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The Chancellor’s controversial letter to Chesham and Amersham voters – politicalbetting.com
The Chancellor’s controversial letter to Chesham and Amersham voters – politicalbetting.com
The above is a copy of a letter from Rishi Sunak that has been sent to voters in the Chesham and Amersham by-election and the controversial part is the strapline at the top – “To recover from the pandemic Chesham and Amersham needs an MP who can work with me”
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We are viewed with suspicion.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15164755/june-21-unlocking-delayed-early-july/
‘US intelligence continues to believe that covid spread [by china] was intentional and that China had an effective vaccine earlier in 2020 and only used it for those who mattered in country.’
Worth reading his last 20 tweets. Mind blowing.
https://twitter.com/adamhousley/status/1400961589977640965?s=21
If he’s halfway right we could be close to war
https://twitter.com/adamhousley/status/1400963042075021312?s=21
That’s what China DID. They closed down domestic travel but sent flights eagerly around the world
Who knows
If he’s half right we are looking at war. Cold or hot
We in the west are paying a heavy price for sacrificing free speech. This is what happens. Vital but unpopular ideas get censored. We all suffer thereby
It’s just a riff on the age old argument - vote for an Mp from the government party and he’ll have a more sympathetic ear in Downing Street
Whatever
Reports of a decline in male fertility rely on flawed assumptions, a new study contends.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/health/sperm-fertility-reproduction-crisis.html
. . . . For nearly as long, scientists have fretted about sperm’s seemingly inevitable decline. Most recently, a series of alarming headlines — as well as a new book by an epidemiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York — warned that falling sperm counts might threaten the future of the human race. “It’s a global existential crisis,” said Shanna H. Swan, author of the book “Count Down.”
Most of these headlines can be traced to an influential 2017 meta-analysis by Dr. Swan and others, which found that sperm counts in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand had plummeted by nearly 60 percent since 1973. The authors screened 7,500 sperm-count studies from around the world, weeded out most of them and ultimately analyzed 185 studies on 43,000 men worldwide.
They called the decline a “canary in the coal mine” for waning male reproductive health worldwide. Today, the authors would amplify that statement. “There is clear and present alarm now,” said Dr. Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and a co-author on the 2017 review, in an email. “The canary is in trouble now.” Dr. Swan, in the same email, agreed.
Now a group of interdisciplinary researchers from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology contend that fears of an impending Spermageddon have been vastly overstated. In a study published in May in the journal Human Fertility, they re-evaluated the 2017 review and found that it relied on flawed assumptions and failed to consider alternate explanations for the apparent decline of sperm.
In an interview, Sarah Richardson, a Harvard scholar on gender and science and the senior author on the new study, called the conclusion of the 2017 review “an astonishing and terrifying claim that, were it to be true, would justify the apocalyptic tenor of some of the writing.” Fortunately, she and her co-authors argue, there is little evidence that this is the case. . . .
SSI2 - Here is link to the new study
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14647273.2021.1917778
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-electoral-urgency-clause-1.6053095
The Liberal Party's national campaign co-chairs have declared a "state of electoral urgency," a procedural move that will allow the party to speed up the nomination processes for local candidates ahead of the next federal election.
It's the latest sign that the federal parties are preparing for a possible fall election. The Conservative Party is prepared to invoke a similar measure if an election is called to get many more would-be MPs nominated on a faster timeline.
MPs also unanimously agreed last night to hold a "take-note debate" in the House of Commons on June 15 to allow members who aren't running again to "make their farewell speech."
In a message to some senior members of the party Thursday, the Liberal co-chairs — Economic Development Minister Melanie Joly and former cabinet minister Navdeep Bains — said they are invoking rule 18 of the national rules for the selection of candidates as of today "in all remaining ridings" that have yet to nominate a candidate.
CBC News has seen a copy of the message that was sent to national and provincial and territorial party leaders and organizers.
Under that rule, the two can "alter the timelines and procedures ... in such a manner as they, in their sole and unfettered discretion, may see fit," to get a local Liberal candidate in place.
Liberals not pushing for election, spokesperson says
As of today, the party has nominated just 162 candidates out of the possible 338 ridings, which means there are many more candidates to recruit and nominate in the months ahead of a possible fall election.
In statement, a spokesperson for the party, Braeden Caley, said the "electoral urgency" clause is a "longstanding administrative measure in our party's processes that gives the ability to shift timelines and procedures in the national nomination rules in order to nominate more candidates, more quickly in the months ahead."
Caley said the party is not pushing for an election but rather preparing for the possibility that the minority government could fall at any time. . . .
SS12 - Actually, what Trudeau & the Grits are preparing for, is the possibility they could win a majority (as opposed to their current status as a minority government) via an October 2021 election. Thus taking advantage of the government's vaccination bump AND the weakness (shown by polling) of the Conservatives under their relatively new (and apparently hapless) leader Erin O'Toole.
Reminds me of how you know Election Day was approaching in my old home county in WVa, because many (but not all) of the rural county roads would get a fresh layer of gravel!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-liberals-quebec-1.6042801
Quebec will loom large in the next federal election and recent moves by the Liberals suggest they're making a play for the Bloc Québécois-held seats that stand between them and a majority government.
On a number of files — the protection of the French language, Quebec's plans to make changes to the Constitution and Bill C-10, a piece of legislation with broad support within the province — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has struck a pose of openness to Quebec. . . .
Polls suggest the party is on the threshold of securing the majority government it failed to win in 2019. According to the CBC's Poll Tracker, an aggregation of all publicly available polling data, the party would win around 171 seats if an election were held today.
The Liberals need at least 170 seats to win a majority government — which means their current polling levels don't give them much margin for error.
Quebec is an important piece in the electoral puzzle for the Liberals. It might also be the best place for them to find many of the seats they need to reach 170.
The Poll Tracker's seat projection model suggests that the Liberals have more upside in Quebec than anywhere else in the country, with the potential to pick up as many as nine more seats in the province. . . .
The polls have been good for the Liberals in Quebec lately. The party has 37 per cent support in the province, according to the Poll Tracker. Though there have been big variations in results — from 29 to 47 per cent in individual polls — more often than not, the Liberals have been closer to 40 per cent approval in Quebec. . . .
Yves-François Blanchet's Bloc Québécois, on the other hand, is polling at around 27 per cent, with most surveys putting the party below the 32.5 per cent they hit in 2019. . . .
The polls suggest that, since 2019, the Liberals have picked up about three points in Quebec, with the Bloc falling 5.5 points. When the Liberals score high in individual Quebec polls, the Bloc tends to poll lower. That suggests some movement going on between Liberal and Bloc voters. . . .
The Liberals' electoral analysis, meanwhile, might also conclude that the New Democrats are no longer a major player in Quebec, the Greens have big but unrealistic ambitions in the province and the Conservative offer to Quebecers appears similar to the one voters rejected in 2019.
To win a majority, the Liberals have to beat the Bloc at its own game. It is no easy feat to out-Quebec the Bloc. That doesn't mean the Trudeau Liberals aren't going to try.
There's a lot of anger out there.
I now reckon the LD's are a value bet for C&A and I have bet accordingly.
It'll be about 10 people in my garden mostly tbh
I was told yesterday morning on here that we were shutting down overseas travel in order to save June 21st. I suggested this was untrue and that it was, in fact, the prelude to Johnson moving the goalposts on ending lockdown.
That now appears to be the case with social distancing, face masks and other infringements of liberty remaining in place until at least the end of the year.
I was very angry yesterday. Someone on here even told me to 'calm down dear'.
Well, that anger is now shared by a LOT of people and it's spreading.
Johnson manages to combine lying and laziness with incompetence. It's quite an unholy trinity.
17th May was their high watermark.
It's not that anyone likes Dominic Cummings but his testimony coincided with the unravelling of Johnson's covid plans.
1. Failing to vaccinate sufficiently quickly. The rollout over the past month has been weak to poor. We have been jabbing around 100-150k 1st jabs per day. This is WOEFULLY inadequate.
2. Delaying 2nd jabs. As I suggested, it's becoming clear that 1 jab is insufficient protection against the Indian variant and that it is adept at side-stepping those people. We should have stepped up both 1st and 2nd jabs, 24/7 with at least 1 million a day. We have been complacent.
3. Refusing to see through vaccine passports. The only way to defeat this is to use vaccine passports. Allowing c. 12,000 fans to travel to Portugal on the basis only of tests is the kind of stupidity which we showed Spring 2020. Why was this permitted? Because Johnson is weak. He should have stood up to his recalcitrant backbenchers and told them simply and straight that, 'You wanna travel? You show your jabs. End of.' That's a very small price to pay for freedom.
4. The entire thrust should be vaccinations. And, again, more controversially that means that if you have been double jabbed you should be completely free to do whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want. A vaccine pass is a very very very small price to pay in exchange for that and we should have resisted all those who whinged about it and who now have far fewer freedoms as a result.
Mr. Chameleon, would they?
Selling a ready-made vaccine would make it pretty clear what happened and make denying the lab release theory (whether accidental or intentional) impossible. And would China gain more by resolving the economic and healthcare crisis elsewhere, or by sitting back?
If it had been deliberate, they would either have suffered far more deaths as they tried to get rid of their elderly population to adjust the demographic nuclear bomb they are currently facing, or far fewer as they targeted only those likely to spread it abroad.
*Yes, I know they claim 1,269. Nobody except Wikipedia and spiked actually believe them.
Wales is about 6 doses per 100 ahead of the rUK. Whatever your split between first and seconds, that's meaningful.
For example, we learnt from the mass-murderer that ancient India invented genetic engineering and plastic surgery.
The BJP government are also responsible for other scientific breakthroughs, like the discovery that the cow is the only animal in the world that exhales oxygen.
https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1400968536076476418?s=20
That should however not be a significant problem given how many of the actually vulnerable have been vaccinated. One of the more irritating things about these reports is that it’s hospitalisations that are the key concern, not cases. And they’re actually falling by about 2% a dayeven as infections go up, precisely because of vaccines.
For almost everybody in their 20s, Covid is at worst like a bad case of flu (which after all is itself a killer disease). If they refuse a vaccine, that’s their concern. I think they’re stupid, but they’re not likely to die of it. Those who were at high risk are now protected.
Given that on the latest figures a maximum of four people with both jabs have died of Delta Covid, some of the more lurid claims are now bordering on the insane. And delaying the lifting of restrictions would be madness.
So we just endure restrictions for two more weeks because Boris kept the borders to India open for too long?
We are squandering the vax success.
As for Wales, it seems there’ll be no businesses left by the end of the year if Drakeford has his way.
That would show signs of significant churn in the vote and, as noted upthread, offer some juicy betting opportunities.
Canada was the same, lots of international tourists.
On topic, in yesterday's Guardian, Katy Balls was suggesting that 'the Tory rebellion on aid shows Johnson’s support is a mile wide and an inch deep,' and maybe Rishi's letter is a demonstration of a realisation of that.
If longstanding MP's in the Home Counties start to fear their careers might be under threat support for Johnson might weaken.
After all, he's not there because he's liked or admired, or, indeed, I suspect, trusted; he's there because he's seen as a winner and if that goes he's in trouble.
There are 2 possibilities. Either we simply do not have enough vaccine because some of our anticipated supplies have fallen through or we are meeting widespread vaccine resistance/indifference. Both of these are alarming and it is astonishing that more attention is not being paid to them.
If it is the former the government needs to move heaven and earth to get some more. If it is the latter the government should be loud and clear that this is the most important thing you can do for your health right now and nothing is more important. They should also be looking at evening clinics, smaller mobile clinics, going to workplaces, going to schools for 18 year olds before they break up, whatever it takes. Now. Immediately. Action this day. This is urgent and becoming more so by the day.
If the Tory doesn't win 'reasonably comfortably' alarm bells will ring.
And, as was pointed out elsewhere ....lived here since 2013 definitely wouldn't make one a 'local' in this neck of the woods.
To my mind, the question is how far over 45% of the vote the Tories get, as 45% was the Leave vote in the seat. If it’s well above 50% it suggests Brexit is no longer a priority for middle-class Remainers.
Who would be mad enough to trust a man who lies about his name?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57358492
Vax rates in Leicester are poor, so we are going to get another wave. 58% first dose, 35% double dose here, in part because of the young population in the city.
And anecdotally every youngster I know can't wait to get it and get on with their lives
He may make a decision based on the data (or for whatever reason) that you don’t like.
But at the moment it’s just various pressure groups and doomsters spinning their stories
The LibDems are fast becoming the go to party of Home Counties snobs and NIMBYs. Margot Leadbetter would now be a LibDem. As would Hyacinth Bucket.
Even now you can see many more maskless and non socially distanced people at outside venues and just generally
That’s likely to cause huge problems in the developing world, as countries in China’s sphere of influence are pushed towards this dud, rather than the much more effective AZ.
But I guess the concern would be overload on the booking system, and a lot of dissatisfaction if the programme were thrown open to all adults, before the numbers are down to a level at which they could cope?
And as for the header it is pure politics and why so far the conservatives are the winners
There is govt propaganda/advertising everywhere telling people to get jabbed, they can’t force it on people though.
Shortage of supply is the most likely explanation, all the alternatives being less likely, and less attractive.
To me the letter seems mainly inconsequential, with a leaning tower of assumption built on not very much. IMO OGH has slightly overegged, and is now running out of eggs.
But I know that C&A will be but of a law unto itself, and a Lib Dem corporeal resuscitation would be interesting; has happened before.
Since we are in PB campaign mode
Donate £5000 and you can become a golden bidet founder member.
Well, I suppose he does come out with a lot of shit...
Full marks to Joe Biden for pushing this and Rishi as host endorsing it
And the BBC are reporting the irony that Ireland and some in the EU are anti
And another problem for Labour as the conservatives resolve the Amazon tax controversy
I guess that we will see a One Party State for a while. It is hard to see a country where that works out well.
The millions of teens and twentysomethings queueing up for a week of debauchery in Ibiza, won’t be happy if their parents are allowed a holiday this year, but they’re not.
I think there is now recognition that early treatment of severe disease gives better outcomes, the very opposite of the paracetamol, hot broth and go home approach of the first wave.
Hermann Goering would now be a Tory. As would Dr Crippen.
And Vlad the Impaler would have voted Brexit, though admittedly for sovereignty reasons rather than immigration per se.
That’s the key I reckon.