Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
That's the corner we have collectively painted ourselves into. Once you decide that the Johnson approach to life is a bad way to run a country, Starmer becomes an attractive alternative. He's an anti-Boris.
Unfortunately, any anti-Boris is going to be rubbish at campaigning against a Boris. Because words that fly free from reality, cheerful cynicism, a dip in the pork barrel and setting up dividing lines are a damn good way of winning votes, for all they are a bad way of using power once you have won.
We've broken the link between good electoral politics and good government.
It is perhaps necessary to look at history to understand what kind of “types” defeated these clowns of populism.
I don’t have a good enough grasp of Italian or Latin American history.
COVID: Are mix-and-match vaccines the way forward? A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
If that’s validated, then imagine the implications for a country with some constraints on Pfizer/Moderna but a metric fuck tonne of AZ…..
The indian variant prevalence changes the risk comparator they were using now too. We should probably head to Astra followed by Pfizer for all remaining over 18s tbh.
I’m in the 35-40 group and got AZ’d (a day before they changed the advice)
Now I need to figure out a way to get Pfizer’d for my 2nd dose…
COVID: Are mix-and-match vaccines the way forward? A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
If that’s validated, then imagine the implications for a country with some constraints on Pfizer/Moderna but a metric fuck tonne of AZ…..
The indian variant prevalence changes the risk comparator they were using now too. We should probably head to Astra followed by Pfizer for all remaining over 18s tbh.
When they made the change to the guidance I thought that the one problem will be if they want to change it back. We understand the calculations being made, but the media won't...
The middle way is simple, you can have your jab today / tomorrow but you will get AZN....but you can wait if you want.
I am pretty certain the system will meltdown with such volume of all those who want to get jabbed. I would be down to my local.centre in a heartbeat, rather than wait 4 more weeks for my 2nd shot of Moderna.
In a defence of Starmer, despite his invisibility as LOTO, he is up against Johnson who the voters have perceived has had an inch-perfect, error-free pandemic.
Johnson's genius has been his non-stop campaigning throughout the pandemic (something I was critical of, considering it tasteless during the height of a pandemic where thousands of people were dying each week). The campaigning has paid dividends and has given the impression that vaccine, procurement, programming and delivery were all entirely his gift to the nation, and now we a reaping the benefits- a nation unlocked and Covid vanquished. (Remember, perception, not reality, although the link between Covid and deaths seems over).
I still cannot see past the early stages of a chaotic economy this time next year, which is why I feel Johnson should go very, very, early Spring/ early Autumn 2022. I believe the economic strife will take a year or so to fully make its mark on Johnson, which is why 2024 is too late.
What strife?
Companies are reporting difficulties in filling vacancies. The economy is rebounding strongly. Confidence is pretty much at a record level. That forwards momentum will take us through the end of furlough and allow those whose companies don't reopen post-lockdown to find companies desperate for staff.
At that point the economic strife as well as the health strife will have been dealt with.
Since you're so convinced the economic strife is coming, if I'm right and the economy gets through this fine with the government support laid out then a post-pandemic rebound . . . would that confounding of your expectations make you consider voting for a Boris led Tory Party in 2023/24 or would that never happen?
I have been very specific when economic strife will take effect. You are in cloud cuckoo land if you believe there will be no economic consequences from the last 14 months. Try getting out more, the signs are already here, quality businesses not reopening, and not just retail that has gone online.
Boom first, then bust!
Formerly quality businesses closing down for good happens all the time, especially every recession.
Any formerly quality business not reopening is not that bad macroeconomically if there is a staffing shortage in other businesses at the same time as the employees formerly working it the former business can find alternative jobs to go too.
What would be far worse is businesses reopening but then closing down again due to failure one after another leading to mass unemployment, a downturn, no businesses hiring and a vicious feedback loop. That looked possible a year ago, it doesn't look at all probable now.
Yeah, we can all replace our well paid engineering jobs with careers as Baristas.
There's constantly news shared here about well paid engineering jobs being made available by investments in the UK at the moment. 🤷♂️
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
It's not the referendum vote itself. It's everything that's gone with it and followed. The citizens of nowhere speech. The denunciation of traitors. The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric. The increased xenophobia and racism. The culture wars. The flags. Proroguing Parliament. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the BBC. The open corruption. The lying. It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
Pish posh.
All of that was part of Britain before the referendum too.
The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric was exceedingly common through Tony Blair's era, wanting to rub the right's nose in it. The denunciation of fruitcakes, nuts and loons was something I confess I was amused by when Cameron was doing it. By all sane measurable (not voodoo) metrics xenophobia and racism has gone down since 2016. Culture wars have been going on since the dawn of time probably, at least consistently since the 60s but probably before then. EU flags were plastered on roundabout and all sorts without you objecting to it previously. Parliamentary shenanigans is stuff all parties engage in. Nothing original about the judiciary being attacked. I've been attacking the BBC since I was at university and I know many others always have been. Open corruption marked Tony "straight kind of guy" Blair's government as did lying.
If its not the Britain you expected to be living in then you slept through Blair's Britain at the very least. Maybe you found all these things you object to now jolly good japes when it was your own side engaged in it.
I guess there's always an element of being more comfortable when the people in power share your values more or less. I think I'm a bit older than you, so my formative years were pre-Blair, and I've lived most of my life under Tory governments (especially as I was working overseas for 8 years when my lot was in). So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
One of my courses is cancer, and particularly prostate cancer. I received some student feedback this week -
"- It would be great if lecturers could use language which is trans-inclusive when referring to sex hormones etc. (e.g. male and female, rather than men/women)."
Now this really annoys me. The words men and male are interchangeable, and only someone with a prostate can get prostate cancer. Its so basic its untrue. I have no desire to upset someone, but talking about male sex hormones and not being able to say men because someone who now lives as a man and regards themselves as a man is just ridiculous. I'm sure others on here will disagree.
So yes, woke nonsense is reaching even into science departments.
It's already hit country's health systems - see the first draft for the US vaccination plan.
Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
That's the corner we have collectively painted ourselves into. Once you decide that the Johnson approach to life is a bad way to run a country, Starmer becomes an attractive alternative. He's an anti-Boris.
Unfortunately, any anti-Boris is going to be rubbish at campaigning against a Boris. Because words that fly free from reality, cheerful cynicism, a dip in the pork barrel and setting up dividing lines are a damn good way of winning votes, for all they are a bad way of using power once you have won.
We've broken the link between good electoral politics and good government.
It is perhaps necessary to look at history to understand what kind of “types” defeated these clowns of populism.
I don’t have a good enough grasp of Italian or Latin American history.
Last time in the UK it was David Cameron, but only after the populist was replaced with Brown.
One of my courses is cancer, and particularly prostate cancer. I received some student feedback this week -
"- It would be great if lecturers could use language which is trans-inclusive when referring to sex hormones etc. (e.g. male and female, rather than men/women)."
Now this really annoys me. The words men and male are interchangeable, and only someone with a prostate can get prostate cancer. Its so basic its untrue. I have no desire to upset someone, but talking about male sex hormones and not being able to say men because someone who now lives as a man and regards themselves as a man is just ridiculous. I'm sure others on here will disagree.
So yes, woke nonsense is reaching even into science departments.
It's a fungus that will get everywhere before the moderates wake up to the dangers of Wokeness
I saw this problem identified on Twitter earlier. So many people in academe, publishing, the arts, journalism, the charity sector even the law, are "centre left". Remainery types.
They see no real problem with Wokeness because at the moment it does not endanger them. Yes, sure, haha, it has some extremes which are mad, but it seems well-meaning. Do we really need that statue of Rhodes? He was a horrible old Tory. What about poor trans people, they do need protecting.
And yet the war between feminists (very often on the left) and the Trans activists shows the future. The Woke will turn on the moderate lefties and destroy their causes and careers as well. See also the Oxfam nonsense about white women being "contemptible" for making rape accusations
This has all unfolded so fast that the centre left status quo don't know how to react, for the most part they just take on an air of amused puzzlement as their entire world is ransacked and taken over. Joe Biden epitomises this type of impotent puzzlement. Thats why it is quite logical and possible to be a centre left liberal and vote for Donald Trump - the least awful option.
Labour are absolubtely seen as a party that tried to prevent Brexit. The next General Election will still be about that, in particular the far more favourably distributed leave vote (It was 410 constituencies that voted to leave) will give SKS his marching orders as they did Corbyn after the moderates had got his ear on the matter in 2019. I can't believe Labour didn't realise the long term damage they did with the electorate by their game playing in the 2017 - 19 parliament. It was clear as day to me and I voted to stay in.
I didn't realise the short term damage Brexit would do to Labour. Longer term, I am still not convinced.
I think we are all just going to have to get used to the Brexiter Cry-Babies. ("Not THAT Brexit! I wanted the OTHER one! Nobody TOLD me it would be like this! It was TWO BIG BOYS who MADE me do it! They FORCED me to recommend it!")
Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
That's the corner we have collectively painted ourselves into. Once you decide that the Johnson approach to life is a bad way to run a country, Starmer becomes an attractive alternative. He's an anti-Boris.
Unfortunately, any anti-Boris is going to be rubbish at campaigning against a Boris. Because words that fly free from reality, cheerful cynicism, a dip in the pork barrel and setting up dividing lines are a damn good way of winning votes, for all they are a bad way of using power once you have won.
We've broken the link between good electoral politics and good government.
It is perhaps necessary to look at history to understand what kind of “types” defeated these clowns of populism.
I don’t have a good enough grasp of Italian or Latin American history.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
It's not the referendum vote itself. It's everything that's gone with it and followed. The citizens of nowhere speech. The denunciation of traitors. The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric. The increased xenophobia and racism. The culture wars. The flags. Proroguing Parliament. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the BBC. The open corruption. The lying. It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
Pish posh.
All of that was part of Britain before the referendum too.
The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric was exceedingly common through Tony Blair's era, wanting to rub the right's nose in it. The denunciation of fruitcakes, nuts and loons was something I confess I was amused by when Cameron was doing it. By all sane measurable (not voodoo) metrics xenophobia and racism has gone down since 2016. Culture wars have been going on since the dawn of time probably, at least consistently since the 60s but probably before then. EU flags were plastered on roundabout and all sorts without you objecting to it previously. Parliamentary shenanigans is stuff all parties engage in. Nothing original about the judiciary being attacked. I've been attacking the BBC since I was at university and I know many others always have been. Open corruption marked Tony "straight kind of guy" Blair's government as did lying.
If its not the Britain you expected to be living in then you slept through Blair's Britain at the very least. Maybe you found all these things you object to now jolly good japes when it was your own side engaged in it.
I guess there's always an element of being more comfortable when the people in power share your values more or less. I think I'm a bit older than you, so my formative years were pre-Blair, and I've lived most of my life under Tory governments (especially as I was working overseas for 8 years when my lot was in). So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
I'm not dismissing it, I'm just saying that its not original. The things you complain about, many Tories would have said when Blair was in office.
All the things you complain about, were issues during Blair's government too. Every single one of them. It was successful electorally for Blair and its successful electorally for Boris, so its possibly something we'll all have to get used to whenever "our side" loses.
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
COVID: Are mix-and-match vaccines the way forward? A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
If that’s validated, then imagine the implications for a country with some constraints on Pfizer/Moderna but a metric fuck tonne of AZ…..
The indian variant prevalence changes the risk comparator they were using now too. We should probably head to Astra followed by Pfizer for all remaining over 18s tbh.
I’m in the 35-40 group and got AZ’d (a day before they changed the advice)
Now I need to figure out a way to get Pfizer’d for my 2nd dose…
Same age group was Pfizer 1 23rd April, Pfizer 2 14th May. I feel like I hit the jackpot with the system tbh.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
I find it bizarre you should question others’ loyalty.
I doubt you could have found many more patriotic to a certain idea of Britain than I was. Unlike most on this Board I made a conscious decision to settle here.
The referendum, or at least the response to the referendum, revealed profound truths about the U.K. which I found/find unsavoury and ultimately alienating.
It's possible that when the emotions of the event subside, and the political context moves on, Brexit will look like an expression of the certain idea of Britain to which you were loyal rather than a repudiation of it.
The issue is not Brexit itself.
As much as I think Brexit is a slow-motion car crash, it is at core largely a matter of diplomatic and trade policy.
The issue was rather the seething contempt Brexiters evinced for “Remoaners” right up to and including accusations of treachery (which @Casino_Royale is still making, sotto voce), the bellicose and philistinic rhetoric, and the wanton lust to subvert and destroy each and every pillar of liberal society.
When Tony Blair vowed to stamp out the "forces of conservatism" and suggested they were responsible for the assassination of Martin Luther King, did his divisiveness not cause you any alarm?
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
"..the Telegraph is a credible source on the right." LOL! Your gullibility index has just shot off the scale.
I would say that the Telegraph has about equal credibility with the Guardian.
Which is not saying much.
The Telegraph more than equals the Guardian for bias but it's way inferior on quality.
Both publish plenty of discreditable stories.
Guardian published a comment piece after the Mumbai attacks blaming them on Indian economic success - it was classic piece of victim blaming.
For a long time the Guardian was in the habit of publishing a victim-blaming piece after just about every similar attack. It's one of the paper's most vomitous features.
You can actually pinpoint the precise moment the Guardian cracked.
One of my courses is cancer, and particularly prostate cancer. I received some student feedback this week -
"- It would be great if lecturers could use language which is trans-inclusive when referring to sex hormones etc. (e.g. male and female, rather than men/women)."
Now this really annoys me. The words men and male are interchangeable, and only someone with a prostate can get prostate cancer. Its so basic its untrue. I have no desire to upset someone, but talking about male sex hormones and not being able to say men because someone who now lives as a man and regards themselves as a man is just ridiculous. I'm sure others on here will disagree.
So yes, woke nonsense is reaching even into science departments.
'Here are some examples of formats I have seen in our coursework:
“This is a 43-year-old woman with ovaries, presenting with …” “A 3-year-old child, assigned male at birth, not assigned gender as of yet by parents, presenting with …” “This patient is a 7-year-old child, gendered as a boy by his parents, who …” “57-year-old woman with testes, here with …” “A 16-year-old patient (gender non-binary, pronouns they/them) …” “A 32-year-old woman (she/her/hers) …” “A 16-year-old patient presents with complaints of …”
COVID: Are mix-and-match vaccines the way forward? A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
If that’s validated, then imagine the implications for a country with some constraints on Pfizer/Moderna but a metric fuck tonne of AZ…..
The indian variant prevalence changes the risk comparator they were using now too. We should probably head to Astra followed by Pfizer for all remaining over 18s tbh.
When they made the change to the guidance I thought that the one problem will be if they want to change it back. We understand the calculations being made, but the media won't...
The middle way is simple, you can have your jab today / tomorrow but you will get AZN....but you can wait if you want.
I am pretty certain the system will meltdown with such volume of all those who want to get jabbed. I would be down to my local.centre in a heartbeat, rather than wait 4 more weeks for my 2nd shot of Moderna.
The test group was AZ followed by Pfizer - I think Moderna would be very similar but mRNA followed by AZ wasn't tested.
Here's the key paragraph:
In terms of antibody development, the double-BioNTech as well as the combined AstraZeneca-BioNTech vaccination was significantly more effective than the double-AstraZeneca alternative. Participants who had one of the first two combinations of shots produced around 10 times more antibodies than those with two AstraZeneca jabs. And looking at the neutralizing antibodies, results with the mix-and-match vaccine approach were "even slightly better" than those achieved with two BioNTech shots, Sester said.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
It's not the referendum vote itself. It's everything that's gone with it and followed. The citizens of nowhere speech. The denunciation of traitors. The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric. The increased xenophobia and racism. The culture wars. The flags. Proroguing Parliament. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the BBC. The open corruption. The lying. It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
Pish posh.
All of that was part of Britain before the referendum too.
The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric was exceedingly common through Tony Blair's era, wanting to rub the right's nose in it. The denunciation of fruitcakes, nuts and loons was something I confess I was amused by when Cameron was doing it. By all sane measurable (not voodoo) metrics xenophobia and racism has gone down since 2016. Culture wars have been going on since the dawn of time probably, at least consistently since the 60s but probably before then. EU flags were plastered on roundabout and all sorts without you objecting to it previously. Parliamentary shenanigans is stuff all parties engage in. Nothing original about the judiciary being attacked. I've been attacking the BBC since I was at university and I know many others always have been. Open corruption marked Tony "straight kind of guy" Blair's government as did lying.
If its not the Britain you expected to be living in then you slept through Blair's Britain at the very least. Maybe you found all these things you object to now jolly good japes when it was your own side engaged in it.
I guess there's always an element of being more comfortable when the people in power share your values more or less. I think I'm a bit older than you, so my formative years were pre-Blair, and I've lived most of my life under Tory governments (especially as I was working overseas for 8 years when my lot was in). So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
IMHO, politics was a lot more bitter in the 1980's than it is today.
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Donald who? As Boris Johnson meets Joe Biden in Cornwall this week, the British prime minister will hope that the President doesn’t dwell on his efforts to woo the last occupant of the Oval Office. Boris’s dalliance with Donald Trump is a bit like his affair with Jennifer Arcuri — an embarrassing fling with a rotund, brash American conspiracy theorist, something he’d rather the world forgot. He’s moved on and so should we.
Yes, I always felt Boris was rather uncomfortable with the Trump thing. He had to play along with it as much of his own base revered Trump as the great Lib-basher extraordinaire. And Trump's presence helped, for a short time, with the post-Brexit Global Britain narrative. But I bet Boris is relieved Trump's gone.
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Probably the Daily Express
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) NHS Trust actually....but its a thing, google it.
Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
That's the corner we have collectively painted ourselves into. Once you decide that the Johnson approach to life is a bad way to run a country, Starmer becomes an attractive alternative. He's an anti-Boris.
Unfortunately, any anti-Boris is going to be rubbish at campaigning against a Boris. Because words that fly free from reality, cheerful cynicism, a dip in the pork barrel and setting up dividing lines are a damn good way of winning votes, for all they are a bad way of using power once you have won.
We've broken the link between good electoral politics and good government.
It is perhaps necessary to look at history to understand what kind of “types” defeated these clowns of populism.
I don’t have a good enough grasp of Italian or Latin American history.
The current incarnation of populism doesn't really have an historical precedent that I can see. I think we also have to caveat every analysis with the reality that we are in extremely strange times. A Conservative government (CINO perhaps) is splurging money in all directions and has taken credit, rightly or wrongly, for the vaccine programme. People are still scared, so they show allegiance to the current leadership. People are fickle though, and popularity, as any vacuous instagram "influencer" will tell you quickly comes, and quickly goes.
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
I cannot quote how my mild and moderate beloved wife, mother and grandmother responded to that piece of idiotic nonsense
Cummings alleges Mark Sedwill advised the prime minister to sack Hancock. Is it part of a civil servant's role nowadays to advise on who should or shouldn't occupy a ministerial position? Cummings has a big mouth and you've got to wonder whether he realises how serious it is to make allegations of criminal behaviour in office against Hancock, behaviour that allegedly killed a large number of people, and furthermore to say that he and Sedwill gave the PM similar advice about it at the time. If this is what our hero was saying, and if he really was backed up by Sedwill, both in his assessment of what was happening and in his preferred solution (whether the implementation would remove Hancock from the premises à la Sonia Khan or "only" à la Sajid Javid), then what happened? Why wasn't anyone prosecuted? Somehow I can't see Sedwill supporting Cummings's version.
I guess there's always an element of being more comfortable when the people in power share your values more or less. I think I'm a bit older than you, so my formative years were pre-Blair, and I've lived most of my life under Tory governments (especially as I was working overseas for 8 years when my lot was in). So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
This has been an interesting wide-ranging discussion. I remember Matthew Parris, who despite many disagreements is viscerally Tory, being challenged to find one thing he genuinely liked about the Blair era, and he identified a great openness and tolerance that had gone beyond grand-sounding initiatives but had filtered through to society in general - he felt that Britain was a more open and tolerant place than it had been 13 years earlier.
I think that is now rather less true. The old quote that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role needs updating. We have renounced our part in the EU project, and are in the process of defining ourselves outside. That's natural and necessary. But there is a temptation among some of the right - encouraged by the lack of serious challenge - to make that definition in narrow terms, with jingoistic nationalism and culture war as hallmarks of a proud new self-definition.
That isn't the whole story by any means and it will be a while before a settled majority view emerges on what Britain is about. But, like OLB, the current version is not one that I identify with. Thoughtful conservatives do seek to have a definition wide enough to encompass sensible non-conservative thinkers, and I hope their influence prevails.
One of the woke terms i love....justice involved youth....can you guess who they are talking about? Hint, no it isn't young people leading campaigns for equality.
Donald who? As Boris Johnson meets Joe Biden in Cornwall this week, the British prime minister will hope that the President doesn’t dwell on his efforts to woo the last occupant of the Oval Office. Boris’s dalliance with Donald Trump is a bit like his affair with Jennifer Arcuri — an embarrassing fling with a rotund, brash American conspiracy theorist, something he’d rather the world forgot. He’s moved on and so should we.
Yes, I always felt Boris was rather uncomfortable with the Trump thing. He had to play along with it as much of his own base revered Trump as the great Lib-basher extraordinaire. And Trump's presence helped, for a short time, with the post-Brexit Global Britain narrative. But I bet Boris is relieved Trump's gone.
Biden’s going to be easier to work with, even if there are more political differences than with Trump. At least you know where he stands now, that he’s not going to radically change his mind, and you have an idea of how negotiations go down.
Donald who? As Boris Johnson meets Joe Biden in Cornwall this week, the British prime minister will hope that the President doesn’t dwell on his efforts to woo the last occupant of the Oval Office. Boris’s dalliance with Donald Trump is a bit like his affair with Jennifer Arcuri — an embarrassing fling with a rotund, brash American conspiracy theorist, something he’d rather the world forgot. He’s moved on and so should we.
Yes, I always felt Boris was rather uncomfortable with the Trump thing. He had to play along with it as much of his own base revered Trump as the great Lib-basher extraordinaire. And Trump's presence helped, for a short time, with the post-Brexit Global Britain narrative. But I bet Boris is relieved Trump's gone.
For once I 100% agree with you.
Only superficial people lumped Trump and Boris, or Trump and Brexit together.
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Probably the Daily Express
Nope, this was told to me by a midwife at one of the hospitals. It is now a disciplinary offence there to say "breast milk"
One of the woke terms i love....justice involved youth....can you guess who they are talking about? Hint, no it isn't young people fighting for equality.
One of the woke terms i love....justice involved youth....can you guess who they are talking about? Hint, no it isn't young people leading campaigns for equality.
Justice involved youth - what we used to call young offenders?
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Probably the Daily Express
Nope, this was told to me by a midwife at one of the hospitals. It is now a disciplinary offence there to say "breast milk"
That doesn't make any sense to me. It quite literally comes from a breast.
And all humans have breasts, male and female, so how is this a trans issue?
Heck some people's moobs can be as big as some ladies. 🤮
One of the woke terms i love....justice involved youth....can you guess who they are talking about? Hint, no it isn't young people leading campaigns for equality.
Justice involved youth - what we used to call young offenders?
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
It's not the referendum vote itself. It's everything that's gone with it and followed. The citizens of nowhere speech. The denunciation of traitors. The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric. The increased xenophobia and racism. The culture wars. The flags. Proroguing Parliament. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the BBC. The open corruption. The lying. It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
Pish posh.
All of that was part of Britain before the referendum too.
The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric was exceedingly common through Tony Blair's era, wanting to rub the right's nose in it. The denunciation of fruitcakes, nuts and loons was something I confess I was amused by when Cameron was doing it. By all sane measurable (not voodoo) metrics xenophobia and racism has gone down since 2016. Culture wars have been going on since the dawn of time probably, at least consistently since the 60s but probably before then. EU flags were plastered on roundabout and all sorts without you objecting to it previously. Parliamentary shenanigans is stuff all parties engage in. Nothing original about the judiciary being attacked. I've been attacking the BBC since I was at university and I know many others always have been. Open corruption marked Tony "straight kind of guy" Blair's government as did lying.
If its not the Britain you expected to be living in then you slept through Blair's Britain at the very least. Maybe you found all these things you object to now jolly good japes when it was your own side engaged in it.
I guess there's always an element of being more comfortable when the people in power share your values more or less. I think I'm a bit older than you, so my formative years were pre-Blair, and I've lived most of my life under Tory governments (especially as I was working overseas for 8 years when my lot was in). So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
IMHO, politics was a lot more bitter in the 1980's than it is today.
In a way you have to admire the Tories. In the eighties they persuaded the middle class that the working class were to blame for the country's problems, and they needed to be cut down to size. Now they've persuaded the working class that it's all the fault of the middle class. And while we fight each other, they prosper.
I think we are all just going to have to get used to the Brexiter Cry-Babies. ("Not THAT Brexit! I wanted the OTHER one! Nobody TOLD me it would be like this! It was TWO BIG BOYS who MADE me do it! They FORCED me to recommend it!")
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Probably the Daily Express
Nope, this was told to me by a midwife at one of the hospitals. It is now a disciplinary offence there to say "breast milk"
It's up to. people going into.hospital to complain about woke shiteness. Most will not experience it. What do they call cocks now?
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Probably the Daily Express
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) NHS Trust actually....but its a thing, google it.
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Probably the Daily Express
Nope, this was told to me by a midwife at one of the hospitals. It is now a disciplinary offence there to say "breast milk"
Are you sure? Wasn't this found to be a garbled version of some bland advice ... possibly in Brighton?
"So let's look into what chestfeeding is, and how we can better support the people who choose to do it.
"What is chestfeeding?
"Chestfeeding is the process of feeding a child human milk from a person's chest. It's is a term that can be used by anyone, but often is used by transgender and nonbinary people for whom the words breastfeeding or nursing are not an ideal fit."
"While chestfeeding may not be as widely discussed as breastfeeding or bottle-feeding yet, it is every bit as awesome."
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
It's not the referendum vote itself. It's everything that's gone with it and followed. The citizens of nowhere speech. The denunciation of traitors. The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric. The increased xenophobia and racism. The culture wars. The flags. Proroguing Parliament. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the BBC. The open corruption. The lying. It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
Oh no flags! It all would have been bearable if it hadn’t been for the flags!
"So let's look into what chestfeeding is, and how we can better support the people who choose to do it.
"What is chestfeeding?
"Chestfeeding is the process of feeding a child human milk from a person's chest. It's is a term that can be used by anyone, but often is used by transgender and nonbinary people for whom the words breastfeeding or nursing are not an ideal fit."
"While chestfeeding may not be as widely discussed as breastfeeding or bottle-feeding yet, it is every bit as awesome."
So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
I came back to the UK in 2014 after 9 years in Russia and it feels like a different country now. I was well used to demagoguery, naked corruption, crude expressions of synthesised patriotism and the laying of all ills at the feet of foreigners but I never thought I'd see it in the UK.
It's hard for me to feel any sense of loss as I never felt particularly British anyway even though I had a British passport before I upgraded as I was born in Ireland and grew up mainly in Belgium and the USA.
We liberal internationalists are unpeople who just have to wait to see in exactly what sordid manner the Johnson project eventually unravels.
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Probably the Daily Express
Nope, this was told to me by a midwife at one of the hospitals. It is now a disciplinary offence there to say "breast milk"
It's up to. people going into.hospital to complain about woke shiteness. Most will not experience it. What do they call cocks now?
You can't do anything about it because the act of complaining about it is transphobic and therefore hate speech. This isn't a joke, its how the world actually is.
Questions those in authority need to be asking are in the field of "How can we ramp up vaccine supply quickly and considerably"?
- Can the VMIC come online now? If not, what's stopping it and how do we remove the blockers? When it does, can we agree with Pfizer to produce their vaccine under licence and how quickly can we get churning it out? The same for Moderna? - - What's the holdup with Novavax? Do we know if it is safe and effective? If not, what needs to be found out and how can we help with that? If it is, and the holdup is administrative/managerial, what can we do to expedite that/assist? How rapidly can they be producing large quantities of vaccine for us?
- Can we get extra Pfizer or Moderna right now? What can we do to achieve that if it's even possible?
- What vaccine stockpiles have we run up in the logistics chain and how can we run that stockpile down and into peoples arms as soon as humanly possible?
If we'd vaxxed everyone already, this would already be over. The only thing stopping it from being over is that we haven't vaxxed enough people.
As our data from July 2020 shows, the proportion of both Conservative and Labour voters who view the United States as more of an ally has increased in the time since Joe Biden was elected President of the United States—from 58% to 65% for Conservative voters and 33% to 48% for Labour voters. This suggests that the UK is more open to closer relations with the United States now that Donald Trump is no longer in power, though some Labour voters continue to oppose this prospect regardless.
"So let's look into what chestfeeding is, and how we can better support the people who choose to do it.
"What is chestfeeding?
"Chestfeeding is the process of feeding a child human milk from a person's chest. It's is a term that can be used by anyone, but often is used by transgender and nonbinary people for whom the words breastfeeding or nursing are not an ideal fit."
"While chestfeeding may not be as widely discussed as breastfeeding or bottle-feeding yet, it is every bit as awesome."
It's a good question for the EU and one that I thought at the time these treaties were negotiated. Should they have gone for arrangements that might stick for longer but were less favourable?
The assumption behind the question reflects very badly on the UK government, which should give Allister Health and his ilk pause for thought, but clearly doesn't. The assumption is that the UK are incompetent negotiators acting in bad faith, who never had any intention of honouring its treaty commitments. And should never have been believed.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
Strikes me that the UK were competent negotiators acting in bad faith, who never had any intention of honouring its treaty commitments.
If you can get what you want via committing to a "price" that you don't intend to pay and have plans to wrangle your way out of, it may be disreputable, it may not be pleasant, but its not incompetent. Its actually very competent realpolitik.
PS all nations and organisations including the EU have form in this so drop the mock horror at the UK doing it. Remember the EU negotiating for Blair to give away half our rebate in exchange for CAP being reformed? Then saying CAP wouldn't be reformed? What's sauce for the goose is good for the gander.
Actually I think you may not be that far from the truth. But that assumes the current protocol situation is just fine from the UK government's PoV and their complaints about it are just performative. Allister Heath can be usefully relied on to maintain the fiction by weighing in. Obviously bad for Northern Ireland, but Johnson and his base don't care about them and also bad for the integrity of the UK but Johnson explicitly chose the division of his own country over any requirement to align with EU regs. That's the basis and possible success of his Brexit approach.
So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
I came back to the UK in 2014 after 9 years in Russia and it feels like a different country now. I was well used to demagoguery, naked corruption, crude expressions of synthesised patriotism and the laying of all ills at the feet of foreigners but I never thought I'd see it in the UK.
It's hard for me to feel any sense of loss as I never felt particularly British anyway even though I had a British passport before I upgraded as I was born in Ireland and grew up mainly in Belgium and the USA.
We liberal internationalists are unpeople who just have to wait to see in exactly what sordid manner the Johnson project eventually unravels.
But where is better? from your perspective?
America which nearly had a civil war, and 70m voted for Trump
France where Marine Le Pen could win the election, so Macron outflanks her on the right
Germany which cuddles up to Putin
Sweden? er, the hard right Sweden Democrats sometimes top the polls
I suppose there's always China. At least they have no truck with Wokeness, and they certainly know what they want
They probably shoot anti-vaxxers tho, so not great for you
Questions those in authority need to be asking are in the field of "How can we ramp up vaccine supply quickly and considerably"?
- Can the VMIC come online now? If not, what's stopping it and how do we remove the blockers? When it does, can we agree with Pfizer to produce their vaccine under licence and how quickly can we get churning it out? The same for Moderna? - - What's the holdup with Novavax? Do we know if it is safe and effective? If not, what needs to be found out and how can we help with that? If it is, and the holdup is administrative/managerial, what can we do to expedite that/assist? How rapidly can they be producing large quantities of vaccine for us?
- Can we get extra Pfizer or Moderna right now? What can we do to achieve that if it's even possible?
- What vaccine stockpiles have we run up in the logistics chain and how can we run that stockpile down and into peoples arms as soon as humanly possible?
If we'd vaxxed everyone already, this would already be over. The only thing stopping it from being over is that we haven't vaxxed enough people.
Because of the length of the vaccine production pipelines, any changes in production would have an effect 2-3 months from now.
If you could purchase more vaccine like coal or steel - maybe. But, again, internationally, everything is booked up in the near future.
In a defence of Starmer, despite his invisibility as LOTO, he is up against Johnson who the voters have perceived has had an inch-perfect, error-free pandemic.
Johnson's genius has been his non-stop campaigning throughout the pandemic (something I was critical of, considering it tasteless during the height of a pandemic where thousands of people were dying each week). The campaigning has paid dividends and has given the impression that vaccine, procurement, programming and delivery were all entirely his gift to the nation, and now we a reaping the benefits- a nation unlocked and Covid vanquished. (Remember, perception, not reality, although the link between Covid and deaths seems over).
I still cannot see past the early stages of a chaotic economy this time next year, which is why I feel Johnson should go very, very, early Spring/ early Autumn 2022. I believe the economic strife will take a year or so to fully make its mark on Johnson, which is why 2024 is too late.
What strife?
Companies are reporting difficulties in filling vacancies. The economy is rebounding strongly. Confidence is pretty much at a record level. That forwards momentum will take us through the end of furlough and allow those whose companies don't reopen post-lockdown to find companies desperate for staff.
At that point the economic strife as well as the health strife will have been dealt with.
Since you're so convinced the economic strife is coming, if I'm right and the economy gets through this fine with the government support laid out then a post-pandemic rebound . . . would that confounding of your expectations make you consider voting for a Boris led Tory Party in 2023/24 or would that never happen?
I have been very specific when economic strife will take effect. You are in cloud cuckoo land if you believe there will be no economic consequences from the last 14 months. Try getting out more, the signs are already here, quality businesses not reopening, and not just retail that has gone online.
Boom first, then bust!
Formerly quality businesses closing down for good happens all the time, especially every recession.
Any formerly quality business not reopening is not that bad macroeconomically if there is a staffing shortage in other businesses at the same time as the employees formerly working it the former business can find alternative jobs to go too.
What would be far worse is businesses reopening but then closing down again due to failure one after another leading to mass unemployment, a downturn, no businesses hiring and a vicious feedback loop. That looked possible a year ago, it doesn't look at all probable now.
Yeah, we can all replace our well paid engineering jobs with careers as Baristas.
There's constantly news shared here about well paid engineering jobs being made available by investments in the UK at the moment. 🤷♂️
But they avoid telling us when, for example Greandier set up in France and jobs are lost at Bombardier.
Lots about batteries to RedWall constituencies.
Overall, despite what you say, Brexit, pre-Brexit and Covid have damaged the engineering sector.
You write authoritatively on Trump, but when it comes to bolstering Johnson, whatever the subject, you will never let facts get in the way, unless of course you can use selectively timed data.
I do think it interesting that Philip Thompson now concedes that the NIP was negotiated “in bad faith”.
Like Allister Heath he seems to have made a 180 degree turn on it.
One senior EU27 official said. “I remember being in a taxi that Sunday night. We just could not believe the British had accepted the text. We knew it would not be acceptable to the unionists."
So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
I came back to the UK in 2014 after 9 years in Russia and it feels like a different country now. I was well used to demagoguery, naked corruption, crude expressions of synthesised patriotism and the laying of all ills at the feet of foreigners but I never thought I'd see it in the UK.
It's hard for me to feel any sense of loss as I never felt particularly British anyway even though I had a British passport before I upgraded as I was born in Ireland and grew up mainly in Belgium and the USA.
We liberal internationalists are unpeople who just have to wait to see in exactly what sordid manner the Johnson project eventually unravels.
But where is better? from your perspective?
America which nearly had a civil war, and 70m voted for Trump
France where Marine Le Pen could win the election, so Macron outflanks her on the right
Germany which cuddles up to Putin
Sweden? er, the hard right Sweden Democrats sometimes top the polls
I suppose there's always China. At least they have no truck with Wokeness, and they certainly know what they want
They probably shoot anti-vaxxers tho, so not great for you
I tend to think that people who think Britain a shithole haven’t spent time in shitholes except perhaps in a tourist bubble. It has plenty of downsides sure but so does everywhere.
"So let's look into what chestfeeding is, and how we can better support the people who choose to do it.
"What is chestfeeding?
"Chestfeeding is the process of feeding a child human milk from a person's chest. It's is a term that can be used by anyone, but often is used by transgender and nonbinary people for whom the words breastfeeding or nursing are not an ideal fit."
"While chestfeeding may not be as widely discussed as breastfeeding or bottle-feeding yet, it is every bit as awesome."
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Probably the Daily Express
Nope, this was told to me by a midwife at one of the hospitals. It is now a disciplinary offence there to say "breast milk"
It's up to. people going into.hospital to complain about woke shiteness. Most will not experience it. What do they call cocks now?
You can't do anything about it because the act of complaining about it is transphobic and therefore hate speech. This isn't a joke, its how the world actually is.
Yeah, so many people don't understand how much of this shit is now deeply rooted, and expanding. It is way beyond Daily Express fantasy articles. This toxicity is real, and here - tho I don't find this chestfeeding example particularly sinister, just a bit sad and silly
It's a good question for the EU and one that I thought at the time these treaties were negotiated. Should they have gone for arrangements that might stick for longer but were less favourable?
The assumption behind the question reflects very badly on the UK government, which should give Allister Health and his ilk pause for thought, but clearly doesn't. The assumption is that the UK are incompetent negotiators acting in bad faith, who never had any intention of honouring its treaty commitments. And should never have been believed.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
Strikes me that the UK were competent negotiators acting in bad faith, who never had any intention of honouring its treaty commitments.
If you can get what you want via committing to a "price" that you don't intend to pay and have plans to wrangle your way out of, it may be disreputable, it may not be pleasant, but its not incompetent. Its actually very competent realpolitik.
PS all nations and organisations including the EU have form in this so drop the mock horror at the UK doing it. Remember the EU negotiating for Blair to give away half our rebate in exchange for CAP being reformed? Then saying CAP wouldn't be reformed? What's sauce for the goose is good for the gander.
Actually I think you may not be that far from the truth. But that assumes the current protocol situation is just fine from the UK government's PoV and their complaints about it are just performative. Allister Heath can be usefully relied on to maintain the fiction by weighing in. Obviously bad for Northern Ireland, but Johnson and his base don't care about them and also bad for the integrity of the UK but Johnson explicitly chose the division of his own country over any requirement to align with EU regs. That's the basis and possible success of his Brexit approach.
Well precisely.
Though I think you can reconcile all of it with complaints being legitimate. Simply sign the treaty agreeing to the Protocol knowing full well the Protocol would never be workable (and you have no intention of making it work) and that you can then legitimately complain its unworkable down the road.
Which again is no different really to the UK agreeing to give away half the rebate for reform of the CAP, only to have it said that there is never going to be that reform the second the ink was dry on us giving away the rebate.
Questions those in authority need to be asking are in the field of "How can we ramp up vaccine supply quickly and considerably"?
- Can the VMIC come online now? If not, what's stopping it and how do we remove the blockers? When it does, can we agree with Pfizer to produce their vaccine under licence and how quickly can we get churning it out? The same for Moderna? - - What's the holdup with Novavax? Do we know if it is safe and effective? If not, what needs to be found out and how can we help with that? If it is, and the holdup is administrative/managerial, what can we do to expedite that/assist? How rapidly can they be producing large quantities of vaccine for us?
- Can we get extra Pfizer or Moderna right now? What can we do to achieve that if it's even possible?
- What vaccine stockpiles have we run up in the logistics chain and how can we run that stockpile down and into peoples arms as soon as humanly possible?
If we'd vaxxed everyone already, this would already be over. The only thing stopping it from being over is that we haven't vaxxed enough people.
Because of the length of the vaccine production pipelines, any changes in production would have an effect 2-3 months from now.
If you could purchase more vaccine like coal or steel - maybe. But, again, internationally, everything is booked up in the near future.
That's where the VMIC comes in. I was under the impression that the mRNA vaccines could be produced faster and with less inherent lag time than the older-type vaccines; the main holdup being the availability of facilities
Indeed, 60% potentially gives us a non-trivial hospitalization wave even with only Step 3 retained & Step 4 not enacted.
The idea of another lockdown.... is terrifying
I think I would flee the country beforehand
Indeed it is. I don't know what the answer is. In some ways I would rather have a big wave in the Summer, now, than in the winter, which ironically would be an argument for full unlocking now. I think a lockdown now would just kick the can into the winter.
Of course it would.
This is the central fallacy at the heart of the lockdownists' thinking: that you can somehow eliminate covid. Either ride the exit wave now or in October when it's pissing it down and 6 degrees celcius.
So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
I came back to the UK in 2014 after 9 years in Russia and it feels like a different country now. I was well used to demagoguery, naked corruption, crude expressions of synthesised patriotism and the laying of all ills at the feet of foreigners but I never thought I'd see it in the UK.
It's hard for me to feel any sense of loss as I never felt particularly British anyway even though I had a British passport before I upgraded as I was born in Ireland and grew up mainly in Belgium and the USA.
We liberal internationalists are unpeople who just have to wait to see in exactly what sordid manner the Johnson project eventually unravels.
But where is better? from your perspective?
America which nearly had a civil war, and 70m voted for Trump
France where Marine Le Pen could win the election, so Macron outflanks her on the right
Germany which cuddles up to Putin
Sweden? er, the hard right Sweden Democrats sometimes top the polls
I suppose there's always China. At least they have no truck with Wokeness, and they certainly know what they want
They probably shoot anti-vaxxers tho, so not great for you
I tend to think that people who think Britain a shithole haven’t spent time in shitholes except perhaps in a tourist bubble. It has plenty of downsides sure but so does everywhere.
Did you see that amazing Sam Harris quote on the Gervais podcast about the UFOS?!
One of the most startling 2 minutes of audio I have ever encountered
Indeed, 60% potentially gives us a non-trivial hospitalization wave even with only Step 3 retained & Step 4 not enacted.
The idea of another lockdown.... is terrifying
I think I would flee the country beforehand
Indeed it is. I don't know what the answer is. In some ways I would rather have a big wave in the Summer, now, than in the winter, which ironically would be an argument for full unlocking now. I think a lockdown now would just kick the can into the winter.
Of course it would.
This is the central fallacy at the heart of the lockdownists' thinking: that you can somehow eliminate covid. Either ride the exit wave now or in October when it's pissing it down and 6 degrees celcius.
Open things up now and let people party outside in the summer, if they don’t want to cram into sweaty nightclubs.
Here is one bit of "wokeness" that will get even those of us of moderate views swivelling our eyes like a Daily Express reader: Apparently the phrase "breast feeding" is to be replaced in NHS hospitals with "chest feeding" and mothers in maternity units must not be referred to as such, but as "persons" amongst other nonsense. Who makes this stuff up?
Probably the Daily Express
Nope, this was told to me by a midwife at one of the hospitals. It is now a disciplinary offence there to say "breast milk"
It's up to. people going into.hospital to complain about woke shiteness. Most will not experience it. What do they call cocks now?
You can't do anything about it because the act of complaining about it is transphobic and therefore hate speech. This isn't a joke, its how the world actually is.
Yeah, so many people don't understand how much of this shit is now deeply rooted, and expanding. It is way beyond Daily Express fantasy articles. This toxicity is real, and here - tho I don't find this chestfeeding example particularly sinister, just a bit sad and silly
exactly, examples like this make it sound like we are back in the 90's and it is all 'political correctness gone mad'; People haven't caught up.
Donald who? As Boris Johnson meets Joe Biden in Cornwall this week, the British prime minister will hope that the President doesn’t dwell on his efforts to woo the last occupant of the Oval Office. Boris’s dalliance with Donald Trump is a bit like his affair with Jennifer Arcuri — an embarrassing fling with a rotund, brash American conspiracy theorist, something he’d rather the world forgot. He’s moved on and so should we.
Yes, I always felt Boris was rather uncomfortable with the Trump thing. He had to play along with it as much of his own base revered Trump as the great Lib-basher extraordinaire. And Trump's presence helped, for a short time, with the post-Brexit Global Britain narrative. But I bet Boris is relieved Trump's gone.
For once I 100% agree with you.
Only superficial people lumped Trump and Boris, or Trump and Brexit together.
Yes, whatever one thinks of Boris (and I am not a fan) likening him to Trump is ridiculous. He is nothing like Trump – he is several strata of intelligence and learning higher, for a start, and, as a person, much nicer.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
The Guardian exploit many of the same tricks as the Mail, where they conveniently miss out something pertinent.
Quite. The idea that the Guardian is reliable on an issue that really engages them - anything to do with race, Trump, gender, Wokeness, Brexit - is laughable. They are just as bad as the Mail. As has often been said, the two papers are eerie mirror images of each other
Here's a good example
"Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn't created in a lab
By Peter Daszak
"Instead of following false claims, we should focus our efforts on the regions where the next pandemic is likely to emerge"
A piece that denounces lab leak as a conspiracy theory, when it fact the opposite is true. The real conspirators were trying to SQUASH the lab leak hypothesis, banning it from Facebook etc
And look at the end:
"This article was amended on 11 June 2020 to make clear the writer’s past work with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
The Guardian originally ran this as a think piece by an apparently neutral scientist. They didn't tell their readers the author worked, and is still working, with the Wuhan Lab, so might just have a bit of an agenda
Couple of points - first, it's comment, not reporting, which ought to be pretty clear from its appearing under "commentisfree". Secondly, the 'conspiracy theory' he denounced (and I'd agree that such language is unscientific) were around the claims (including the Nature article) that the virus was 'almost certainly' genetically engineered. Such claims remain completely untrue. Its not possible completely to disprove such a thesis, but it is exceedingly unlikely.
And remarkable for your being quite so exercised about an amendment a whole year ago.
I am furnishing my argument - the Guardian can be just as wanky as the Mail, if not worse - with evidence. That is clear evidence - the late, quiet amendment, after 900 comments saying how fantastic the article is (with nearly all the negative ones deleted)
Incidentally, that Nature article - Proximal Origins of Covid - is fascinating, the more you dig
As I say, the author is K G Andersen
On 31st January he told Fauci in a private email that the virus was potentially engineered
Four days later, anyone who believes in an engineered virus is a "crackpot" - according to K G Andersen, despite him saying exactly that to Fauci, in private, the same week
Coupla weeks later he gets a fat grant from Fauci. A year later, when everyone starts asking about this, he suddenly deletes 4000 tweets and then vanishes from Twitter.
Your characterisation of what he said simply isn't accurate.
In the first case, the precise quote is "I only had a very quick look at the link but the analyses are completely flawed and wrong" - ie a specific analysis in flawed. That doesn't seem to me inconsistent with his email to Fauci.
In the second case, it is again the theories going round that he calls "crackpot". …the main crackpot theories going around at the moment relate to the virus being somehow engineered with intent and that is demonstrably not the case. Engineering can mean many thins and could be done for either basic research or nefarious reasons, but the data conclusively show that neither was done (in the nefarious scenario somebody would have used a SARS/MERS backbone and optimal ACE2 binding as previously described, and for the basic research scenario would have used one of the many already available reverse genetic systems…
Given the treatment he is getting in the circles you derive your information from, I am not entirely surprised that a scientist with a full time job would simply pull the plug.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
The Guardian exploit many of the same tricks as the Mail, where they conveniently miss out something pertinent.
Quite. The idea that the Guardian is reliable on an issue that really engages them - anything to do with race, Trump, gender, Wokeness, Brexit - is laughable. They are just as bad as the Mail. As has often been said, the two papers are eerie mirror images of each other
Here's a good example
"Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn't created in a lab
By Peter Daszak
"Instead of following false claims, we should focus our efforts on the regions where the next pandemic is likely to emerge"
A piece that denounces lab leak as a conspiracy theory, when it fact the opposite is true. The real conspirators were trying to SQUASH the lab leak hypothesis, banning it from Facebook etc
And look at the end:
"This article was amended on 11 June 2020 to make clear the writer’s past work with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
The Guardian originally ran this as a think piece by an apparently neutral scientist. They didn't tell their readers the author worked, and is still working, with the Wuhan Lab, so might just have a bit of an agenda
Couple of points - first, it's comment, not reporting, which ought to be pretty clear from its appearing under "commentisfree". Secondly, the 'conspiracy theory' he denounced (and I'd agree that such language is unscientific) were around the claims (including the Nature article) that the virus was 'almost certainly' genetically engineered. Such claims remain completely untrue. Its not possible completely to disprove such a thesis, but it is exceedingly unlikely.
And remarkable for your being quite so exercised about an amendment a whole year ago.
I am furnishing my argument - the Guardian can be just as wanky as the Mail, if not worse - with evidence. That is clear evidence - the late, quiet amendment, after 900 comments saying how fantastic the article is (with nearly all the negative ones deleted)
Incidentally, that Nature article - Proximal Origins of Covid - is fascinating, the more you dig
As I say, the author is K G Andersen
On 31st January he told Fauci in a private email that the virus was potentially engineered
Four days later, anyone who believes in an engineered virus is a "crackpot" - according to K G Andersen, despite him saying exactly that to Fauci, in private, the same week
Coupla weeks later he gets a fat grant from Fauci. A year later, when everyone starts asking about this, he suddenly deletes 4000 tweets and then vanishes from Twitter.
Your characterisation of what he said simply isn't accurate.
In the first case, the precise quote is "I only had a very quick look at the link but the analyses are completely flawed and wrong" - ie a specific analysis in flawed. That doesn't seem to me inconsistent with his email to Fauci.
In the second case, it is again the theories going round that he calls "crackpot". …the main crackpot theories going around at the moment relate to the virus being somehow engineered with intent and that is demonstrably not the case. Engineering can mean many thins and could be done for either basic research or nefarious reasons, but the data conclusively show that neither was done (in the nefarious scenario somebody would have used a SARS/MERS backbone and optimal ACE2 binding as previously described, and for the basic research scenario would have used one of the many already available reverse genetic systems…
Given the treatment he is getting in the circles you derive your information from, I am not entirely surprised that a scientist with a full time job would simply pull the plug.
Anyway, got work to do now.
Why delete 4000 tweets, then lie about it and say "my tweets auto-delete" - a statement proven false five minutes after he said it? These are not the actions of a confident, guiltless man
The rest of your argument is egregious. He says analyses and you reckon he said "a specific analysis"! It's there in the link.
FPT - yes, there are cases here too (including my plumber).
But, if they're not progressing to significant numbers of hospitalisations then it may be best to ensure vaccination, use a bit of common sense and let it wash.
We have to have an exit wave at some stage. Surely it is better to let it wash now than face it in the autumn when the weather is worse, and more people are socialising indoors?
Surely it's better to have the "final" exit in the spring when we're at 75%+ 2-doses, and have got through the winter demand on the NHS, rather than loading up the NHS into that winter spike?
The worst thing for e.g. hospitality would be a return to (even local) lockdowns in response to a slightly-worse-than-expected exit spike now.
We'll we be at 75%+ 2-doses in by about July 10. Assuming that it is based on delivery capacity rather than extended waits for dose 2.
Don't you think spring is pushing it a bit? (unless I have misunderstood)
I bet someone somewhere would have a picture of a very chubby Boris with his breasts (moobs) visible through his t-shirt.
I can't understand why anyone objects to the term breasts.
You have to know the long tangled history of Wokeness to know why some terms are correct and some offensive
Given that you support all this, you maybe need to do some research?
I don't support all this.
I support tackling racism, sexism etc and recognise those are real problems that need to be dealt with.
That doesn't mean I support every element of crazy. Its not all or nothing you know, its possible to give an inch but refuse a mile.
Nah, they take a mile, every time
Chest-feeding will be the required term, quite soon - just watch
If they try then I will oppose that, even if I support the giving of an inch.
This is an issue where I'm not an extremist, I don't support the conservatives and I don't support the wokists. On some issues I can agree with the wokists, on others the conservatives. To use an analogy, I'd be an "EFTA wokist"
I bet someone somewhere would have a picture of a very chubby Boris with his breasts (moobs) visible through his t-shirt.
I can't understand why anyone objects to the term breasts.
You have to know the long tangled history of Wokeness to know why some terms are correct and some offensive
Given that you support all this, you maybe need to do some research?
I don't support all this.
I support tackling racism, sexism etc and recognise those are real problems that need to be dealt with.
That doesn't mean I support every element of crazy. Its not all or nothing you know, its possible to give an inch but refuse a mile.
As I have said it's an overshoot, which all movements and especially movements for change have. It's to jolt the @Leons of this world (I say of this world, any minute now I'm hoping some of his alien buddies will make contact and it will be all round to theirs for beers).
There is a problem with racism. In this country things are a lot better than they were and a lot better than other countries. But there remains a problem. Same with other forms of discrimination. We need the suffragettes to be "out there" so we can move forward but not to the extent that the outriders want or say they want.
@Leaon et al are, as tbf is typical of PB, mostly dinosaurs in this regard. Hugely amiable ones, but dinosaurs nevertheless.
So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
I came back to the UK in 2014 after 9 years in Russia and it feels like a different country now. I was well used to demagoguery, naked corruption, crude expressions of synthesised patriotism and the laying of all ills at the feet of foreigners but I never thought I'd see it in the UK.
It's hard for me to feel any sense of loss as I never felt particularly British anyway even though I had a British passport before I upgraded as I was born in Ireland and grew up mainly in Belgium and the USA.
We liberal internationalists are unpeople who just have to wait to see in exactly what sordid manner the Johnson project eventually unravels.
But where is better? from your perspective?
America which nearly had a civil war, and 70m voted for Trump
France where Marine Le Pen could win the election, so Macron outflanks her on the right
Germany which cuddles up to Putin
Sweden? er, the hard right Sweden Democrats sometimes top the polls
I suppose there's always China. At least they have no truck with Wokeness, and they certainly know what they want
They probably shoot anti-vaxxers tho, so not great for you
I tend to think that people who think Britain a shithole haven’t spent time in shitholes except perhaps in a tourist bubble. It has plenty of downsides sure but so does everywhere.
Not a shithole but mediocre at best. Moribund.
We have no natural wildernesses. Nowhere to escape urbanisation and farmland. No proper mountains to speak of. No decent rivers. No way of escaping other humans. Sea is freezing. We are too densely populated. No weather (or too much if you like).
We have cities. That's true. London, Oxford and Cambridge are ace.
I would rather have spent the last year in ... hmmm .... The States, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Switzerland - to name but a few.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
The thing is one thing fuels another.
Remainers saying "they're no longer British" and then arguing for the vote to be overturned fuelled charges of treason.
Leavers attacking every institution that put caveats or limits on the interpretation of the vote similarly infuriated Remainers and made them want to disassociate themselves from a decision they couldn't understand or identify with.
Well that’s me on this Board in 2021 saying as such.
I don’t remember a mass disavowal of citizenship in the wake of the vote, so your post just reads like a rewrite of history, if not victim blaming.
The Mail’s editorial (not wholly separable from govt comms policy) during this period was truly sickening. And even May was not immune, with disastrous criticisms of “citizens of nowhere” and grotesque suggestions that the EU was interfering in the 2017 election.
Her citizens of nowhere comment related to big business not paying their share if tax didn’t it?
As our data from July 2020 shows, the proportion of both Conservative and Labour voters who view the United States as more of an ally has increased in the time since Joe Biden was elected President of the United States—from 58% to 65% for Conservative voters and 33% to 48% for Labour voters. This suggests that the UK is more open to closer relations with the United States now that Donald Trump is no longer in power, though some Labour voters continue to oppose this prospect regardless.
I’d love to interrogate those that answered “Ireland”. That can objectively be shown to be wrong. Not because we have any issue with the Irish but because Ireland is objectively too small and too neutral to ever be that useful as an ally.
Labour are absolubtely seen as a party that tried to prevent Brexit. The next General Election will still be about that, in particular the far more favourably distributed leave vote (It was 410 constituencies that voted to leave) will give SKS his marching orders as they did Corbyn after the moderates had got his ear on the matter in 2019. I can't believe Labour didn't realise the long term damage they did with the electorate by their game playing in the 2017 - 19 parliament. It was clear as day to me and I voted to stay in.
Indeed so. I must have said it three dozen times on here during that period, but apparently making that point made ME undemocratic for not wanting another vote!
So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
I came back to the UK in 2014 after 9 years in Russia and it feels like a different country now. I was well used to demagoguery, naked corruption, crude expressions of synthesised patriotism and the laying of all ills at the feet of foreigners but I never thought I'd see it in the UK.
It's hard for me to feel any sense of loss as I never felt particularly British anyway even though I had a British passport before I upgraded as I was born in Ireland and grew up mainly in Belgium and the USA.
We liberal internationalists are unpeople who just have to wait to see in exactly what sordid manner the Johnson project eventually unravels.
But where is better? from your perspective?
America which nearly had a civil war, and 70m voted for Trump
France where Marine Le Pen could win the election, so Macron outflanks her on the right
Germany which cuddles up to Putin
Sweden? er, the hard right Sweden Democrats sometimes top the polls
I suppose there's always China. At least they have no truck with Wokeness, and they certainly know what they want
They probably shoot anti-vaxxers tho, so not great for you
I tend to think that people who think Britain a shithole haven’t spent time in shitholes except perhaps in a tourist bubble. It has plenty of downsides sure but so does everywhere.
Not a shithole but mediocre at best. Moribund.
We have no natural wildernesses. Nowhere to escape urbanisation and farmland. No proper mountains to speak of. No decent rivers. No way of escaping other humans. Sea is freezing. We are too densely populated. No weather (or too much if you like).
We have cities. That's true. London, Oxford and Cambridge are ace.
I would rather have spent the last year in ... hmmm .... The States, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Switzerland - to name but a few.
No. The word is not "mediocre", it's "mild". The weather is substantially pleasant most of the time. The countryside is pleasant. It's not Yellowstone but neither is it Iowa. The rivers are right for the size of country.
Doesn't mean that they all have Covid. Only takes one child to test positive for an entire year group "bubble" to be sent home.
True, but still an alarmingly high number
We may have to mandate vaccines for anyone who wants to do anything
A quick Twitter search on "delta variant" produces some scary stuff
"I do not say this lightly, but the delta variant is a seriously horrible development in terms of global health. More transmissible, more dangerous, but blunted and controlled by vaccines. We need to get those vaccines to where they are needed"
Doesn't mean that they all have Covid. Only takes one child to test positive for an entire year group "bubble" to be sent home.
True, but still an alarmingly high number
We may have to mandate vaccines for anyone who wants to do anything
A quick Twitter search on "delta variant" produces some scary stuff
"I do not say this lightly, but the delta variant is a seriously horrible development in terms of global health. More transmissible, more dangerous, but blunted and controlled by vaccines. We need to get those vaccines to where they are needed"
Or we do the opposite. Recognise that we have vaccinated the vulnerable, drop the concepts of bubbles and self-isolation from proximity and if it spreads it spreads and burns out.
I bet someone somewhere would have a picture of a very chubby Boris with his breasts (moobs) visible through his t-shirt.
I can't understand why anyone objects to the term breasts.
You have to know the long tangled history of Wokeness to know why some terms are correct and some offensive
Given that you support all this, you maybe need to do some research?
I don't support all this.
I support tackling racism, sexism etc and recognise those are real problems that need to be dealt with.
That doesn't mean I support every element of crazy. Its not all or nothing you know, its possible to give an inch but refuse a mile.
As I have said it's an overshoot, which all movements and especially movements for change have. It's to jolt the @Leons of this world (I say of this world, any minute now I'm hoping some of his alien buddies will make contact and it will be all round to theirs for beers).
There is a problem with racism. In this country things are a lot better than they were and a lot better than other countries. But there remains a problem. Same with other forms of discrimination. We need the suffragettes to be "out there" so we can move forward but not to the extent that the outriders want or say they want.
@Leaon et al are, as tbf is typical of PB, mostly dinosaurs in this regard. Hugely amiable ones, but dinosaurs nevertheless.
@Leon is provocative and seems to enjoy winding people up which is all very entertaining. but absolutely correct about the woke.
So I'm very used to living with a government that I don't like. But in all honesty, what's happening now feels different. I'm not trying to score points here, I'm just telling you how it feels. You are welcome to dismiss it if you like.
I came back to the UK in 2014 after 9 years in Russia and it feels like a different country now. I was well used to demagoguery, naked corruption, crude expressions of synthesised patriotism and the laying of all ills at the feet of foreigners but I never thought I'd see it in the UK.
It's hard for me to feel any sense of loss as I never felt particularly British anyway even though I had a British passport before I upgraded as I was born in Ireland and grew up mainly in Belgium and the USA.
We liberal internationalists are unpeople who just have to wait to see in exactly what sordid manner the Johnson project eventually unravels.
But where is better? from your perspective?
America which nearly had a civil war, and 70m voted for Trump
France where Marine Le Pen could win the election, so Macron outflanks her on the right
Germany which cuddles up to Putin
Sweden? er, the hard right Sweden Democrats sometimes top the polls
I suppose there's always China. At least they have no truck with Wokeness, and they certainly know what they want
They probably shoot anti-vaxxers tho, so not great for you
I tend to think that people who think Britain a shithole haven’t spent time in shitholes except perhaps in a tourist bubble. It has plenty of downsides sure but so does everywhere.
Not a shithole but mediocre at best. Moribund.
We have no natural wildernesses. Nowhere to escape urbanisation and farmland. No proper mountains to speak of. No decent rivers. No way of escaping other humans. Sea is freezing. We are too densely populated. No weather (or too much if you like).
We have cities. That's true. London, Oxford and Cambridge are ace.
I would rather have spent the last year in ... hmmm .... The States, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Switzerland - to name but a few.
Come up here to the Rough Bounds of Moidart and say that.
The formal US protest to the UK (démarche) is very rare,especially among allies. It marks the UK’s new & unwanted reputation as a nation whose word cannot be trusted,signing a treaty it broke almost immediately & refusing to recognise the impact on law in Europe. Hard to recover. https://twitter.com/BillNeelyReport/status/1402963773741219840
Comments
I don’t have a good enough grasp of Italian or Latin American history.
Now I need to figure out a way to get Pfizer’d for my 2nd dose…
I am pretty certain the system will meltdown with such volume of all those who want to get jabbed. I would be down to my local.centre in a heartbeat, rather than wait 4 more weeks for my 2nd shot of Moderna.
https://twitter.com/gavinesler/status/1402958663891959809
https://twitter.com/StevePeers/status/1402873425585127424
All the things you complain about, were issues during Blair's government too. Every single one of them. It was successful electorally for Blair and its successful electorally for Boris, so its possibly something we'll all have to get used to whenever "our side" loses.
'Here are some examples of formats I have seen in our coursework:
“This is a 43-year-old woman with ovaries, presenting with …”
“A 3-year-old child, assigned male at birth, not assigned gender as of yet by parents, presenting with …”
“This patient is a 7-year-old child, gendered as a boy by his parents, who …”
“57-year-old woman with testes, here with …”
“A 16-year-old patient (gender non-binary, pronouns they/them) …”
“A 32-year-old woman (she/her/hers) …”
“A 16-year-old patient presents with complaints of …”
Here's the key paragraph:
In terms of antibody development, the double-BioNTech as well as the combined AstraZeneca-BioNTech vaccination was significantly more effective than the double-AstraZeneca alternative. Participants who had one of the first two combinations of shots produced around 10 times more antibodies than those with two AstraZeneca jabs. And looking at the neutralizing antibodies, results with the mix-and-match vaccine approach were "even slightly better" than those achieved with two BioNTech shots, Sester said.
https://www.mother.ly/life/what-is-chestfeeding
I think that is now rather less true. The old quote that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role needs updating. We have renounced our part in the EU project, and are in the process of defining ourselves outside. That's natural and necessary. But there is a temptation among some of the right - encouraged by the lack of serious challenge - to make that definition in narrow terms, with jingoistic nationalism and culture war as hallmarks of a proud new self-definition.
That isn't the whole story by any means and it will be a while before a settled majority view emerges on what Britain is about. But, like OLB, the current version is not one that I identify with. Thoughtful conservatives do seek to have a definition wide enough to encompass sensible non-conservative thinkers, and I hope their influence prevails.
Only superficial people lumped Trump and Boris, or Trump and Brexit together.
And all humans have breasts, male and female, so how is this a trans issue?
Heck some people's moobs can be as big as some ladies. 🤮
Says England holds a "buffer" to ensure no one misses second doses but Wales doesn't as they knew that in a crisis they could use England's
https://twitter.com/Smyth_Chris/status/1402950490682540038?s=20
"So let's look into what chestfeeding is, and how we can better support the people who choose to do it.
"What is chestfeeding?
"Chestfeeding is the process of feeding a child human milk from a person's chest. It's is a term that can be used by anyone, but often is used by transgender and nonbinary people for whom the words breastfeeding or nursing are not an ideal fit."
"While chestfeeding may not be as widely discussed as breastfeeding or bottle-feeding yet, it is every bit as awesome."
https://www.mother.ly/life/what-is-chestfeeding
"Why do I use the term chestfeeding or bodyfeeding, along with breastfeeding, when discussing the transfer of human milk?"
Canada:
"Chestfeeding is a term used by many transmasculine and non-binary parents to describe how they feed and nurture their children from their bodies"
"Bodyfeeding" just creeps me out. Dunno why. Sounds like a horror movie trope
Why can't we all just say "unassisted mammalian transfer of human-based lactose?"
Men have breasts too! Heck men can even get breast cancer, though its rare. Should we now call it chest cancer?
It's hard for me to feel any sense of loss as I never felt particularly British anyway even though I had a British passport before I upgraded as I was born in Ireland and grew up mainly in Belgium and the USA.
We liberal internationalists are unpeople who just have to wait to see in exactly what sordid manner the Johnson project eventually unravels.
- Can the VMIC come online now? If not, what's stopping it and how do we remove the blockers? When it does, can we agree with Pfizer to produce their vaccine under licence and how quickly can we get churning it out? The same for Moderna?
-
- What's the holdup with Novavax? Do we know if it is safe and effective? If not, what needs to be found out and how can we help with that? If it is, and the holdup is administrative/managerial, what can we do to expedite that/assist? How rapidly can they be producing large quantities of vaccine for us?
- Can we get extra Pfizer or Moderna right now? What can we do to achieve that if it's even possible?
- What vaccine stockpiles have we run up in the logistics chain and how can we run that stockpile down and into peoples arms as soon as humanly possible?
If we'd vaxxed everyone already, this would already be over. The only thing stopping it from being over is that we haven't vaxxed enough people.
Because Wales is a small part of the UK, in population terms, their vaccination program relatively small.
A shortfall in Wales could easily be covered by a barely noticeable slowdown elsewhere.
I can't understand why anyone objects to the term breasts.
USA: 46%
Australia: 6%
Ireland: 6%
Canada: 5%
France: 4%
59% of 2019 Conservative voters and 35% of 2019 Labour voters say USA.
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1402958874458611714?s=20
As our data from July 2020 shows, the proportion of both Conservative and Labour voters who view the United States as more of an ally has increased in the time since Joe Biden was elected President of the United States—from 58% to 65% for Conservative voters and 33% to 48% for Labour voters. This suggests that the UK is more open to closer relations with the United States now that Donald Trump is no longer in power, though some Labour voters continue to oppose this prospect regardless.
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/uk-foreign-relations-opinions-of-conservative-and-labour-voters/
America which nearly had a civil war, and 70m voted for Trump
France where Marine Le Pen could win the election, so Macron outflanks her on the right
Germany which cuddles up to Putin
Sweden? er, the hard right Sweden Democrats sometimes top the polls
I suppose there's always China. At least they have no truck with Wokeness, and they certainly know what they want
They probably shoot anti-vaxxers tho, so not great for you
If you could purchase more vaccine like coal or steel - maybe. But, again, internationally, everything is booked up in the near future.
Like Allister Heath he seems to have made a 180 degree turn on it.
Lots about batteries to RedWall constituencies.
Overall, despite what you say, Brexit, pre-Brexit and Covid have damaged the engineering sector.
You write authoritatively on Trump, but when it comes to bolstering Johnson, whatever the subject, you will never let facts get in the way, unless of course you can use selectively timed data.
Given that you support all this, you maybe need to do some research?
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-uk-lost-brexit-eu-negotiation/
Always look to PB for resources.
*born male to boot.
Though I think you can reconcile all of it with complaints being legitimate. Simply sign the treaty agreeing to the Protocol knowing full well the Protocol would never be workable (and you have no intention of making it work) and that you can then legitimately complain its unworkable down the road.
Which again is no different really to the UK agreeing to give away half the rebate for reform of the CAP, only to have it said that there is never going to be that reform the second the ink was dry on us giving away the rebate.
This is the central fallacy at the heart of the lockdownists' thinking: that you can somehow eliminate covid. Either ride the exit wave now or in October when it's pissing it down and 6 degrees celcius.
I've always advocated playing hardball with the EU. This is going just how I wanted.
One of the most startling 2 minutes of audio I have ever encountered
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I support tackling racism, sexism etc and recognise those are real problems that need to be dealt with.
That doesn't mean I support every element of crazy. Its not all or nothing you know, its possible to give an inch but refuse a mile.
Chest-feeding will be the required term, quite soon - just watch
In the first case, the precise quote is "I only had a very quick look at the link but the analyses are completely flawed and wrong" - ie a specific analysis in flawed.
That doesn't seem to me inconsistent with his email to Fauci.
In the second case, it is again the theories going round that he calls "crackpot".
…the main crackpot theories going around at the moment relate to the virus being somehow engineered with intent and that is demonstrably not the case. Engineering can mean many thins and could be done for either basic research or nefarious reasons, but the data conclusively show that neither was done (in the nefarious scenario somebody would have used a SARS/MERS backbone and optimal ACE2 binding as previously described, and for the basic research scenario would have used one of the many already available reverse genetic systems…
Given the treatment he is getting in the circles you derive your information from, I am not entirely surprised that a scientist with a full time job would simply pull the plug.
Anyway, got work to do now.
What evidence of there for this wild assertion?
Did Trump conspire to have someone beaten up?
How many times was Trump sacked for telling lies?
How many women has Trump cheated on?
Anecdotally BoZo has betrayed every person who ever trusted him. What part of that is "nice" ?
The rest of your argument is egregious. He says analyses and you reckon he said "a specific analysis"! It's there in the link.
Tsk
Don't you think spring is pushing it a bit? (unless I have misunderstood)
This is an issue where I'm not an extremist, I don't support the conservatives and I don't support the wokists. On some issues I can agree with the wokists, on others the conservatives. To use an analogy, I'd be an "EFTA wokist"
There is a problem with racism. In this country things are a lot better than they were and a lot better than other countries. But there remains a problem. Same with other forms of discrimination. We need the suffragettes to be "out there" so we can move forward but not to the extent that the outriders want or say they want.
@Leaon et al are, as tbf is typical of PB, mostly dinosaurs in this regard. Hugely amiable ones, but dinosaurs nevertheless.
We have no natural wildernesses. Nowhere to escape urbanisation and farmland. No proper mountains to speak of. No decent rivers. No way of escaping other humans. Sea is freezing. We are too densely populated. No weather (or too much if you like).
We have cities. That's true. London, Oxford and Cambridge are ace.
I would rather have spent the last year in ... hmmm .... The States, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Switzerland - to name but a few.
"In Bolton, 21% of primary children and 31% of secondary children are absent from school due to COVID."
https://twitter.com/MarkPlackett1/status/1402451303347810310?s=20
“what are you scared of” etc
We may have to mandate vaccines for anyone who wants to do anything
A quick Twitter search on "delta variant" produces some scary stuff
"I do not say this lightly, but the delta variant is a seriously horrible development in terms of global health. More transmissible, more dangerous, but blunted and controlled by vaccines. We need to get those vaccines to where they are needed"
https://twitter.com/BillHanage/status/1402449882124898305?s=20
Not so sure about the alien stuff.
And the sea's fine, just get in.
https://twitter.com/BillNeelyReport/status/1402963773741219840