree with makes you a stooge to be taken for granted.

    If other parties want my vote they can win it. Same as the Tories. I can and have voted for parties other than the Tories twice before (2001 GE and 2019 EP).
    Self-validation

    He was shackled to the party line for ever. Then threw it over and adopted a new tribe.

    He can’t understand people who conditionally support a party
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited June 2021
    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    Surely the only epidemiological data that matters is how many people are going to die from this point on? I've been more pro-lockdown than many on this site - and still am, if it's necessary - but we've now come to the point that @rcs1000 keeps making: if Israel today is on 1.85 (!) new cases a day (and has been under 10 cases/day for over a month) after 122 doses/100, why would we not expect the same in very short order, given that we are on 96 doses/100 today?

    You're been one of the most sensible posters on the pandemic this year, and so though the data is less than optimal at the moment, I don't see why you'd be inclined to panic now.
  • MaffewMaffew Posts: 235
    Well, if all the doom predictions about 21 June not happening come true I think I'm going to have to go out and join the anti-lockdoiwn protests, which doesn't fill me with joy. Not only because I'd rather use my time for other things, but also because of the discomfort of being around far-right and anti-vaxxer types. Sigh.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,344
    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    Really, really impressed to see the Liberal Party on 6%, especially as they've only about 4 councillors scattered around Northern England.

    Surprised though that there's no mention of the LibDems.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    The grey bloc is not decisive any more than the student bloc.

    It's important but if the Tories lose their under 65 voters whom they win every single age of from 39+ and only have the grey vote then they lose the election.
    Lol.

    Would you mind giving us the absolute number of pensioners voting versus students voting?
    How about you?

    Labour got 10,269,051 at the last election.
    Tories got 13,966,454 at the last election.

    If the Tories were to get 0 working age voters and only have grey voters then how many votes is that from grey voters alone? Who wins the election then?
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,257
    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    Really, really impressed to see the Liberal Party on 6%, especially as they've only about 4 councillors scattered around Northern England.

    Surprised though that there's no mention of the LibDems.
    Apparently one of the great things about Sir Keir taking over from Jezza was it made Con>LD switching more attractive. But they’ve nearly halved in support
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,257

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    The grey bloc is not decisive any more than the student bloc.

    It's important but if the Tories lose their under 65 voters whom they win every single age of from 39+ and only have the grey vote then they lose the election.
    Lol.

    Would you mind giving us the absolute number of pensioners voting versus students voting?
    How about you?

    Labour got 10,269,051 at the last election.
    Tories got 13,966,454 at the last election.

    If the Tories were to get 0 working age voters and only have grey voters then how many votes is that from grey voters alone? Who wins the election then?
    Ok so your new argument is “Tories got more votes than Labour in 2019”.

    What is this, politics for the under 10s?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,871
    Quite an old one now I see, but I must admit I did chuckle at this comment on a piece on Ed M, where apparently said he wasn't bold enough as leader

    Stabbing your own brother in the back wasn’t bold enough? Ed, mate, you’re a maniac

    https://twitter.com/CountBinface/status/1396045370128482305

    Though as previously noted I saw no issue with him taking on his brother.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,357

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Labour won non retirees up to £100k

    Boris won an 80 seat majority.

    File under "metrics that don't mean jack...."
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753
    isam said:

    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    Really, really impressed to see the Liberal Party on 6%, especially as they've only about 4 councillors scattered around Northern England.

    Surprised though that there's no mention of the LibDems.
    Apparently one of the great things about Sir Keir taking over from Jezza was it made Con>LD switching more attractive. But they’ve nearly halved in support
    I think that is a function of SKS supporting every damn thing the Cons have done.

    Why bother switching if you know all you'll get is an ersatz version of what is already there.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    Thread on the NI protocol TL:dr “”It’s all the UK’s fault”

    https://twitter.com/tconnellyrte/status/1400683894744272901?s=21

    So instead of using the joint committee to work for a solution they are going to use it to shout at the UK? That’s constructive.

    And it’s laughably one sided reporting… the state frustration at “refusal to consider an SPS agreement” but forget to add the words “containing dynamic alignment”. The UL would be fine with an SPS agreement based on alignment
    Their stock answer is "that's Brexit" which, through the beauty of confirmation bias, means they don't have to accept any responsibility whatsoever for the implications of their own actions, nor consider any innovative solutions or show any flexibility. The hope is (still, of course) that they can use the NI protocol to crowbar the UK into closer alignment.

    They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.
    That sort of attitude takes the biscuit
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,455
    Professor Pantsdown has gone back to doomsday mode....

    Professor Lockdown' Neil Ferguson warns Indian variant is between 30% and 100% more infectious and twice as likely to cause hospitalisation in the unvaccinated compared to Kent strain
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,344
    isam said:

    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    Really, really impressed to see the Liberal Party on 6%, especially as they've only about 4 councillors scattered around Northern England.

    Surprised though that there's no mention of the LibDems.
    Apparently one of the great things about Sir Keir taking over from Jezza was it made Con>LD switching more attractive. But they’ve nearly halved in support
    Just wait until after C&A?...... Why isn't it Amersham & Chesham, by the way? Alphabetical order.Or is Chesham much bigger?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,871

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    If you're allowed to introduce a variable to restrict how we are measuring support (or what that support is worth) why cannot others?

    That they did better among the working age population overall is an interesting point, but having broken things down to that point, of course people wil break it down further.
  • northern_monkeynorthern_monkey Posts: 1,639
    edited June 2021
    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    One thing about the debate on this that was barely mentioned the other day is Brexit. That surely was the major factor driving the swing to the Tories in the over 65's between 2010 and 2019.

    Of course this is the population with least to lose from Brexitism.
    But by the same token the least to lose from Bremainerism.

    Again, I think the idea that old people vote out of self-interest needs challenging. With childen and grandchildren you become more invested in the future of your country.
    My mum voted Brexit because she thinks it will make life better for her children and grandchildren. Her children and grandchildren would very much prefer to still be in the EU and think life will be poorer for leaving. Remains to be seen who's right!
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,401
    James Ward
    @JamesWard73
    ·
    2h
    So, how am I feeling after all that? Well, to be honest, not much different to how I was before yesterday. The bad news on hospitalisations is balanced by the hope that the transmission gain / SAR might be a bit lower, and there’s no real change on vaccine efficacy.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    isam said:

    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    Really, really impressed to see the Liberal Party on 6%, especially as they've only about 4 councillors scattered around Northern England.

    Surprised though that there's no mention of the LibDems.
    Apparently one of the great things about Sir Keir taking over from Jezza was it made Con>LD switching more attractive. But they’ve nearly halved in support
    Just wait until after C&A?...... Why isn't it Amersham & Chesham, by the way? Alphabetical order.Or is Chesham much bigger?
    Maybe they had a tie-in with the clothes store!
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,141
    edited June 2021

    Having been woken up by the factory manager of one of my clients reporting stupidity which I have now had to manage to their expectant UK customer and try and save them some face, I may be on here today a bit more than recent days. For some reason I am less motivated than I have been, perhaps I'll do work for the other client instead and enjoy the debate on here instead.

    As a complete aside I am seriously loving this house we bought in February. The ghosts are quite entertaining - an upstairs storeroom in the bank (attached to the house and now my office) appears to be the domain of a banker who died here at work in 1891. And the house part has a ghost who keeps presenting us with metal objects (screws etc) and last night had fun with the power.

    Making tea for the kids (6pm). Downstairs power trips off. Head upstairs to the laundry room where the fuse box is. Tripped. Return partway along the upstairs corridor to shout downstairs to Mrs RP to check nothing had been plugged in that may have caused the trip. Turned back towards the room with the fuses which is literally at the end of the corridor which has 4 bedrooms off it to the right. See one of the kids going into the room, shout "oi!" and of course when I get there the room is empty and the switch has been reset!

    Mrs RP has seen a figure in the house, my Sis-in-law who is sensitive to these things has seen and heard from them, this was the first time I had seen an actual ghost. In broad daylight whilst sober. It was triffic.

    I'm very jealous. I've always wanted to see something like that, and never have.
    I've always had a belief there was something like ghosts - too much evidence from too many people. Have seen some seriously weird shit since we moved in (and my brother / sis-in-law's house is older and "really busy").

    Upstairs storeroom is not a happy place, have seen objects placed (most notably a red ribbon which wasn't on the floor at the foot of the stairs when I took a group up there but was in the middle of the floor as we came back down. EDIT - this storeroom is in the same building as the house but can't be accessed indoors - the connection between the (former bank manager's) house and the bank which share the same building is behind my desk as I type but bricked up decades ago.

    Mrs RP has seen a figure walk past her downstairs out the corner of her eye. I had see *something* previously at the end of the corridor upstairs but at an oblique angle. This though was a figure of perhaps 5 foot 5, wearing a light coloured shirt - so just like my 13 year old son in a school shirt. Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). My son's bedroom is to the right, the laundry room with fuse box directly in front and the bathroom to the left.

    I saw the back of them crossing from my son's bedroom into the laundry room at an angle from a distance of perhaps 10 feet. As the door to the laundry room opens that way the angles walk made sense. It was a split second glimpse but I shouted "oi" wondering why he had gone in there.

    As I got in there and find there is noone there, my son of course is still in his room, the door is shut and anyway he is wearing a black hoody as no school yesterday so no white school shirt...

    They don't scare me. Its quite comforting actually that death isn't the end. Though I do agree with the comment that I wouldn't want to leave even part of me to haunt work. Screw that...
    Never had any ghostly experience myself. But when at College of Law in Chester, I was part of a group of 9 in an old rectory, just (100 yards) over the border in Wales. My then gf was in the house on her own, when laughing children's voices were running up and down the big staircase. Nobody else there. Not at all scary, she said.

    One of the others, a burly bloke from Sheffield, came down to breakfast white as the proverbial. "Guys, did you play a trick on me last night?" Nope, none of us had. With that, he packed his stuff and moved out by lunchtime.

    My stepfather in a newly-acquired farmhouse in Derbyshire saw a red-faced man at the foot of the bed, staring at him. When he described it to a local, he said that was definitely "Brick" Barratt, a farmer who had shot himself in that very room.

    Another gf was on a school exchange to mid-France. When it came to mealtime, she asked if the old lady upstairs was going to join them. Turns out the old lady had been dead years - but again, a perfect description.
    Closest I have had to this was poltergeist activist in a quiet Dublin hotel having breakfast with a colleague. A fork - followed quickly by a knife - decided to spontaneously leap off a nearby table onto the floor.
    FWIW, I've always suspected that ghosts are like black holes. We see the star, long after it's actually burnt out. With a ghost, one is seeing a memory of the person who was there in the past.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,344
    Well, as my later f-i-l would have said, I'll go to the foot of our stairs!

    Rain is preventing play in the Test Match.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,273
    edited June 2021

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Only because of Labour's vast lead with under 34s most of whom will still be renting (unless they are on a very high salary which was the only group the Tories won amongst the youngest voters).

    The Tories won workers over 34 narrowly and it was only once you got to the retirees the Tories got a vast lead but they are excluded from that calculation, so inevitably the vast Labour lead with under 34s will outweigh the narrow Tory lead with 34 to 65s amongst non retirees
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited June 2021

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,357
    isam said:

    isam said:

    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    Really, really impressed to see the Liberal Party on 6%, especially as they've only about 4 councillors scattered around Northern England.

    Surprised though that there's no mention of the LibDems.
    Apparently one of the great things about Sir Keir taking over from Jezza was it made Con>LD switching more attractive. But they’ve nearly halved in support
    Just wait until after C&A?...... Why isn't it Amersham & Chesham, by the way? Alphabetical order.Or is Chesham much bigger?
    Maybe they had a tie-in with the clothes store!
    ....and going the same way!!
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,375

    Professor Pantsdown has gone back to doomsday mode....

    Professor Lockdown' Neil Ferguson warns Indian variant is between 30% and 100% more infectious and twice as likely to cause hospitalisation in the unvaccinated compared to Kent strain

    Why are cases in India falling off a cliff at the moment?
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    Professor Pantsdown has gone back to doomsday mode....

    Professor Lockdown' Neil Ferguson warns Indian variant is between 30% and 100% more infectious and twice as likely to cause hospitalisation in the unvaccinated compared to Kent strain

    That’s what the data says. It’s nothing to do with his emotional state or extra marital affairs. Nice as it would be for his analysis to be discredited by his lockdown breach he is, unfortunately, right.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,609

    Professor Pantsdown has gone back to doomsday mode....

    Professor Lockdown' Neil Ferguson warns Indian variant is between 30% and 100% more infectious and twice as likely to cause hospitalisation in the unvaccinated compared to Kent strain

    'doomsday' is a bit strong. If that's from the Mail article (that's what google brings up) then he says that 21 June is a "very difficult judgement call". He's not even saying there should be a delay.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,480

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    I'm expecting Boris to announce 'Stage 3.5' for 21 June - some further relaxations, but not all. And no more green countries.
    Dammit, and there is me hoping that Easy Jet were adding the South Sandwich Islands to their schedule.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,344
    On ghosts, about a year ago I was in a pub, which has been such for several hundred years, and is reputed to be haunted.

    I was sitting at a table, there were one or two other people standing at the bar, but quite well apart, when one chap suddenly asked "Who poked me in the back'.
    Everyone else was at least a couple of feet from him, no-one had moved for about five minutes (apart from lifting a glass; it's that sort of place) but he insisted he'd been poked in the back to make him move.

    General opinion was that the ghost had re-appeared.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,177
    DougSeal said:

    Professor Pantsdown has gone back to doomsday mode....

    Professor Lockdown' Neil Ferguson warns Indian variant is between 30% and 100% more infectious and twice as likely to cause hospitalisation in the unvaccinated compared to Kent strain

    That’s what the data says. It’s nothing to do with his emotional state or extra marital affairs. Nice as it would be for his analysis to be discredited by his lockdown breach he is, unfortunately, right.
    PHE honing in on it being 50% more transmissable, but potentially also slightly more likely to lead to hospital (for unvaccinated, I suspect).
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,480
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    #China’s nationalism isn’t getting weird or anything. Tonight I go to have some BBQ in #Beijing and all of the waiting staff are wearing these T-shirts in an area with foreign embassies. “Chinese people won’t be pushed around...#USA has no right to speak down to Chinese people”.
    https://twitter.com/StephenMcDonell/status/1400466643101224960

    Presumably pushing them around must remain the preserve of the authoritarian regime ?

    Truly bizarre reaction. China is unnerved by the lab leak stuff. They had control of the narrative for a year, now they've lost it, probably forever, and it is not good for them

    The concern is that a prickly, nervous regime with enormous power will lash out, militarily - to reassert itself and regain "respect"

    Part of the new drive to be "trustworthy, lovable and respectable" ?
    https://twitter.com/dtiffroberts/status/1399901704213209093
    After finishing his brilliant book The Splendid and The Vile (on Churchill and the Blitz etc) I have moved on to another Erik Larson book: In The Garden of Beasts, a true story about a naive middle-American family where the patriarch becomes US Ambassador to Berlin in 1933

    So far it is excellent, just as good as the Blitz book

    The parallels between early Nazi Germany and Xi Jinping's China are uncanny. Hitler kept doing terrible things and everyone kept saying "OMG - but surely this won't last", and then Hitler would say something nice, or appear sane and regretful, and then everyone would sigh and relax. Then Hitler would do something even worse than before, and so the cycle repeated

    I really hope Xi's China is not Hitler's Germany. But the echoes can be heard
    The parallels are pretty limited, I think.
    China is a very different kind of totalitarian regime.

    Incidentally, today is an anniversary.
    https://twitter.com/Alex_at_ACHK/status/1400629939251167235
    And yet: forced sterilisation, cultural genocide, expansionist military, racist supremacism?

    I agree it is not a perfect match, thank God, but there are enough similarities to unnerve
    More Maoist than Nazi IMO.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,798
    Sean_F said:

    Having been woken up by the factory manager of one of my clients reporting stupidity which I have now had to manage to their expectant UK customer and try and save them some face, I may be on here today a bit more than recent days. For some reason I am less motivated than I have been, perhaps I'll do work for the other client instead and enjoy the debate on here instead.

    As a complete aside I am seriously loving this house we bought in February. The ghosts are quite entertaining - an upstairs storeroom in the bank (attached to the house and now my office) appears to be the domain of a banker who died here at work in 1891. And the house part has a ghost who keeps presenting us with metal objects (screws etc) and last night had fun with the power.

    Making tea for the kids (6pm). Downstairs power trips off. Head upstairs to the laundry room where the fuse box is. Tripped. Return partway along the upstairs corridor to shout downstairs to Mrs RP to check nothing had been plugged in that may have caused the trip. Turned back towards the room with the fuses which is literally at the end of the corridor which has 4 bedrooms off it to the right. See one of the kids going into the room, shout "oi!" and of course when I get there the room is empty and the switch has been reset!

    Mrs RP has seen a figure in the house, my Sis-in-law who is sensitive to these things has seen and heard from them, this was the first time I had seen an actual ghost. In broad daylight whilst sober. It was triffic.

    I'm very jealous. I've always wanted to see something like that, and never have.
    I've always had a belief there was something like ghosts - too much evidence from too many people. Have seen some seriously weird shit since we moved in (and my brother / sis-in-law's house is older and "really busy").

    Upstairs storeroom is not a happy place, have seen objects placed (most notably a red ribbon which wasn't on the floor at the foot of the stairs when I took a group up there but was in the middle of the floor as we came back down. EDIT - this storeroom is in the same building as the house but can't be accessed indoors - the connection between the (former bank manager's) house and the bank which share the same building is behind my desk as I type but bricked up decades ago.

    Mrs RP has seen a figure walk past her downstairs out the corner of her eye. I had see *something* previously at the end of the corridor upstairs but at an oblique angle. This though was a figure of perhaps 5 foot 5, wearing a light coloured shirt - so just like my 13 year old son in a school shirt. Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). My son's bedroom is to the right, the laundry room with fuse box directly in front and the bathroom to the left.

    I saw the back of them crossing from my son's bedroom into the laundry room at an angle from a distance of perhaps 10 feet. As the door to the laundry room opens that way the angles walk made sense. It was a split second glimpse but I shouted "oi" wondering why he had gone in there.

    As I got in there and find there is noone there, my son of course is still in his room, the door is shut and anyway he is wearing a black hoody as no school yesterday so no white school shirt...

    They don't scare me. Its quite comforting actually that death isn't the end. Though I do agree with the comment that I wouldn't want to leave even part of me to haunt work. Screw that...
    Never had any ghostly experience myself. But when at College of Law in Chester, I was part of a group of 9 in an old rectory, just (100 yards) over the border in Wales. My then gf was in the house on her own, when laughing children's voices were running up and down the big staircase. Nobody else there. Not at all scary, she said.

    One of the others, a burly bloke from Sheffield, came down to breakfast white as the proverbial. "Guys, did you play a trick on me last night?" Nope, none of us had. With that, he packed his stuff and moved out by lunchtime.

    My stepfather in a newly-acquired farmhouse in Derbyshire saw a red-faced man at the foot of the bed, staring at him. When he described it to a local, he said that was definitely "Brick" Barratt, a farmer who had shot himself in that very room.

    Another gf was on a school exchange to mid-France. When it came to mealtime, she asked if the old lady upstairs was going to join them. Turns out the old lady had been dead years - but again, a perfect description.
    Closest I have had to this was poltergeist activist in a quiet Dublin hotel having breakfast with a colleague. A fork - followed quickly by a knife - decided to spontaneously leap off a nearby table onto the floor.
    FWIW, I've always suspected that ghosts are like black holes. We see the star, long after it's actually burnt out. With a ghost, one is seeing a memory of the person who was there in the past.
    I'm quite attracted to that hypothesis, however a nightmarish variation on it is that the last thread of our consciousness, all that's left of us, is trapped in these echoes of our lives for ever. Makes black eternal oblivion seem quite attractive.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    Surely the only epidemiological data that matters is how many people are going to die from this point on? I've been more pro-lockdown than many on this site - and still am, if it's necessary - but we've now come to the point that @rcs1000 keeps making: if Israel today is on 1.85 (!) new cases a day (and has been under 10 cases/day for over a month) after 122 doses/100, why would we not expect the same in very short order, given that we are on 96 doses/100 today?

    You're been one of the most sensible posters on the pandemic this year, and so though the data is less than optimal at the moment, I don't see why you'd be inclined to panic now.
    I’m not panicking, just disappointed that we are likely to have to delay matters. In truth it might even be better to have an “exit wave” during the summer than during next winter when the hospitals will be busy with other matters, but a delay (maybe only for a few weeks) while that wave happens is almost definite now.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,257
    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    If you're allowed to introduce a variable to restrict how we are measuring support (or what that support is worth) why cannot others?

    That they did better among the working age population overall is an interesting point, but having broken things down to that point, of course people wil break it down further.
    Because HYUFD is ignoring my variable, not breaking it down further. His latter post is better.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited June 2021
    Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living - Arthur C. Clarke

    Boo! :smile:
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,257

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    Having failed to provide any evidence that students were decisive, you are reduced to bloviating about “agendas”.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited June 2021
    Unless I’m reading these tables incorrectly, the Tories are gaining support amongst younger voters, and Labour are losing it @Gardenwalker @Philip_Thompson

    Although if you ignore 2017, both are slightly up?

    This is from BES



  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,480
    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
    Well that is obvious. From just short of 40% in 2017 to 33% in 2019 requires losses pretty much across the board.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,257
    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
    I don’t have it.
    I wish I did. But others noted, yes that trend is downwards.

    I’m not here to say Corbyn is popular. Far from it. I’m here to note:
    -the grey vote is decisive
    -the narrative that the working class have gone Tory is...shaky.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,720
    So with the unrealistic 9% Green score the real Labour vote is probably more like 36%. Still woefully large gap though.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,342
    Pfizer approved for 12-15 year olds.
  • fox327fox327 Posts: 370
    Maffew said:

    Well, if all the doom predictions about 21 June not happening come true I think I'm going to have to go out and join the anti-lockdoiwn protests, which doesn't fill me with joy. Not only because I'd rather use my time for other things, but also because of the discomfort of being around far-right and anti-vaxxer types. Sigh.

    I have seen some of these demos near Hyde Park. There was also an Israel demo there recently and a stabbing. I saw some antivaxx stickers on lamp posts in the area. People can sometimes come to the same conclusions for very different reasons.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,795
    Charles said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    Don't be silly. The ones that are stupid are those who secretly disagree with the government but profess they agree with it and vote for it anyway, because its their party so is never wrong.

    Why do you condemn people who aren't party loyalists always towing the party line? It shows an independence of thought that in my opinion should always be to people's credit. Unless you're a party hack loyalist no individual voter will ever agree with 100% of what any party, any government, is doing and a failure to say what you disagree with makes you a stooge to be taken for granted.

    If other parties want my vote they can win it. Same as the Tories. I can and have voted for parties other than the Tories twice before (2001 GE and 2019 EP).
    Self-validation

    He was shackled to the party line for ever. Then threw it over and adopted a new tribe.

    He can’t understand people who conditionally support a party
    Oh I absolutely do understand them - they are called "voters" and you get to know them the best when you are asking them to vote for you.

    What I don't get are people who rant and rave about the evils of the government and then demonstrate their shackling by voting for it anyway. If you want proper grown up government you have to vote for it. Its a choice of Labour of Tory government (at least on paper) so register your fury with shagger by voting for someone else. Tories won't start behaving when they get your unflinching support.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,609

    Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living - Arthur C. Clarke

    Boo! :smile:

    I guess that will be out of date now (higher now? more dead, but many more living, so maybe not?), but it's still an astonishingly low number to me. Population growth really has been crazy in the last hundred years or so.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,257
    isam said:

    Unless I’m reading these tables incorrectly, the Tories are gaining support amongst younger voters, and Labour are losing it @Gardenwalker @Philip_Thompson

    Although if you ignore 2017, both are slightly up?

    This is from BES



    This is v interesting.
    Seems to suggest that 2019 was about the fragmentation of the Labour vote, rather than an uplift in Tory vote. I think @HYUFD has also noted this.

    It would be good to see this for income and perhaps also work status (then Philip can finally confirm whether it was students that swung it).
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,993
    edited June 2021
    IanB2 said:

    darkage said:

    Mike has nailed it:

    "The vast majority of adults have now been vaccinated and it becomes hard to make the case for the continuation of strict travel controls. They got the plaudits for the vaccine roll-out and the danger is they could see the opposite over this.

    What many will find hard to understand is why those who have been fully vaccinated will have to be subject to long airport queues and compulsory quarantine on their return from holiday destinations. Surely proof of vaccination should be enough?"

    I'm absolutely livid about this. I voted Conservatives (twice) and Green (once) last month. I am mindful right now never to give the Conservatives my support ever again. That's how angry this has made me.

    The whole point of double vaccination is that we should have back our freedom. Yes, there will be case rises and some deaths but not on the previous scale and we have to take that hit. The wider damage socially, economically, emotionally, psychologically and physically is incalculable.

    This is an utter nonsense. I'm fuming.

    The interesting thing about Covid is that people have been happy to willingly accept draconian restrictions on their freedom, indicating that they don't really value it all that much.
    I don't think that follows at all.

    For a rational individual, the decision is one that weighs both sides of the equation. The key element on the other side of the equation is the medical consequences (for oneself and the knock on risk for friends and family) of catching the virus.

    I suspect that people value their freedom highly, but feared dying from the virus even more. Now that the latter fear is fast receding, it is entirely reasonable that people protest more about arbitrary limitations on our freedom.



    Indeed; the logic is as questionable as claiming that the willingness to accept chemotherapy (which literally poisons you and damages your health) for cancer indicates that they don't really value their health and feeling unpoisoned all that much.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    edited June 2021
    The way the government has us all completely over a barrel surely shows that 'vaccines are the way out' is at least a highly debatable statement. Vaccines have not bought you freedom. You cannot travel abroad at all, and probably won't be able to at least for this year. The return of everything else is still up in the air, and reversible at a whim.

    Compliance does not buy freedom, clearly.

    If you really want your freedoms now, just get Reform to take half a dozen points off the tories in the polls. Or five thousand votes in Chesham & Amersham.

    You will be on a plane to Spain before you can say Michael O'Leary.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,795
    "The young" and "the old" are not some kind of block votes where everyone up to age x votes one way then votes another way...
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,147
    edited June 2021

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    The Starmer/Morgan show really has cut through.... :smiley:
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753
    edited June 2021
    This seemingly widespread talk of and belief in ghosts, conspiracy theories, aliens, etc on PB of all places, is proof if proof be needed of the battering that people's mental health has taken over the course of this pandemic. They have sadly been beaten down and are ready to believe anything because that (tinfoil hat on) is how we are easy to govern.

    Hold it together, people, ffs.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,585
    dixiedean said:

    Pfizer approved for 12-15 year olds.

    What, really? In this country?
    What about 16-18 year olds? Are we into vaccinating the secondary school age cohort yet?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,344

    "The young" and "the old" are not some kind of block votes where everyone up to age x votes one way then votes another way...

    Certainly not.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,273
    edited June 2021

    isam said:

    Unless I’m reading these tables incorrectly, the Tories are gaining support amongst younger voters, and Labour are losing it @Gardenwalker @Philip_Thompson

    Although if you ignore 2017, both are slightly up?

    This is from BES



    This is v interesting.
    Seems to suggest that 2019 was about the fragmentation of the Labour vote, rather than an uplift in Tory vote. I think @HYUFD has also noted this.

    It would be good to see this for income and perhaps also work status (then Philip can finally confirm whether it was students that swung it).
    The Mori breakdown is useful on this.

    In 2019 Labour won 62% amongst 18 to 24s and 51% amongst 25-34s.

    However Labour won only 39% amongst 35-44s and just 28% amongst 45-54s and 27% amongst 55-65s.

    However the Tories only got over 60% with over 65s with whom they got 64% to just 17% for Labour
    https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election

    In 2017 by contrast Labour got 49% amongst 35-44s, 40% amongst 45-54s and 34% amongst 55-64s.

    Their 18 to 24 vote was the same as in 2019 though at 62% and the Tories still got 61% amongst over 65s even in 2017
    https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2017-election

    So the swing from 2017 to 2019 to the Tories was almost entirely with middle aged workers
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,357

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
    I don’t have it.
    I wish I did. But others noted, yes that trend is downwards.

    I’m not here to say Corbyn is popular. Far from it. I’m here to note:
    -the grey vote is decisive
    -the narrative that the working class have gone Tory is...shaky.
    Except, if you knew Mansfield, you would have some explaining to do to show why the working class has not gone Tory. It ain't exactly teeming with the middle class...

    2005 - Tory vote 18.4%

    2019 - Tory vote 63.9%

  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,177
    edited June 2021
    Cookie said:

    dixiedean said:

    Pfizer approved for 12-15 year olds.

    What, really? In this country?
    What about 16-18 year olds? Are we into vaccinating the secondary school age cohort yet?
    MHRA, the UK, and I believe 16-18 already approved.

    I'd expect the secondary cohort to be done well before September's return to school.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    I know I talked about this yesterday but there are some truly depressing vaccine numbers beneath the headline figures.

    Basically any city in the UK has pitiful uptake of the vaccine.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,177
    Alistair said:

    I know I talked about this yesterday but there are some truly depressing vaccine numbers beneath the headline figures.

    Basically any city in the UK has pitiful uptake of the vaccine.

    Or less people live there than believed?
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,141

    isam said:

    Unless I’m reading these tables incorrectly, the Tories are gaining support amongst younger voters, and Labour are losing it @Gardenwalker @Philip_Thompson

    Although if you ignore 2017, both are slightly up?

    This is from BES



    This is v interesting.
    Seems to suggest that 2019 was about the fragmentation of the Labour vote, rather than an uplift in Tory vote. I think @HYUFD has also noted this.

    It would be good to see this for income and perhaps also work status (then Philip can finally confirm whether it was students that swung it).
    The Conservative vote share only rose from 44% to 45% overall.

    Within that, there was quite a bit of churn, which benefitted the Conservatives. A considerable number of Labour leave voters switched to the Tories, whereas Conservative Remain voters who defected switched to the Lib Dems. That gave the Lib Dems some hefty vote shares, but few seats, whereas switchers from Labour delivered a lot of Conservative seats.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    edited June 2021
    Perspective on the "why are they hiding the schools data?" mob:

    Thread:
    I'm extremely impressed by the quality of the UK #COVID19 data. Their near-real time analyses or the PHE reports are unparalleled in their quality. I'm also in awe of the efforts to present those findings in an approachable way on social media for instance by @kallmemeg.
    1/

    The scientific capacity and rapid release of data and analyses makes the UK the country which may be most transparent and open about the epidemiological situation and its evolution


    https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1400761347684634624?s=20
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,357
    TOPPING said:

    This seemingly widespread talk of and belief in ghosts, conspiracy theories, aliens, etc on PB of all places, is proof if proof be needed of the battering that people's mental health has taken over the course of this pandemic. They have sadly been beaten down and are ready to believe anything because that (tinfoil hat on) is how we are easy to govern.

    Hold it together, people, ffs.

    Alternatively, it is proof if proof be needed of the lack of value political betting tips in these times of Boris and Skyr.....

    Not battered, just bored.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,599
    Alistair said:

    I know I talked about this yesterday but there are some truly depressing vaccine numbers beneath the headline figures.

    Basically any city in the UK has pitiful uptake of the vaccine.

    Or young people live in cities and are only just being offered the vaccine shocker?
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    DougSeal said:

    Professor Pantsdown has gone back to doomsday mode....

    Professor Lockdown' Neil Ferguson warns Indian variant is between 30% and 100% more infectious and twice as likely to cause hospitalisation in the unvaccinated compared to Kent strain

    That’s what the data says. It’s nothing to do with his emotional state or extra marital affairs. Nice as it would be for his analysis to be discredited by his lockdown breach he is, unfortunately, right.
    PHE honing in on it being 50% more transmissable, but potentially also slightly more likely to lead to hospital (for unvaccinated, I suspect).
    PHE and NHS are currently not neutral commentators on this because of the new variable being introduced that says that any COVID related hospitalisation increases (however minor) is going to cause problems because of all the “backlog” work going on.

    Also it seems to be that this “Indian variant more likely to cause hospitalisations in the unvaccinated” line has huge potential for exploitation via misuse.

    Because the unvaccinated population now, has a completely different demographic profile to the unvaccinated population of six months ago. So a doubling of risk amongst the “unvaccinated” has very different implications for the pressures on the NHS.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,357
    felix said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    The Starmer/Morgan show really has cut through.... :smiley:
    Dominic....who?
  • LennonLennon Posts: 1,770
    Selebian said:

    Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living - Arthur C. Clarke

    Boo! :smile:

    I guess that will be out of date now (higher now? more dead, but many more living, so maybe not?), but it's still an astonishingly low number to me. Population growth really has been crazy in the last hundred years or so.
    Even after the last year or so - people still get surprised by the consequences of exponential growth.

    (Not a criticism - it is somewhat non-intuitive, just an observation how we don't instinctively switch to recognizing it)
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    TOPPING said:

    This seemingly widespread talk of and belief in ghosts, conspiracy theories, aliens, etc on PB of all places, is proof if proof be needed of the battering that people's mental health has taken over the course of this pandemic. They have sadly been beaten down and are ready to believe anything because that (tinfoil hat on) is how we are easy to govern.

    Hold it together, people, ffs.

    Alternatively, it is proof if proof be needed of the lack of value political betting tips in these times of Boris and Skyr.....

    Not battered, just bored.
    Con Maj 5/4 with some bookies
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,599

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
    I don’t have it.
    I wish I did. But others noted, yes that trend is downwards.

    I’m not here to say Corbyn is popular. Far from it. I’m here to note:
    -the grey vote is decisive
    -the narrative that the working class have gone Tory is...shaky.
    Those who are working class and retired have clearly gone Tory. I am far from convinced those who are working class and working have done the same.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,344
    Just tried to book an X-Ray appointment. Receptionist told me that they've had a rush of chest X-Ray requests lately 'due to the effects of Covid'.

    Hmm.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,342
    Cookie said:

    dixiedean said:

    Pfizer approved for 12-15 year olds.

    What, really? In this country?
    What about 16-18 year olds? Are we into vaccinating the secondary school age cohort yet?
    It has been approved as safe. Presumably, the clinically vulnerable can be given it.
    I think the Vaccines Committee will decide whether it will be routinely administered.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753

    TOPPING said:

    This seemingly widespread talk of and belief in ghosts, conspiracy theories, aliens, etc on PB of all places, is proof if proof be needed of the battering that people's mental health has taken over the course of this pandemic. They have sadly been beaten down and are ready to believe anything because that (tinfoil hat on) is how we are easy to govern.

    Hold it together, people, ffs.

    Alternatively, it is proof if proof be needed of the lack of value political betting tips in these times of Boris and Skyr.....

    Not battered, just bored.
    I prefer my theory. Whatever now is, it isn't boring.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,283

    The way the government has us all completely over a barrel surely shows that 'vaccines are the way out' is at least a highly debatable statement. Vaccines have not bought you freedom. You cannot travel abroad at all, and probably won't be able to at least for this year. The return of everything else is still up in the air, and reversible at a whim.

    Compliance does not buy freedom, clearly.

    If you really want your freedoms now, just get Reform to take half a dozen points off the tories in the polls. Or five thousand votes in Chesham & Amersham.

    You will be on a plane to Spain before you can say Michael O'Leary.

    You are such a gloom merchant. Assuming you don't have an alternative persona for home life, I pity anyone that lives with you.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,273
    edited June 2021

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
    I don’t have it.
    I wish I did. But others noted, yes that trend is downwards.

    I’m not here to say Corbyn is popular. Far from it. I’m here to note:
    -the grey vote is decisive
    -the narrative that the working class have gone Tory is...shaky.
    Those who are working class and retired have clearly gone Tory. I am far from convinced those who are working class and working have done the same.
    Those who are middle aged working class and working clearly voted mainly Labour in 2017 but mainly Tory in 2019, they are the key swing voters now and there are lots of them in the Red Wall.

    You see the same trend in the US, in 2016 Trump won 40-49s and won the election but in 2020 Biden won 40-49s and the election even though other age groups stayed the same ie under 40s still voted Democrat and over 50s still voted GOP
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,480

    Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living - Arthur C. Clarke

    Boo! :smile:

    Is that anywhere near correct? I thought that because of population growth and longevity a much higher proportion of humans are alive today than at any time in human history?

    This little graphic is quite illuminating.


  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited June 2021
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    While everyone is busy catastrophizing and every single thing is going wrong in every single way...

    CON: 46% (+3)
    LAB: 30% (+1)
    GRN: 9% (+1)
    LIB: 6% (-2)

    @YouGov
    - Changes w May 28

    For the record, I still think we're going ahead with June 21 as planned. Garde ta foy!

    That's great, one thing that isn't going wrong are your beloved ratings, but cases are rising at there isn't a gnats chance that 21 June will go ahead "as planned". None whatsoever. There MAY be some face saving relaxations but things on the epidemiological front are not rosey.
    Surely the only epidemiological data that matters is how many people are going to die from this point on? I've been more pro-lockdown than many on this site - and still am, if it's necessary - but we've now come to the point that @rcs1000 keeps making: if Israel today is on 1.85 (!) new cases a day (and has been under 10 cases/day for over a month) after 122 doses/100, why would we not expect the same in very short order, given that we are on 96 doses/100 today?

    You're been one of the most sensible posters on the pandemic this year, and so though the data is less than optimal at the moment, I don't see why you'd be inclined to panic now.
    I’m not panicking, just disappointed that we are likely to have to delay matters. In truth it might even be better to have an “exit wave” during the summer than during next winter when the hospitals will be busy with other matters, but a delay (maybe only for a few weeks) while that wave happens is almost definite now.
    By my reckoning (assuming no increase in rate), we'll hit the 120 doses / 100 at which the Israel programme levelled off around the end of this month, and we'll probably be able to keep motoring and push that even higher. I can see your point about the value of a brief delay now (or the 3.5 / 4.0 split mentioned by @londonpubman) but even someone as risk-averse as I am might be tempted to take the gamble of sticking to the timetable. Either way, we're rapidly closing off the room for manoeuvre left to the virus.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
    I don’t have it.
    I wish I did. But others noted, yes that trend is downwards.

    I’m not here to say Corbyn is popular. Far from it. I’m here to note:
    -the grey vote is decisive
    -the narrative that the working class have gone Tory is...shaky.
    Those who are working class and retired have clearly gone Tory. I am far from convinced those who are working class and working have done the same.
    Those who are middle aged working class and working clearly voted Labour in 2017 but Tory in 2019, they are the key swing voters now and there are lots of them in the Red Wall
    Yes, they’re Leave voters let down by Sir Keir’s People’s Vote nonsense
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    The grey bloc is not decisive any more than the student bloc.

    It's important but if the Tories lose their under 65 voters whom they win every single age of from 39+ and only have the grey vote then they lose the election.
    Lol.

    Would you mind giving us the absolute number of pensioners voting versus students voting?
    How about you?

    Labour got 10,269,051 at the last election.
    Tories got 13,966,454 at the last election.

    If the Tories were to get 0 working age voters and only have grey voters then how many votes is that from grey voters alone? Who wins the election then?
    Ok so your new argument is “Tories got more votes than Labour in 2019”.

    What is this, politics for the under 10s?
    No that's not what I said. Are you functionally illiterate? All votes count, you can't lop off a fraction then pretend that's the result or meaningful.

    If the Tories were to get 0 working age voters and only have grey voters then how many votes is that from grey voters alone? Who wins the election then?
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,795

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
    I don’t have it.
    I wish I did. But others noted, yes that trend is downwards.

    I’m not here to say Corbyn is popular. Far from it. I’m here to note:
    -the grey vote is decisive
    -the narrative that the working class have gone Tory is...shaky.
    Those who are working class and retired have clearly gone Tory. I am far from convinced those who are working class and working have done the same.
    They certainly have on Teesside. One of the entertaining joys of 2019 was doing joint polling station visits with my good friend and former fellow ward councillor with our now mismatching red/yellow rosettes.

    The polling stations showing record turnout were in resolutely w/c areas and once opened at the count had gone heavily Tory.

    People wanted their moon on a stick and were happy to vote for it.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
    I don’t have it.
    I wish I did. But others noted, yes that trend is downwards.

    I’m not here to say Corbyn is popular. Far from it. I’m here to note:
    -the grey vote is decisive
    -the narrative that the working class have gone Tory is...shaky.
    Those who are working class and retired have clearly gone Tory. I am far from convinced those who are working class and working have done the same.
    Those who are middle aged working class and working clearly voted mainly Labour in 2017 but mainly Tory in 2019, they are the key swing voters now and there are lots of them in the Red Wall.

    You see the same trend in the US, in 2016 Trump won 40-49s and won the election but in 2020 Biden won 40-49s and the election even though other age groups stayed the same ie under 40s voted Democrats and over 50s still voted GOP
    Yes. The crossover age was from memory late 40s in 2017 but 39 in 2019. Winning more working voters is why the Tories got a majority in 2019, which goes against @Gardenwalker 's spin which is why he wants to pretend you can mix the middle aged (plurality Tory voting) with the students but not the retired to spin a result he likes.

    Labour wins the young, the Tories the old, whoever wins the middle aged wins overall. That's the Tories in 2019 and Labour in 1997.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,795
    Lol - I need to find a courier to ferry frozen items from one end of the country to the other thanks to a mispick at the factory sending samples to the wrong place.

    The name of one frozen courier company's sales dude? Mr Frost! :D
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited June 2021

    isam said:

    Unless I’m reading these tables incorrectly, the Tories are gaining support amongst younger voters, and Labour are losing it @Gardenwalker @Philip_Thompson

    Although if you ignore 2017, both are slightly up?

    This is from BES



    This is v interesting.
    Seems to suggest that 2019 was about the fragmentation of the Labour vote, rather than an uplift in Tory vote. I think @HYUFD has also noted this.

    It would be good to see this for income and perhaps also work status (then Philip can finally confirm whether it was students that swung it).
    It seems turnout was up amongst the young, and down for the old in 2019.



    Labour voters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote Tory so stayed indoors (in December)?


    The Lib Dem’s got Remainers of all ages perhaps




    https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/age-and-voting-behaviour-at-the-2019-general-election/
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,767
    Foxy said:

    Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living - Arthur C. Clarke

    Boo! :smile:

    Is that anywhere near correct? I thought that because of population growth and longevity a much higher proportion of humans are alive today than at any time in human history?

    This little graphic is quite illuminating.


    It's amazing that the level of native americans is so low, given the size of the USA. I guess that agricultural methods, or the lack of them held back their population?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:

    I know I talked about this yesterday but there are some truly depressing vaccine numbers beneath the headline figures.

    Basically any city in the UK has pitiful uptake of the vaccine.

    Or young people live in cities and are only just being offered the vaccine shocker?
    No, I'm not an idiot, I'm talking about at comparable age group levels. So 50-54 year old age group take up in cities is massively lower than the national average.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,706
    Sean_F said:

    Having been woken up by the factory manager of one of my clients reporting stupidity which I have now had to manage to their expectant UK customer and try and save them some face, I may be on here today a bit more than recent days. For some reason I am less motivated than I have been, perhaps I'll do work for the other client instead and enjoy the debate on here instead.

    As a complete aside I am seriously loving this house we bought in February. The ghosts are quite entertaining - an upstairs storeroom in the bank (attached to the house and now my office) appears to be the domain of a banker who died here at work in 1891. And the house part has a ghost who keeps presenting us with metal objects (screws etc) and last night had fun with the power.

    Making tea for the kids (6pm). Downstairs power trips off. Head upstairs to the laundry room where the fuse box is. Tripped. Return partway along the upstairs corridor to shout downstairs to Mrs RP to check nothing had been plugged in that may have caused the trip. Turned back towards the room with the fuses which is literally at the end of the corridor which has 4 bedrooms off it to the right. See one of the kids going into the room, shout "oi!" and of course when I get there the room is empty and the switch has been reset!

    Mrs RP has seen a figure in the house, my Sis-in-law who is sensitive to these things has seen and heard from them, this was the first time I had seen an actual ghost. In broad daylight whilst sober. It was triffic.

    I'm very jealous. I've always wanted to see something like that, and never have.
    I've always had a belief there was something like ghosts - too much evidence from too many people. Have seen some seriously weird shit since we moved in (and my brother / sis-in-law's house is older and "really busy").

    Upstairs storeroom is not a happy place, have seen objects placed (most notably a red ribbon which wasn't on the floor at the foot of the stairs when I took a group up there but was in the middle of the floor as we came back down. EDIT - this storeroom is in the same building as the house but can't be accessed indoors - the connection between the (former bank manager's) house and the bank which share the same building is behind my desk as I type but bricked up decades ago.

    Mrs RP has seen a figure walk past her downstairs out the corner of her eye. I had see *something* previously at the end of the corridor upstairs but at an oblique angle. This though was a figure of perhaps 5 foot 5, wearing a light coloured shirt - so just like my 13 year old son in a school shirt. Upstairs is a long corridor with 3 rooms off it to the left and then a very short cross corridor at the end (like the top of a caps T). My son's bedroom is to the right, the laundry room with fuse box directly in front and the bathroom to the left.

    I saw the back of them crossing from my son's bedroom into the laundry room at an angle from a distance of perhaps 10 feet. As the door to the laundry room opens that way the angles walk made sense. It was a split second glimpse but I shouted "oi" wondering why he had gone in there.

    As I got in there and find there is noone there, my son of course is still in his room, the door is shut and anyway he is wearing a black hoody as no school yesterday so no white school shirt...

    They don't scare me. Its quite comforting actually that death isn't the end. Though I do agree with the comment that I wouldn't want to leave even part of me to haunt work. Screw that...
    Never had any ghostly experience myself. But when at College of Law in Chester, I was part of a group of 9 in an old rectory, just (100 yards) over the border in Wales. My then gf was in the house on her own, when laughing children's voices were running up and down the big staircase. Nobody else there. Not at all scary, she said.

    One of the others, a burly bloke from Sheffield, came down to breakfast white as the proverbial. "Guys, did you play a trick on me last night?" Nope, none of us had. With that, he packed his stuff and moved out by lunchtime.

    My stepfather in a newly-acquired farmhouse in Derbyshire saw a red-faced man at the foot of the bed, staring at him. When he described it to a local, he said that was definitely "Brick" Barratt, a farmer who had shot himself in that very room.

    Another gf was on a school exchange to mid-France. When it came to mealtime, she asked if the old lady upstairs was going to join them. Turns out the old lady had been dead years - but again, a perfect description.
    Closest I have had to this was poltergeist activist in a quiet Dublin hotel having breakfast with a colleague. A fork - followed quickly by a knife - decided to spontaneously leap off a nearby table onto the floor.
    FWIW, I've always suspected that ghosts are like black holes. We see the star, long after it's actually burnt out. With a ghost, one is seeing a memory of the person who was there in the past.
    So ghosts are really small and black holes are far away, or something?

    I quite like the sonic theory. When I was at boarding school there inevitably came that point when someone got an Ouija board out after which a bunch of suggestible teens kept claiming to have felt or heard something. One night I was going down a long corridor (definitely a theme here) and I was utterly convinced that there was something behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck and arms were up and I was just about hyperventilating. I don't think I really saw anything, there was a slightly odd blur, maybe, but I definitely felt under threat. Maybe vibration was responsible.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited June 2021

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    isam said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    The crux of the problem that @Cocky_cockney raises is that this government is functionally incompetent. I have been banging the drum for ages that "we won, we're popular, it doesn't matter" isn't good enough. Lies, corruption, incompetence, strategy based on newspaper headlines - this isn't how good government is done.

    Since the start it has been blindingly obvious this clowncar government don't know how to communicate. Guidance that is contradicted one minister on the radio to the next that contradicts the law. A new 5 stage plan launched at 3.5. Regional tiers supposedly all the same but the rules are different in each place affected.

    So it isn't a surprise that we're here. If you are double vaccinated then why do you need to isolate for 10 days and take 3 tests to come back from countries who have less pox than we do? Its illogical and stupid. They declared that 6 people in a choir couldn't meet covid secure in a venue to sing, but bands can play with the audience singing along. Who makes this shit up?

    Fundamentally they do it and they get away with it because @Philip_Thompson and @Cocky_cockney etc rightly tear chunks of the government but vote for it anyway. They think you are stupid and tret you accordingly.

    On linkedIn I currently see a thread from knowledgeable people complaining about another further coming HMRC attack on self employment.

    The simple fact is that with the Tories on 40% percentage of the vote they can (sadly) do what they want.
    As discussed last night, the Tories don’t need to govern for working people / the economically active.

    The grey vote trumps all.
    And as discussed last night that's complete claptrap.

    The Tories win those aged 39+ not those aged 65+

    If Labour won all years up to 65 then they'd win the election.
    Sadly missing the point again.

    The grey bloc is the decisive vote. Age is more explanatory than class (or education).

    Hence the Tories can “fuck business” at leisure because the oldies have their triple lock and rising house prices.
    Not true, the age at which most people first voted Tory in 2017 was 47 and the Tories did not win a majority.

    In 2019 however the age at which most people first voted Tory was 39 and the Tories won a comfortable majority
    You are missing the swing to Tory *within* the retired cohort.
    I can’t read the article but what is the swing on the other wage bands?

    Britain Elects tweeted this
    GE2019: Labour won 38.4% of non-retiree households earning between £25,000-30,000 a year, but that figure represents a fall of 12pts on 2017...
    Yes. Corbyn!
    But astonishingly according to BES they still won all (non retired) income earners up to £100k.
    Only under 34, over 34 the Tories won all classes bar DEs with Mori
    You are (deliberately?) introducing new variables to muddy the key point.

    Regardless of age, Labour won non retirees up to £100k.

    (Though there wasn’t much in it).
    Regardless of age, Labour won caveating based upon age?

    If you want to exclude retirees then exclude students. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda.
    The elephant in the room for Labour is that this win with working age + students in 2019 is trending downwards from 2017 isn’t it? @Gardenwalker you have the data, can you check please? Or @Philip_Thompson if you have it
    I don’t have it.
    I wish I did. But others noted, yes that trend is downwards.

    I’m not here to say Corbyn is popular. Far from it. I’m here to note:
    -the grey vote is decisive
    -the narrative that the working class have gone Tory is...shaky.
    Those who are working class and retired have clearly gone Tory. I am far from convinced those who are working class and working have done the same.
    Those who are middle aged working class and working clearly voted mainly Labour in 2017 but mainly Tory in 2019, they are the key swing voters now and there are lots of them in the Red Wall.

    You see the same trend in the US, in 2016 Trump won 40-49s and won the election but in 2020 Biden won 40-49s and the election even though other age groups stayed the same ie under 40s voted Democrats and over 50s still voted GOP
    Yes. The crossover age was from memory late 40s in 2017 but 39 in 2019. Winning more working voters is why the Tories got a majority in 2019, which goes against @Gardenwalker 's spin which is why he wants to pretend you can mix the middle aged (plurality Tory voting) with the students but not the retired to spin a result he likes.

    Labour wins the young, the Tories the old, whoever wins the middle aged wins overall. That's the Tories in 2019 and Labour in 1997.
    Seems to me, based on the graphs I’ve shown, that Boris’s majority was based on middle aged and retired Labour voters from 2017 not voting in 2019

    Leavers turned off by the ‘People’s Vote’

This discussion has been closed.