Sub half a million. Not good enough for a thursday.
There is a clear obvious problem with supply, while we also have a clear obvious problem with cases. And like anything with COVID, the longer you leave it, the worse the problem becomes very quickly.
Change the guidance on AZ and the supply problem disappears.
Actually it is implement the guidance as written.....
"the JCVI has advised a preference for adults aged 30 to 39 without underlying health conditions to receive an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – where available and only if this does not cause substantial delays in being vaccinated."
If supply is an issue the official policy is surely already to use AZ.
It clearly isn't been used, as 5m doses are sitting in a warehouse doing nothing, while they struggle to do 500k jabs a day.
Give the yuff the choice, you want a shot of AZN, you can come line up tomorrow at x. We will do as many as people turn up. If you want to wait, that's fine.
The queues will be around the block by 8am....well maybe 11am....the kids don't often get out of bed that early.
The supply issue is that we don't have enough Pfizer/Moderna to jab the under 30s quickly. The message now through various sources is that if you've had AZ more than 4 weeks ago then you can practically just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I had my first AZ 6 weeks ago, I am booked to have my 2nd in 2 weeks. However, my local main vaccination centre has sent out a message saying that on Friday and Saturday if you had AZ more than 4 weeks ago you can just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I think I might go for it.
The JCVI needs to re-work its guidance based on the current situation. Right now AZ in the arms of the under 30s is far more beneficial than it sat in a giant fridge. Like Francis says, offer the under 30s to just turn up and get jabbed with AZ. They can make an informed choice. Risks of a blood clot are less than going on a long haul flight.
Matt Hancock ought to be doing this today instead of sat in front of a select committee talking about what he should have done with the benefit of hindsight over a year ago. I'm still not convinced that we have a big issue but we ought to be jabbing as fast as we can and not be held back by some tiny risks.
The JCVI guidance is perfectly clear that we should be using AZ more. It is the implementation of that, that is not happening.
Not just me. But the Zero Covid Independent SAGE zealots get a lot more media attention than those scientists saying that we have herd immunity, so I'm not surprised at your mistake in thinking it was just me.
This is Karl Friston, the expert in neurological imaging (but not epidemiology), who produced an "unconventional" model last year and was saying a year ago that test-and-trace could defer a second wave until vaccines were available.
And in fact he is a member of Independent SAGE.
But don't let any of that deter you from believing just what you want to believe.
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
Sub half a million. Not good enough for a thursday.
There is a clear obvious problem with supply, while we also have a clear obvious problem with cases. And like anything with COVID, the longer you leave it, the worse the problem becomes very quickly.
Change the guidance on AZ and the supply problem disappears.
Actually it is implement the guidance as written.....
"the JCVI has advised a preference for adults aged 30 to 39 without underlying health conditions to receive an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – where available and only if this does not cause substantial delays in being vaccinated."
If supply is an issue the official policy is surely already to use AZ.
It clearly isn't been used, as 5m doses are sitting in a warehouse doing nothing, while they struggle to do 500k jabs a day.
Give the yuff the choice, you want a shot of AZN, you can come line up tomorrow at x. We will do as many as people turn up. If you want to wait, that's fine.
The queues will be around the block by 8am....well maybe 11am....the kids don't often get out of bed that early.
The supply issue is that we don't have enough Pfizer/Moderna to jab the under 30s quickly. The message now through various sources is that if you've had AZ more than 4 weeks ago then you can practically just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I had my first AZ 6 weeks ago, I am booked to have my 2nd in 2 weeks. However, my local main vaccination centre has sent out a message saying that on Friday and Saturday if you had AZ more than 4 weeks ago you can just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I think I might go for it.
The JCVI needs to re-work its guidance based on the current situation. Right now AZ in the arms of the under 30s is far more beneficial than it sat in a giant fridge. Like Francis says, offer the under 30s to just turn up and get jabbed with AZ. They can make an informed choice. Risks of a blood clot are less than going on a long haul flight.
Matt Hancock ought to be doing this today instead of sat in front of a select committee talking about what he should have done with the benefit of hindsight over a year ago. I'm still not convinced that we have a big issue but we ought to be jabbing as fast as we can and not be held back by some tiny risks.
The thing about the blood clot risk is now we know about it. A not insignificant part of the danger is we didn't know and thus people didn't seek medical treatment quickly, as people were told oh you might get a headache etc with this vaccine, don't worry.
I presume now those getting AZN are told to go straight to hospital should certain symptoms arise.
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.
And the sea's fine, just get in.
Are you going to write us an autoptic account of your circumnavigation of Britain in the manner of Pytheas' lost Περὶ Τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ?
Can't answer for @Ishmael_Z, obvs, but I won't be.
Are you doing one right now? I think he is!
Naah, the East coast has always looked too boring for circumnavigation to appeal. That's probably rampant prejudice and it's absolutely fascinating out there.
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?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
What unity was there when Lisbon was passed without a referendum despite the government's manifesto promising to do otherwise? What unity was there when half of Britain's rebate was pissed away on an EU promise to reform CAP, that was then reneged on? Did Thatcher seek unity with the miners?
Did Cameron seek unity with those opposed to gay marriage? Did Blair seek unity with those supporting Section 28?
Politics isn't about unity, its about making decisions and having debates. Those who lose the argument can either accept it and move on, which results in unity, or bitterly oppose it and keep fighting which makes unity impossible. It isn't on the winners to seek unity, though its popular to say that you're trying to.
Yawn yawn. I see you making the excuses to carry on bleating on your boring old "we won" narrative. Sad, as your US political role model would say.
Sub half a million. Not good enough for a thursday.
There is a clear obvious problem with supply, while we also have a clear obvious problem with cases. And like anything with COVID, the longer you leave it, the worse the problem becomes very quickly.
Change the guidance on AZ and the supply problem disappears.
Actually it is implement the guidance as written.....
"the JCVI has advised a preference for adults aged 30 to 39 without underlying health conditions to receive an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – where available and only if this does not cause substantial delays in being vaccinated."
If supply is an issue the official policy is surely already to use AZ.
It clearly isn't been used, as 5m doses are sitting in a warehouse doing nothing, while they struggle to do 500k jabs a day.
Give the yuff the choice, you want a shot of AZN, you can come line up tomorrow at x. We will do as many as people turn up. If you want to wait, that's fine.
The queues will be around the block by 8am....well maybe 11am....the kids don't often get out of bed that early.
The supply issue is that we don't have enough Pfizer/Moderna to jab the under 30s quickly. The message now through various sources is that if you've had AZ more than 4 weeks ago then you can practically just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I had my first AZ 6 weeks ago, I am booked to have my 2nd in 2 weeks. However, my local main vaccination centre has sent out a message saying that on Friday and Saturday if you had AZ more than 4 weeks ago you can just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I think I might go for it.
The JCVI needs to re-work its guidance based on the current situation. Right now AZ in the arms of the under 30s is far more beneficial than it sat in a giant fridge. Like Francis says, offer the under 30s to just turn up and get jabbed with AZ. They can make an informed choice. Risks of a blood clot are less than going on a long haul flight.
Matt Hancock ought to be doing this today instead of sat in front of a select committee talking about what he should have done with the benefit of hindsight over a year ago. I'm still not convinced that we have a big issue but we ought to be jabbing as fast as we can and not be held back by some tiny risks.
The thing about the blood clot risk is now we know about it. A not insignificant part of the danger is we didn't know and thus people didn't seek medical treatment quickly, as people were told oh you might get a headache etc with this vaccine, don't worry.
I presume now those getting AZN are told to go straight to hospital should certain symptoms arise.
Yes, I know someone who had it. All fairly scary but on road to recovery now.
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?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
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.
And the sea's fine, just get in.
Preferences are personal. But Brits do have this idiotic tendency to bash how wonderful Britain truly is. While many Brits might prefer to live elsewhere, there are many Americans, Spaniards, French, Italians etc... who would prefer to be in Britain.
Is Britain the best? There is no "Best". Does Britain have stunning natural beauty, great food, great culture, great science, great fundamental infrastructure for life? In any impartial analysis, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.
Of course, you may be skeptical as this is coming from an expat washed up on US shores. But I have lived in 7 countries, and spent more than passing time in another 50. Britain is definitely in the top bracket.
I agree with you. But Britain’s appeal lies in being mostly harmless, like the Earth in Hitchhikers. There isnt so much of the wow factor that you get in Venice or the Alps or Yellowstone or New York or Norway, but you have a lot of charmingly pleasant and inoffensive countryside.
I find, for example, the north coast of Cornwall in a storm every bit as stunning as Venice or the Alps, just in a different way.
It is funny you should say that Britain has no wow factor. I used to think that. But 1 year living in the general brownness of Yemen, and then to land at Heathrow in early May with everything in full spring green. Now that is a wow factor if you are not used to it.
For those who don't know it, I love the Beautiful Britain page on Facebook:
My employer just told everyone to continue to WAH if they want - if they require us back in office they will give us 60 days notice - Realistically then we continue to WAH until September at earliest.
Not just me. But the Zero Covid Independent SAGE zealots get a lot more media attention than those scientists saying that we have herd immunity, so I'm not surprised at your mistake in thinking it was just me.
Ironically the scientist making that claim, Karl Friston, is on Cosplay SAGE.
Kucharski pointed out that Friston's model had predicted that the second wave would peak at no more than 31 deaths per day.
The fact that covid did not become extinct in this country in the two months since also points towards that (with widespread herd immunity, yet with ongoing restrictions that drove R down still further, it should have collapsed and only exist in one or two isolated areas).
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
I think that is right both for political and moral reasons.
If we end up at 80%-90%+ take up as seems very likely not sure we need separate rules anyway.
Not just me. But the Zero Covid Independent SAGE zealots get a lot more media attention than those scientists saying that we have herd immunity, so I'm not surprised at your mistake in thinking it was just me.
This is Karl Friston, the expert in neurological imaging (but not epidemiology), who produced an "unconventional" model last year and was saying a year ago that test-and-trace could defer a second wave until vaccines were available.
And in fact he is a member of Independent SAGE.
But don't let any of that deter you from believing just what you want to believe.
Thanks for looking it up, because I wasn't going to subscribe to check the veracity of the article, but I guessed it was bollox. The DT always was crap on science, even before it became crap on most things.
One big thing in the tax world at the moment is the natural extension of home and flexible working, which is working from a different country. This is significant where multinationals have established a value chain and transfer pricing model based on all their senior people sitting in one (low tax) location. It was already under strain as it was often hard or expensive to hire people in places like Switzerland or Singapore but this is really pushing things harder.
Coupled with the global minimum tax shaving some edge off the tax benefits of being the SIS countries (Switz, Ireland, Singapore) we're expecting to see HQs sprawl ever further across multiple countries.
Not just me. But the Zero Covid Independent SAGE zealots get a lot more media attention than those scientists saying that we have herd immunity, so I'm not surprised at your mistake in thinking it was just me.
It's a tricky thing, herd immunity. If you apply it at the UK level, then it doesn't necessarily mean you can't have a big wave of cases - as that depends on the infection chains. You could probably get to herd immunity percentages by vaccinating everyone in the UK except for those in Scotland, where you vaccinate no-one (gets you somewhere near 90%). You could have a horrific wave of cases in Scotland (crudely, without lockdowns, a big majority would end up getting infected - let's assume 80% for herd immunity, so asymptotically approaching 80%).
That's clearly not the case, but we have vaccinated the old and vulnerable preferentially (for good reason) and they're probably not the major spreaders. So if your crude calculation for herd immunity is 80% it might be that you actually need a fair bit above 80% to prevent a big wave in the youngsters (how far does the chain of infection go before it gets stopped by someone in the 80%?).
(All of which is just academic observation that practical herd immunity is not that easy to determine. Not an argument eiter way on 21 June. The above was more of an issue when most mums and dads were not vaccinated at all as there's a clear child - > child -> parent -> child route aross families, schools etc which is even now being shut down. If the hospitalisation ratio is low enough for those who would get infected now then it desn't really matter anyway).
Sub half a million. Not good enough for a thursday.
There is a clear obvious problem with supply, while we also have a clear obvious problem with cases. And like anything with COVID, the longer you leave it, the worse the problem becomes very quickly.
Change the guidance on AZ and the supply problem disappears.
Which, as mentioned yesterday, is fine until the media find a photogenic young lady who gets seriously ill - or worse - as a result of her vaccine.
The clinicians have made the decision, trying to overturn it for political reasons could end very badly.
There is going to be a competition now who can boo or clap the loudest. Strange how they report the survey on what people think about who the England team is open to, but not the polling on what the public think about the gesture.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
The advice was that “gender identity or trans status” were protected under the Equality Act whereas the actual wording of the Act refers to “gender re-assignment".
Not just me. But the Zero Covid Independent SAGE zealots get a lot more media attention than those scientists saying that we have herd immunity, so I'm not surprised at your mistake in thinking it was just me.
Ironically the scientist making that claim, Karl Friston, is on Cosplay SAGE.
Kucharski pointed out that Friston's model had predicted that the second wave would peak at no more than 31 deaths per day.
The fact that covid did not become extinct in this country in the two months since also points towards that (with widespread herd immunity, yet with ongoing restrictions that drove R down still further, it should have collapsed and only exist in one or two isolated areas).
If R0 of the Indian variant really is in the 5-6 range, then we won't have herd immunity until 80-85% of the (total, not just adult) population have either been fully vaccinated or have acquired natural immunity through exposure. I think we are a ways off that yet.
Sub half a million. Not good enough for a thursday.
There is a clear obvious problem with supply, while we also have a clear obvious problem with cases. And like anything with COVID, the longer you leave it, the worse the problem becomes very quickly.
Change the guidance on AZ and the supply problem disappears.
Actually it is implement the guidance as written.....
"the JCVI has advised a preference for adults aged 30 to 39 without underlying health conditions to receive an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – where available and only if this does not cause substantial delays in being vaccinated."
If supply is an issue the official policy is surely already to use AZ.
It clearly isn't been used, as 5m doses are sitting in a warehouse doing nothing, while they struggle to do 500k jabs a day.
Give the yuff the choice, you want a shot of AZN, you can come line up tomorrow at x. We will do as many as people turn up. If you want to wait, that's fine.
The queues will be around the block by 8am....well maybe 11am....the kids don't often get out of bed that early.
The supply issue is that we don't have enough Pfizer/Moderna to jab the under 30s quickly. The message now through various sources is that if you've had AZ more than 4 weeks ago then you can practically just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I had my first AZ 6 weeks ago, I am booked to have my 2nd in 2 weeks. However, my local main vaccination centre has sent out a message saying that on Friday and Saturday if you had AZ more than 4 weeks ago you can just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I think I might go for it.
The JCVI needs to re-work its guidance based on the current situation. Right now AZ in the arms of the under 30s is far more beneficial than it sat in a giant fridge. Like Francis says, offer the under 30s to just turn up and get jabbed with AZ. They can make an informed choice. Risks of a blood clot are less than going on a long haul flight.
Matt Hancock ought to be doing this today instead of sat in front of a select committee talking about what he should have done with the benefit of hindsight over a year ago. I'm still not convinced that we have a big issue but we ought to be jabbing as fast as we can and not be held back by some tiny risks.
The JCVI guidance is perfectly clear that we should be using AZ more. It is the implementation of that, that is not happening.
The question is still about a balance of whether to give AZ to say 20 year old women , in the face of rising cases. What is the risk of Covid to them? Vs the risk of a vanishingly rare blood clot? I still think it is better to use Moderna/Pfizer for the under 40's, because the vast majority of the new cases are in school kids and most of the vulnerable are protected (and all have been offered the protection - with the exception of those who CANNOT have the vaccine).
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?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
There is going to be a competition now who can boo or clap the loudest. Strange how they report the survey on what people think about who the England team is open to, but not the polling on what the public think about the gesture.
Good on Kick It Out.
Funny how it is Kick It Out behind this and not the Marxist Party of GB as some people would imply.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
This is a constant GC talking point: that Stonewall gave incorrect & misleading advice on the law on sex based rights.
Can you point to the actual text that you believe overstepped the legal stipulation? I’d like to compare it with the recent judgement in the High Court where the attempt to have a judicial review of the EHRC guidance on the Equality Act & it’s implications was refused by the judge on the grounds that the EHRC’s interpretation of the law was the correct one.
“Schools, colleges and settings should ensure that a trans child or young person is supported to use the toilets and changing rooms they feel most comfortable with, including the facilities matching their gender.
Under the Equality Act a trans child or young person can use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender.
Under the Act, a school can only prevent a trans child or young person from using the facilities matching their gender if they can demonstrate that doing so is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, which is a high legal bar to clear. Schools, colleges and settings should also support trans children and young people to use gender-neutral facilities or a private space, if that is what they prefer. The most important thing is to talk to the child or young person rather than making assumptions about the facilities they would like to use.”
Which seems in line with the judgement in AEA vs EHRC - i.e. this is a “should”, not a “must” & exceptions can & do apply - but it’s posible that this is not the original document & that Stonewall has (rightly if so) updated the text since the judgement in that case was published.
There is this. The report for Essex University concluded that Stonewall was misrepresenting the law on free speech/
So the statement that Stonewall had misrepresented the EHRC advice is the opinion of one barrister & not a court judgement?
Obviously, a barrister’s opinion of the law carries more weight than the average numpty, but it’s not exactly definitive.
(NB. “Lesbian and Gay News” appears to be an anti-trans organisation from a quick scan of their Twitter, so I would imagine their reporting carries the same slant.)
(also they link to Graham Lineham’s blog as a source in the article you link to, which is really nailing your colours to this particular mast...)
One can assume that Akua Reindorf knows her stuff. She is very much a leader in her field, employment and discriminatiion law.
Unless the Stonewall document has been updated (which is entirely possible) I /think/ the implication of the High Court judgement on whether AEA vs EHRC can go forward (which was “Nope, get lost.”) implies that the text in Stonewall’s document was a correct interpretation of the law.
But that text includes some very specific legal language which makes me think they might have changed it, hence my request to Cyclefree for a link to the original text she was complaining about.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if this is just another soundbite opinion that Cyclefree has picked up from GC social media without actually looking at the source documents. GC social media seems very prone to spreading legal opinions that end up falling apart when they actually get into court & this is exactly the kind of hearsay smear that GC social media loves to spread around.)
Molecular evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in New York before the first pandemic wave https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23688-7.pdf Numerous reports document the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but there is limited information on its introduction before the identification of a local case. This may lead to incorrect assumptions when modeling viral origins and transmission. Here, we utilize a sample pooling strategy to screen for previously undetected SARS-CoV-2 in de-identified, respiratory pathogen-negative nasopharyngeal specimens from 3,040 patients across the Mount Sinai Health System in New York. The patients had been previously evaluated for respiratory symptoms or influenza-like illness during the first 10 weeks of 2020. We identify SARS-CoV- 2 RNA from specimens collected as early as 25 January 2020, and complete SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from multiple pools of samples collected between late February and early March, documenting an increase prior to the later surge. Our results provide evidence of sporadic SARS-CoV-2 infections a full month before both the first officially documented case and emergence of New York as a COVID-19 epicenter in March 2020.
There is going to be a competition now who can boo or clap the loudest. Strange how they report the survey on what people think about who the England team is open to, but not the polling on what the public think about the gesture.
Good on Kick It Out.
Funny how it is Kick It Out behind this and not the Marxist Party of GB as some people would imply.
Personally, I thought the cricket got it right this morning, and not a boo to be heard.
One of the authors comments... https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1402971799059632131 Also, because I see many people commenting that they already had SARS-CoV-2 in December. We actually did serology in several cases that seemed plausible (travel to China followed by respiratory disease in December) in NY and California. All negative.
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?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
If people stopped whinging about it, it would be easier to move on.
I very rarely bring the subject up myself, but I do reply to those like Scott whining about it. Then you call me a keyboard warrior for doing so, but say nothing to him since you agree with him.
I'm very happy with how things are going. Very, very happy. So when I see people whinging, why shouldn't I reply to them?
One of the authors comments... https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1402971799059632131 Also, because I see many people commenting that they already had SARS-CoV-2 in December. We actually did serology in several cases that seemed plausible (travel to China followed by respiratory disease in December) in NY and California. All negative.
Large numbers of people claiming they had in the west prior to Christmas just doesn't stand up to what we know about spread and severity. If they really did have it and not a cold, given zero precautions being taken they would have spread to so many people, we would have had hospitals been inundated with cases....especially say around Christmas, as families get to together, you hug granny etc.
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
Yes, but that's partly because they haven't laid out the sensible case and the criteria. And of course this isn't a choice between good things, it's a choice between alternative evils:
Evil 1: Let rip, and damn the consequences. Quite apart from the moral and economic impact of rapidly rising cases and hospitalisations, the headlines wouldn't be too good in that scenario, would they?
Evil 2: Screw down further or for longer, with continued very dire consequences for the economy, especially the hospitality sector, the arts, sport and entertainment, plus other knock-on effects to education and health. The headlines in that scenario? Screaming ones about how Boris broke his promise, about cancelled events, restaurants going bust etc etc.
Evil 3: Better targeted rules which allow a lot of re-opening to the vaccinated but with some 'unfairness' to those who haven't been vaccinated. Sure, screaming headlines in that case too, but it's actually the least of the three evils (and, especially, the least damaging of the three to exactly those to whom it is 'unfair'). Almost everyone who has argued against this has failed to explain why it's worse that the other two evils.
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?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
If people stopped whinging about it, it would be easier to move on.
I very rarely bring the subject up myself, but I do reply to those like Scott whining about it. Then you call me a keyboard warrior for doing so, but say nothing to him since you agree with him.
I'm very happy with how things are going. Very, very happy. So when I see people whinging, why shouldn't I reply to them?
Facebook said it will let all employees work remotely even after the pandemic if their jobs can be done out of an office, but may reduce their pay if they move to a less-expensive area
That will go down like a bucket of cold sick.
That sort of thing depends very much on the numbers.
$200k salary in the Bay Area buys you a 1 bed apartment there but a f***ton of property almost anywhere else in the US. Dropping the salary to $180k if you want to live in the Boonies makes little difference to your standard of living. Dropping it to $80k, on the other hand...
Sub half a million. Not good enough for a thursday.
There is a clear obvious problem with supply, while we also have a clear obvious problem with cases. And like anything with COVID, the longer you leave it, the worse the problem becomes very quickly.
Change the guidance on AZ and the supply problem disappears.
Actually it is implement the guidance as written.....
"the JCVI has advised a preference for adults aged 30 to 39 without underlying health conditions to receive an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – where available and only if this does not cause substantial delays in being vaccinated."
If supply is an issue the official policy is surely already to use AZ.
It clearly isn't been used, as 5m doses are sitting in a warehouse doing nothing, while they struggle to do 500k jabs a day.
Give the yuff the choice, you want a shot of AZN, you can come line up tomorrow at x. We will do as many as people turn up. If you want to wait, that's fine.
The queues will be around the block by 8am....well maybe 11am....the kids don't often get out of bed that early.
The supply issue is that we don't have enough Pfizer/Moderna to jab the under 30s quickly. The message now through various sources is that if you've had AZ more than 4 weeks ago then you can practically just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I had my first AZ 6 weeks ago, I am booked to have my 2nd in 2 weeks. However, my local main vaccination centre has sent out a message saying that on Friday and Saturday if you had AZ more than 4 weeks ago you can just turn up and get your 2nd jab. I think I might go for it.
The JCVI needs to re-work its guidance based on the current situation. Right now AZ in the arms of the under 30s is far more beneficial than it sat in a giant fridge. Like Francis says, offer the under 30s to just turn up and get jabbed with AZ. They can make an informed choice. Risks of a blood clot are less than going on a long haul flight.
Matt Hancock ought to be doing this today instead of sat in front of a select committee talking about what he should have done with the benefit of hindsight over a year ago. I'm still not convinced that we have a big issue but we ought to be jabbing as fast as we can and not be held back by some tiny risks.
The thing about the blood clot risk is now we know about it. A not insignificant part of the danger is we didn't know and thus people didn't seek medical treatment quickly, as people were told oh you might get a headache etc with this vaccine, don't worry.
I presume now those getting AZN are told to go straight to hospital should certain symptoms arise.
You presume almost correctly. On Tuesday I got my jab, with a lengthy exposition of possible indicators of clotting. Both orally and on 4 sides of an A4 leaflet. Was told to call 111 however.
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.
And the sea's fine, just get in.
Preferences are personal. But Brits do have this idiotic tendency to bash how wonderful Britain truly is. While many Brits might prefer to live elsewhere, there are many Americans, Spaniards, French, Italians etc... who would prefer to be in Britain.
Is Britain the best? There is no "Best". Does Britain have stunning natural beauty, great food, great culture, great science, great fundamental infrastructure for life? In any impartial analysis, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.
Of course, you may be skeptical as this is coming from an expat washed up on US shores. But I have lived in 7 countries, and spent more than passing time in another 50. Britain is definitely in the top bracket.
I agree with you. But Britain’s appeal lies in being mostly harmless, like the Earth in Hitchhikers. There isnt so much of the wow factor that you get in Venice or the Alps or Yellowstone or New York or Norway, but you have a lot of charmingly pleasant and inoffensive countryside.
I find, for example, the north coast of Cornwall in a storm every bit as stunning as Venice or the Alps, just in a different way.
It is funny you should say that Britain has no wow factor. I used to think that. But 1 year living in the general brownness of Yemen, and then to land at Heathrow in early May with everything in full spring green. Now that is a wow factor if you are not used to it.
Hell Yeah! When you come back to the UK after a long time somewhere else, it’s a lovely place to be.
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
Yes, but that's partly because they haven't laid out the sensible case and the criteria. And of course this isn't a choice between good things, it's a choice between alternative evils:
Evil 1: Let rip, and damn the consequences. Quite apart from the moral and economic impact of rapidly rising cases and hospitalisations, the headlines wouldn't be too good in that scenario, would they?
Evil 2: Screw down further or for longer, with continued very dire consequences for the economy, especially the hospitality sector, the arts, sport and entertainment, plus other knock-on effects to education and health. The headlines in that scenario? Screaming ones about how Boris broke his promise, about cancelled events, restaurants going bust etc etc.
Evil 3: Better targeted rules which allow a lot of re-opening to the vaccinated but with some 'unfairness' to those who haven't been vaccinated. Sure, screaming headlines in that case too, but it's actually the least of the three evils (and, especially, the least damaging of the three to exactly those to whom it is 'unfair'). Almost everyone who has argued against this has failed to explain why it's worse that the other two evils.
Its far, far worse than Evil 1.
We locked down the young quite explicitly to protect the elderly, knowing they weren't vulnerable. We've quite explicitly refused to vaccinate the young, because they weren't vulnerable, to protect the vulnerable.
Now that the vulnerable are protected you want to keep the young locked down. Why? Who are you trying to protect now?
If its the young themselves, who aren't really at risk, then let them make their own choices and risk assessment. If its the elderly, despite being vaccinated, then tell the elderly who are afraid to stay at home not the young.
One of the authors comments... https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1402971799059632131 Also, because I see many people commenting that they already had SARS-CoV-2 in December. We actually did serology in several cases that seemed plausible (travel to China followed by respiratory disease in December) in NY and California. All negative.
Large numbers of people claiming they had in the west prior to Christmas just doesn't stand up to what we know about spread and severity. If they really did have it and not a cold, given zero precautions being taken they would have spread to so many people, we would have had hospitals been inundated with cases....especially say around Christmas, as families get to together, you hug granny etc.
I believe I had it in early Feb. All the main symptoms plus a few others (eg. urinary problems) which I have subsequently discovered are also symptoms of Covid. I don't know for certain, and I have a certain degree of doubt because technically that is too early.
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
Yes, but that's partly because they haven't laid out the sensible case and the criteria. And of course this isn't a choice between good things, it's a choice between alternative evils:
Evil 1: Let rip, and damn the consequences. Quite apart from the moral and economic impact of rapidly rising cases and hospitalisations, the headlines wouldn't be too good in that scenario, would they?
Evil 2: Screw down further or for longer, with continued very dire consequences for the economy, especially the hospitality sector, the arts, sport and entertainment, plus other knock-on effects to education and health. The headlines in that scenario? Screaming ones about how Boris broke his promise, about cancelled events, restaurants going bust etc etc.
Evil 3: Better targeted rules which allow a lot of re-opening to the vaccinated but with some 'unfairness' to those who haven't been vaccinated. Sure, screaming headlines in that case too, but it's actually the least of the three evils (and, especially, the least damaging of the three to exactly those to whom it is 'unfair'). Almost everyone who has argued against this has failed to explain why it's worse that the other two evils.
If you want an opinion against option 3, Steve Baker and Dawn Butler have co-authored a piece
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?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
If people stopped whinging about it, it would be easier to move on.
I very rarely bring the subject up myself, but I do reply to those like Scott whining about it. Then you call me a keyboard warrior for doing so, but say nothing to him since you agree with him.
I'm very happy with how things are going. Very, very happy. So when I see people whinging, why shouldn't I reply to them?
Because you talk bollox?
If that was the case you'd be able to rebut my bollox instead of being desperate to just use ad hominems instead.
You can't, because I was right all along. I called Brexit right and consistently from Chequers onwards - and that gets under your skin.
Supply of Pfizer jabs 'will be particularly tight over the next few weeks', Scotland's health minister @HumzaYousaf has revealed in a letter to Matt Hancock.
Another day on PB, another 24 hours obsessing about positive tests and not the real problem – the pisspoor vaccination rate. Absolutely shite numbers today. No excuses.
One of the authors comments... https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1402971799059632131 Also, because I see many people commenting that they already had SARS-CoV-2 in December. We actually did serology in several cases that seemed plausible (travel to China followed by respiratory disease in December) in NY and California. All negative.
Large numbers of people claiming they had in the west prior to Christmas just doesn't stand up to what we know about spread and severity. If they really did have it and not a cold, given zero precautions being taken they would have spread to so many people, we would have had hospitals been inundated with cases....especially say around Christmas, as families get to together, you hug granny etc.
I believe I had it in early Feb. All the main symptoms plus a few others (eg. urinary problems) which I have subsequently discovered are also symptoms of Covid. I don't know for certain, and I have a certain degree of doubt because technically that is too early.
I think it is more plausible there were people getting it in Feb that never got tested so don't know.
Supply of Pfizer jabs 'will be particularly tight over the next few weeks', Scotland's health minister @HumzaYousaf has revealed in a letter to Matt Hancock.
While some bloke called Colin is in a warehouse getting buried under new deliveries of AZN....but boss I don't have anymore room, what another 2 million of them, I don't have space, we are bursting at the seams here.
Another day on PB, another 24 hours obsessing about positive tests and not the real problem – the pisspoor vaccination rate. Absolutely shite numbers today. No excuses.
Half a million a day is not poor.
Not when we're finishing this up now, have the over 50s all double jabbed and are down to the under-30s being first jabbed.
Our cumulative vaccination rate is one of the best in the entire world, past 100 doses per 100 population, better than any other major economy on the planet and catching up now with Israel. Yet you've called it pisspoor since it began.
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?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
If people stopped whinging about it, it would be easier to move on.
I very rarely bring the subject up myself, but I do reply to those like Scott whining about it. Then you call me a keyboard warrior for doing so, but say nothing to him since you agree with him.
I'm very happy with how things are going. Very, very happy. So when I see people whinging, why shouldn't I reply to them?
Because you talk bollox?
If that was the case you'd be able to rebut my bollox instead of being desperate to just use ad hominems instead.
You can't, because I was right all along. I called Brexit right and consistently from Chequers onwards - and that gets under your skin.
Dear me, I know you are a lot younger than me, but you do not need to be *so* childish, and for that matter so arrogant. What do you have to be arrogant about Philip? The fact that you guessed a binary question correctly? Silly boy. Get a job and get some experience of the real world.
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?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
If people stopped whinging about it, it would be easier to move on.
I very rarely bring the subject up myself, but I do reply to those like Scott whining about it. Then you call me a keyboard warrior for doing so, but say nothing to him since you agree with him.
I'm very happy with how things are going. Very, very happy. So when I see people whinging, why shouldn't I reply to them?
Because you talk bollox?
If that was the case you'd be able to rebut my bollox instead of being desperate to just use ad hominems instead.
You can't, because I was right all along. I called Brexit right and consistently from Chequers onwards - and that gets under your skin.
Dear me, I know you are a lot younger than me, but you do not need to be *so* childish, and for that matter so arrogant. What do you have to be arrogant about Philip? The fact that you guessed a binary question correctly? Silly boy. Get a job and get some experience of the real world.
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
Yes, but that's partly because they haven't laid out the sensible case and the criteria. And of course this isn't a choice between good things, it's a choice between alternative evils:
Evil 1: Let rip, and damn the consequences. Quite apart from the moral and economic impact of rapidly rising cases and hospitalisations, the headlines wouldn't be too good in that scenario, would they?
Evil 2: Screw down further or for longer, with continued very dire consequences for the economy, especially the hospitality sector, the arts, sport and entertainment, plus other knock-on effects to education and health. The headlines in that scenario? Screaming ones about how Boris broke his promise, about cancelled events, restaurants going bust etc etc.
Evil 3: Better targeted rules which allow a lot of re-opening to the vaccinated but with some 'unfairness' to those who haven't been vaccinated. Sure, screaming headlines in that case too, but it's actually the least of the three evils (and, especially, the least damaging of the three to exactly those to whom it is 'unfair'). Almost everyone who has argued against this has failed to explain why it's worse that the other two evils.
Its far, far worse than Evil 1.
We locked down the young quite explicitly to protect the elderly, knowing they weren't vulnerable. We've quite explicitly refused to vaccinate the young, because they weren't vulnerable, to protect the vulnerable.
Now that the vulnerable are protected you want to keep the young locked down. Why? Who are you trying to protect now?
If its the young themselves, who aren't really at risk, then let them make their own choices and risk assessment. If its the elderly, despite being vaccinated, then tell the elderly who are afraid to stay at home not the young.
All you are saying there is that you don't believe Evil 1 is bad. Well, it would be nice to be able to believe that, but unfortunately wanting something doesn't make it happen. And, unfortunately, all the indications at the moment are that Evil 1 is going to be really quite bad - and, most especially, bad for the youngish and the young, plus of course for those older people who for medical reasons can't be vaccinated, or for whom the vaccines don't offer full protection.
I agree that the risks to those who choose not to be vaccinated for non-medical reasons should be left of the calculation. That is their problem.
Molecular evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in New York before the first pandemic wave https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23688-7.pdf Numerous reports document the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but there is limited information on its introduction before the identification of a local case. This may lead to incorrect assumptions when modeling viral origins and transmission. Here, we utilize a sample pooling strategy to screen for previously undetected SARS-CoV-2 in de-identified, respiratory pathogen-negative nasopharyngeal specimens from 3,040 patients across the Mount Sinai Health System in New York. The patients had been previously evaluated for respiratory symptoms or influenza-like illness during the first 10 weeks of 2020. We identify SARS-CoV- 2 RNA from specimens collected as early as 25 January 2020, and complete SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from multiple pools of samples collected between late February and early March, documenting an increase prior to the later surge. Our results provide evidence of sporadic SARS-CoV-2 infections a full month before both the first officially documented case and emergence of New York as a COVID-19 epicenter in March 2020.
There was an excellent article somewhere, with an interactive timeline, that strongly suggested that the disease was everywhere in the US by 4th March 2020.
Another day on PB, another 24 hours obsessing about positive tests and not the real problem – the pisspoor vaccination rate. Absolutely shite numbers today. No excuses.
Half a million a day is not poor.
Not when we're finishing this up now, have the over 50s all double jabbed and are down to the under-30s being first jabbed.
Our cumulative vaccination rate is one of the best in the entire world, past 100 doses per 100 population, better than any other major economy on the planet and catching up now with Israel. Yet you've called it pisspoor since it began.
Not so.
I have been a vax hawk – admittedly – but I have also given credit when the numbers have been high.
Yet this last few days they have not been high, they have been poor.
There is going to be a competition now who can boo or clap the loudest. Strange how they report the survey on what people think about who the England team is open to, but not the polling on what the public think about the gesture.
Good on Kick It Out.
Funny how it is Kick It Out behind this and not the Marxist Party of GB as some people would imply.
I’d be the last person to boo those taking the knee. Yet I’d also feel pretty uncomfortable cheering it, too.
I recon most people are like me, the silent majority.
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
Yes, but that's partly because they haven't laid out the sensible case and the criteria. And of course this isn't a choice between good things, it's a choice between alternative evils:
Evil 1: Let rip, and damn the consequences. Quite apart from the moral and economic impact of rapidly rising cases and hospitalisations, the headlines wouldn't be too good in that scenario, would they?
Evil 2: Screw down further or for longer, with continued very dire consequences for the economy, especially the hospitality sector, the arts, sport and entertainment, plus other knock-on effects to education and health. The headlines in that scenario? Screaming ones about how Boris broke his promise, about cancelled events, restaurants going bust etc etc.
Evil 3: Better targeted rules which allow a lot of re-opening to the vaccinated but with some 'unfairness' to those who haven't been vaccinated. Sure, screaming headlines in that case too, but it's actually the least of the three evils (and, especially, the least damaging of the three to exactly those to whom it is 'unfair'). Almost everyone who has argued against this has failed to explain why it's worse that the other two evils.
Its far, far worse than Evil 1.
We locked down the young quite explicitly to protect the elderly, knowing they weren't vulnerable. We've quite explicitly refused to vaccinate the young, because they weren't vulnerable, to protect the vulnerable.
Now that the vulnerable are protected you want to keep the young locked down. Why? Who are you trying to protect now?
If its the young themselves, who aren't really at risk, then let them make their own choices and risk assessment. If its the elderly, despite being vaccinated, then tell the elderly who are afraid to stay at home not the young.
All you are saying there is that you don't believe Evil 1 is bad. Well, it would be nice to be able to believe that, but unfortunately wanting something doesn't make it happen. And, unfortunately, all the indications at the moment are that Evil 1 is going to be really quite bad - and, most especially, bad for the youngish and the young.
Well yes, if Evil 1 is not that bad, then its less bad than Evil 3. That's kind of the point, isn't it?
Let the youngish and the young make their own choices. If they wish to stay at home and shield let them do so, but we're down to under-30s now and they've never been high risk. What sort of levels of risk are we talking about for the young now in reality and how does it compare to eg the risk they have in being inexperienced drivers going on the road?
Lockdown was never to protect under-30s from themselves. It shouldn't be about that now.
Not just me. But the Zero Covid Independent SAGE zealots get a lot more media attention than those scientists saying that we have herd immunity, so I'm not surprised at your mistake in thinking it was just me.
Ironically the scientist making that claim, Karl Friston, is on Cosplay SAGE.
Kucharski pointed out that Friston's model had predicted that the second wave would peak at no more than 31 deaths per day.
The fact that covid did not become extinct in this country in the two months since also points towards that (with widespread herd immunity, yet with ongoing restrictions that drove R down still further, it should have collapsed and only exist in one or two isolated areas).
If R0 of the Indian variant really is in the 5-6 range, then we won't have herd immunity until 80-85% of the (total, not just adult) population have either been fully vaccinated or have acquired natural immunity through exposure. I think we are a ways off that yet.
Unfortunately true. However, we must also bear in mind that as it's not a binary on/off, we're still getting considerable benefit on the spread slowing. If we get to around the herd immunity threshold for Alpha (probably 75% or so), we'll slow it by a factor of 4, anyway. With vaccination and acquired immunity, I can see us getting to that level by sometime this month, and at least it slows R from 5-6 to 1.25-1.5 or so. Which can help considerably in slowing the spread to buy time for vaccinating yet more.
Another day on PB, another 24 hours obsessing about positive tests and not the real problem – the pisspoor vaccination rate. Absolutely shite numbers today. No excuses.
Half a million a day is not poor.
Not when we're finishing this up now, have the over 50s all double jabbed and are down to the under-30s being first jabbed.
Our cumulative vaccination rate is one of the best in the entire world, past 100 doses per 100 population, better than any other major economy on the planet and catching up now with Israel. Yet you've called it pisspoor since it began.
Not so.
I have been a vax hawk – admittedly – but I have also given credit when the numbers have been high.
Yet this last few days they have not been high, they have been poor.
No dressing that up.
Why is half a million poor, when we're down to people aged 25 to 29? How do you define poor?
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons......
....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons...... ....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
She falls into that rare category of better ex-PM than PM. A sort of British Jimmy Carter.
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons...... ....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
Another day on PB, another 24 hours obsessing about positive tests and not the real problem – the pisspoor vaccination rate. Absolutely shite numbers today. No excuses.
The only important number at this stage, is the number of people in hospital. So long as that doesn’t start growing exponentially, things are fine.
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons...... ....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
She falls into that rare category of better ex-PM than PM. A sort of British Jimmy Carter.
She appears, like Jeremy Hunt and a few others, to be providing more acute Opposition than the Labour Party.
Another day on PB, another 24 hours obsessing about positive tests and not the real problem – the pisspoor vaccination rate. Absolutely shite numbers today. No excuses.
Half a million a day is not poor.
Not when we're finishing this up now, have the over 50s all double jabbed and are down to the under-30s being first jabbed.
Our cumulative vaccination rate is one of the best in the entire world, past 100 doses per 100 population, better than any other major economy on the planet and catching up now with Israel. Yet you've called it pisspoor since it began.
We have all the over 50s double jabbed? Not unless we've finished since Tuesday, we don't. Cos at least 75% of the people I saw then at the Vax centre were 50+. Some by quite some way.
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
Yes, but that's partly because they haven't laid out the sensible case and the criteria. And of course this isn't a choice between good things, it's a choice between alternative evils:
Evil 1: Let rip, and damn the consequences. Quite apart from the moral and economic impact of rapidly rising cases and hospitalisations, the headlines wouldn't be too good in that scenario, would they?
Evil 2: Screw down further or for longer, with continued very dire consequences for the economy, especially the hospitality sector, the arts, sport and entertainment, plus other knock-on effects to education and health. The headlines in that scenario? Screaming ones about how Boris broke his promise, about cancelled events, restaurants going bust etc etc.
Evil 3: Better targeted rules which allow a lot of re-opening to the vaccinated but with some 'unfairness' to those who haven't been vaccinated. Sure, screaming headlines in that case too, but it's actually the least of the three evils (and, especially, the least damaging of the three to exactly those to whom it is 'unfair'). Almost everyone who has argued against this has failed to explain why it's worse that the other two evils.
Its far, far worse than Evil 1.
We locked down the young quite explicitly to protect the elderly, knowing they weren't vulnerable. We've quite explicitly refused to vaccinate the young, because they weren't vulnerable, to protect the vulnerable.
Now that the vulnerable are protected you want to keep the young locked down. Why? Who are you trying to protect now?
If its the young themselves, who aren't really at risk, then let them make their own choices and risk assessment. If its the elderly, despite being vaccinated, then tell the elderly who are afraid to stay at home not the young.
NB: That's not quite right. The young are not invulnerable; it's not a binary of "vulnerable" and "not vulnerable."
They are less vulnerable. Considerably so in most cases, but a non-negligible number will still get seriously ill. I do worry that the focus on emphasising how vulnerable the old were has led to that binary being implied and many seem to believe that the young are not at all vulnerable, or it is invariably nothing more than a sniffle.
About one in a hundred will need hospitalisation. If we're talking 10 million or so, that's on the order of a hundred thousand or so.
Somewhere between 5% and 20% will have long-term symptoms; a hopefully very small proportion of these will have long-lasting organ damage. That's still an unpleasant outcome, even if they're not dead.
A lot of the time people keep saying they're "not really at risk" and seem to be under the impression that the above risks don't exist. That's a bit worrying.
Supply of Pfizer jabs 'will be particularly tight over the next few weeks', Scotland's health minister @HumzaYousaf has revealed in a letter to Matt Hancock.
While some bloke called Colin is in a warehouse getting buried under new deliveries of AZN....but boss I don't have anymore room, what another 2 million of them, I don't have space, we are bursting at the seams here.
It's very clear the best use of vaccination would be Astra followed by Pfizer, yet noone is on that. Switch the planned doses round !
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons...... ....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
She falls into that rare category of better ex-PM than PM. A sort of British Jimmy Carter.
"It is incomprehensible that one of the most heavily vaccinated countries in the world is one that is most reluctant to give its citizens the freedoms those vaccinations should support"
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?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
If people stopped whinging about it, it would be easier to move on.
I very rarely bring the subject up myself, but I do reply to those like Scott whining about it. Then you call me a keyboard warrior for doing so, but say nothing to him since you agree with him.
I'm very happy with how things are going. Very, very happy. So when I see people whinging, why shouldn't I reply to them?
Because you talk bollox?
If that was the case you'd be able to rebut my bollox instead of being desperate to just use ad hominems instead.
You can't, because I was right all along. I called Brexit right and consistently from Chequers onwards - and that gets under your skin.
Dear me, I know you are a lot younger than me, but you do not need to be *so* childish, and for that matter so arrogant. What do you have to be arrogant about Philip? The fact that you guessed a binary question correctly? Silly boy. Get a job and get some experience of the real world.
More ad hominems. Don't you get tired of it?
Philip, without wishing to lower myself to your level of arrogance, I think any impartial observer would notice that when you and I have crossed swords it is rarely, if ever, that you come close to having the upper hand. Particularly on subjects that you have pontificated on such as "herd immunity" and vaccines. Both subjects that I have professional knowledge on and you talk complete nonsense. As for rebutting your bollox, it is hardly necessary. It is clearly bollox to any person reading it excepting yourself. Find a subject you know something about? Take up a hobby perhaps?
England bowler Ollie Robinson will miss Sussex's first two T20 Blast games as he takes a "short break" from cricket.
The 27-year-old seamer was suspended from international cricket on Sunday after racist and sexist tweets he posted in 2012 and 2013 were shared online.
He will miss Sussex's matches against Gloucestershire and Hampshire on Friday and Saturday respectively.
There is currently no indication when he will play again.
Not just me. But the Zero Covid Independent SAGE zealots get a lot more media attention than those scientists saying that we have herd immunity, so I'm not surprised at your mistake in thinking it was just me.
Ironically the scientist making that claim, Karl Friston, is on Cosplay SAGE.
Kucharski pointed out that Friston's model had predicted that the second wave would peak at no more than 31 deaths per day.
The fact that covid did not become extinct in this country in the two months since also points towards that (with widespread herd immunity, yet with ongoing restrictions that drove R down still further, it should have collapsed and only exist in one or two isolated areas).
If R0 of the Indian variant really is in the 5-6 range, then we won't have herd immunity until 80-85% of the (total, not just adult) population have either been fully vaccinated or have acquired natural immunity through exposure. I think we are a ways off that yet.
Unfortunately true. However, we must also bear in mind that as it's not a binary on/off, we're still getting considerable benefit on the spread slowing. If we get to around the herd immunity threshold for Alpha (probably 75% or so), we'll slow it by a factor of 4, anyway. With vaccination and acquired immunity, I can see us getting to that level by sometime this month, and at least it slows R from 5-6 to 1.25-1.5 or so. Which can help considerably in slowing the spread to buy time for vaccinating yet more.
NB: That's not quite right. The young are not invulnerable; it's not a binary of "vulnerable" and "not vulnerable."
They are less vulnerable. Considerably so in most cases, but a non-negligible number will still get seriously ill. I do worry that the focus on emphasising how vulnerable the old were has led to that binary being implied and many seem to believe that the young are not at all vulnerable, or it is invariably nothing more than a sniffle.
About one in a hundred will need hospitalisation. If we're talking 10 million or so, that's on the order of a hundred thousand or so.
Somewhere between 5% and 20% will have long-term symptoms; a hopefully very small proportion of these will have long-lasting organ damage. That's still an unpleasant outcome, even if they're not dead.
A lot of the time people keep saying they're "not really at risk" and seem to be under the impression that the above risks don't exist. That's a bit worrying.
Yes, exactly. This is a very nasty disease. Even the 'mild' cases can be really quite bad: a relative of mine is a first-year student, and contracted Covid in her first term, last Autumn. Even now, seven months later, she's still not fully recovered. And that's a 'mild' case.
Another day on PB, another 24 hours obsessing about positive tests and not the real problem – the pisspoor vaccination rate. Absolutely shite numbers today. No excuses.
Half a million a day is not poor.
Not when we're finishing this up now, have the over 50s all double jabbed and are down to the under-30s being first jabbed.
Our cumulative vaccination rate is one of the best in the entire world, past 100 doses per 100 population, better than any other major economy on the planet and catching up now with Israel. Yet you've called it pisspoor since it began.
We have all the over 50s double jabbed? Not unless we've finished since Tuesday, we don't. Cos at least 75% of the people I saw then at the Vax centre were 50+. Some by quite some way.
From the ONS antibodies survey, as of the 23rd of May, it was estimated that around 50% of 50-59s and 60% of 60-64s had been double-jabbed (so should now have gained the benefit of that).
It's around age 65 that it jumps up over 90% by then
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons...... ....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
She falls into that rare category of better ex-PM than PM. A sort of British Jimmy Carter.
She appears, like Jeremy Hunt and a few others, to be providing more acute Opposition than the Labour Party.
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons...... ....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
She falls into that rare category of better ex-PM than PM. A sort of British Jimmy Carter.
She appears, like Jeremy Hunt and a few others, to be providing more acute Opposition than the Labour Party.
Unlike her successor, her experience prior to becoming PM was pretty impressive. I think her problems started when she pivoted to a hard brexit position which appeared to have no credibility to anyone. She then surrounded herself with some very bad advisors. I hope she becomes a continuous thorn in Johnson's side.
A WOMAN who lost her job after tweeting that “male people are not women” has won a landmark employment case.
The victory for Maya Forstater, who was backed by JK Rowling and SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, means people with ‘gender critical’ beliefs must not be sacked simply for holding them.
However, they cannot express them in a way that discriminates against trans people.
Ms Cherry said the decision should end discrimination against academics, trade unionists and others like herself who had been bullied and threatened because of their beliefs.
“This judgment does not mean that those with gender-critical beliefs can ‘misgender’ trans persons with impunity.The Claimant, like everyone else, will continue to be subject to the prohibitions on discrimination and harassment that apply to everyone else. Whether or not conduct in a given situation does amount to harassment or discrimination within the meaning of EqA will be for a tribunal to determinein a given case.”
It seems that the judgement is essentially saying that GC beliefs are not grounds for dismissal, as they are philosophical beliefs & thus protected. However, if Forster acts on those beliefs then that action would be grounds for dismissal.
Do I have that right? I think that’s the court’s conclusion.
Since the whole subject of the tweets for which Forster was let go was her insistence on being able to call trans women men to their face, which the court has explictly told her she can’t do, this isn’t quite the victory she thinks it is.
Right decision IMO: uphold the law, but not the idea that mere thoughtcrime is grounds for dismissal.
I expect the GC crowd to crow about this for a few days, until eventually they realise that nothing has actually changed.
Except that isn't what she said as the judgment makes clear. This is what she said about what to call people in one of the contested tweets -
"Of course in social situations I would treat any trans-woman as an honorary female, and use whatever pronouns etc... I wouldn’t try to hurt anyone’s feelings" (see page 5 of the judgment).
The judgment does make a significant difference because it establishes the principle that:- - someone stating what is biological fact is a belief worthy of protection under the relevant legislation - it is irrelevant what others may think of that belief or indeed how dogmatically or firmly it is held - it is not for the court to determine the legitimacy of the belief (one of the errors which the Employment Tribunal made) - such protection is not dependant on whether others may be offended by such a belief (another error of the tribunal) - the tribunal was wrong to impose a requirement that she must refer to a trans woman as a woman to avoid harassment as this was a blanket restriction and it could not be said that failing to do so would in all circumstances and without knowing the context amount to harassment - see paras.103 and 104. This is a very important wider principle because it effectively states that limits on the expressions of one's belief should be the bare minimum ie that merely avoiding offence is not a sufficient reason for limiting what people can say. " the accepted evidence before the Tribunal was that she believed that it is not “incompatible to recognise that human beings cannot change sex whilst also protecting the human rights of people who identify as transgender”: see para 39.2 of the Judgment. That is not, on any view, a statement of a belief that seeks to destroy the rights of trans persons. It is a belief that might in some circumstances cause offence to trans persons, but the potential for offence cannot be a reason to exclude a belief from protection altogether."
The court went on to say that her belief that sex is immutable and binary is in fact in accordance with the law - "Where a belief or a major tenet of it appears to be in accordance with the law of the land, then it is all the more jarring that it should be declared as one not worthy of respect in a democratic society."
The whole lengthy judgment is worth reading.
I've read it. It's rigorous and coherent. But not sure it changes much. If you deliberately misgender a transperson - from their viewpoint - it may or may not be a violation of the Equality Act depending on situation and context. No change there.
What struck me in general was that - contrary to what many believe - there's a high bar for what is deemed illegal speech. There's little you can say that will get you into legal trouble, ie convicted of an offence in a court of law.
Molecular evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in New York before the first pandemic wave https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23688-7.pdf Numerous reports document the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but there is limited information on its introduction before the identification of a local case. This may lead to incorrect assumptions when modeling viral origins and transmission. Here, we utilize a sample pooling strategy to screen for previously undetected SARS-CoV-2 in de-identified, respiratory pathogen-negative nasopharyngeal specimens from 3,040 patients across the Mount Sinai Health System in New York. The patients had been previously evaluated for respiratory symptoms or influenza-like illness during the first 10 weeks of 2020. We identify SARS-CoV- 2 RNA from specimens collected as early as 25 January 2020, and complete SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from multiple pools of samples collected between late February and early March, documenting an increase prior to the later surge. Our results provide evidence of sporadic SARS-CoV-2 infections a full month before both the first officially documented case and emergence of New York as a COVID-19 epicenter in March 2020.
There was an excellent article somewhere, with an interactive timeline, that strongly suggested that the disease was everywhere in the US by 4th March 2020.
The Nature article is very solid confirmatory evidence that it was, albeit in small numbers, given New York's status as a very large transport hub.
England bowler Ollie Robinson will miss Sussex's first two T20 Blast games as he takes a "short break" from cricket.
The 27-year-old seamer was suspended from international cricket on Sunday after racist and sexist tweets he posted in 2012 and 2013 were shared online.
He will miss Sussex's matches against Gloucestershire and Hampshire on Friday and Saturday respectively.
There is currently no indication when he will play again.
Scotland players decide they WON'T take the knee at Euro 2020 and will STAND opposite England's kneeling stars in their Auld Enemy clash at Wembley after saying the anti-racism gesture's meaning has been 'diluted'
A lot of the time people keep saying they're "not really at risk" and seem to be under the impression that the above risks don't exist. That's a bit worrying.
You can't blame people for this, there's been a huge amount of discourse about "the vulnerable"
England bowler Ollie Robinson will miss Sussex's first two T20 Blast games as he takes a "short break" from cricket.
The 27-year-old seamer was suspended from international cricket on Sunday after racist and sexist tweets he posted in 2012 and 2013 were shared online.
He will miss Sussex's matches against Gloucestershire and Hampshire on Friday and Saturday respectively.
There is currently no indication when he will play again.
Does anyone know what he actually said in these tweets when he was a teenager?
You can look them up, they are widely available. From recollection there is one what I would say really bad one, many of the others highlighted are more stupid jokey ones like women can't play video games. 10 years ago, I am pretty certain it was ok to make jokes along the lines of women being poor at driving.
I caught an old clip from a few years ago of Mock the Week and Russell Howard was doing an African voice, making the insinuation that all Somali's are pirates. Now he is one of the most right on comedians these days. Paul Chowdary still does similar gags about African taxi drivers.
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
Yes, but that's partly because they haven't laid out the sensible case and the criteria. And of course this isn't a choice between good things, it's a choice between alternative evils:
Evil 1: Let rip, and damn the consequences. Quite apart from the moral and economic impact of rapidly rising cases and hospitalisations, the headlines wouldn't be too good in that scenario, would they?
Evil 2: Screw down further or for longer, with continued very dire consequences for the economy, especially the hospitality sector, the arts, sport and entertainment, plus other knock-on effects to education and health. The headlines in that scenario? Screaming ones about how Boris broke his promise, about cancelled events, restaurants going bust etc etc.
Evil 3: Better targeted rules which allow a lot of re-opening to the vaccinated but with some 'unfairness' to those who haven't been vaccinated. Sure, screaming headlines in that case too, but it's actually the least of the three evils (and, especially, the least damaging of the three to exactly those to whom it is 'unfair'). Almost everyone who has argued against this has failed to explain why it's worse that the other two evils.
Its far, far worse than Evil 1.
We locked down the young quite explicitly to protect the elderly, knowing they weren't vulnerable. We've quite explicitly refused to vaccinate the young, because they weren't vulnerable, to protect the vulnerable.
Now that the vulnerable are protected you want to keep the young locked down. Why? Who are you trying to protect now?
If its the young themselves, who aren't really at risk, then let them make their own choices and risk assessment. If its the elderly, despite being vaccinated, then tell the elderly who are afraid to stay at home not the young.
Can I just clarify - I’m not talking about vaccine passports or anything like that here. I’m talking about thing like quarantine when coming into contact with infected cases. To have people self isolating in such circumstances doesn’t make much sense to me.
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.
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.
It seems to be that a major part of the problem is the continuing failure to distinguish between vaxxed and non-vaxxed for things like self isolation etc. It means thing like rising cases represent a problem in themselves, regardless of the public health consequences because current policies require people, under criminal penalty from non compliance, to isolate when coming into contact, regardless of their vaccine status. This is bonkers.
There could be no public health risks at all, and the economy could still be brought to a grinding halt.
Government don’t want to discriminate based on vaccine status, until everyone’s been offered a vaccine. Can you imagine the headlines about ‘millennials’ and ‘boomers’?
Yes, but that's partly because they haven't laid out the sensible case and the criteria. And of course this isn't a choice between good things, it's a choice between alternative evils:
Evil 1: Let rip, and damn the consequences. Quite apart from the moral and economic impact of rapidly rising cases and hospitalisations, the headlines wouldn't be too good in that scenario, would they?
Evil 2: Screw down further or for longer, with continued very dire consequences for the economy, especially the hospitality sector, the arts, sport and entertainment, plus other knock-on effects to education and health. The headlines in that scenario? Screaming ones about how Boris broke his promise, about cancelled events, restaurants going bust etc etc.
Evil 3: Better targeted rules which allow a lot of re-opening to the vaccinated but with some 'unfairness' to those who haven't been vaccinated. Sure, screaming headlines in that case too, but it's actually the least of the three evils (and, especially, the least damaging of the three to exactly those to whom it is 'unfair'). Almost everyone who has argued against this has failed to explain why it's worse that the other two evils.
Its far, far worse than Evil 1.
We locked down the young quite explicitly to protect the elderly, knowing they weren't vulnerable. We've quite explicitly refused to vaccinate the young, because they weren't vulnerable, to protect the vulnerable.
Now that the vulnerable are protected you want to keep the young locked down. Why? Who are you trying to protect now?
If its the young themselves, who aren't really at risk, then let them make their own choices and risk assessment. If its the elderly, despite being vaccinated, then tell the elderly who are afraid to stay at home not the young.
I would agree with you as long as they are allowed to do their own risk assessment without penalty.
So no one who has not yet had the opportunity to be vaccinated should be forced to return to work. Either working from home or Furlough should remain available to them until they have been offered both jabs (or one in the case of the single jab vaccine). Nor should any employer be allowed to discriminate against anyone who has not yet been offered their jabs. No one should lose their job because they have not yet been given the opportunity to be protected.
Apart from that I would agree with you about Lockdown ending as planned.
A WOMAN who lost her job after tweeting that “male people are not women” has won a landmark employment case.
The victory for Maya Forstater, who was backed by JK Rowling and SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, means people with ‘gender critical’ beliefs must not be sacked simply for holding them.
However, they cannot express them in a way that discriminates against trans people.
Ms Cherry said the decision should end discrimination against academics, trade unionists and others like herself who had been bullied and threatened because of their beliefs.
“This judgment does not mean that those with gender-critical beliefs can ‘misgender’ trans persons with impunity.The Claimant, like everyone else, will continue to be subject to the prohibitions on discrimination and harassment that apply to everyone else. Whether or not conduct in a given situation does amount to harassment or discrimination within the meaning of EqA will be for a tribunal to determinein a given case.”
It seems that the judgement is essentially saying that GC beliefs are not grounds for dismissal, as they are philosophical beliefs & thus protected. However, if Forster acts on those beliefs then that action would be grounds for dismissal.
Do I have that right? I think that’s the court’s conclusion.
Since the whole subject of the tweets for which Forster was let go was her insistence on being able to call trans women men to their face, which the court has explictly told her she can’t do, this isn’t quite the victory she thinks it is.
Right decision IMO: uphold the law, but not the idea that mere thoughtcrime is grounds for dismissal.
I expect the GC crowd to crow about this for a few days, until eventually they realise that nothing has actually changed.
Except that isn't what she said as the judgment makes clear. This is what she said about what to call people in one of the contested tweets -
"Of course in social situations I would treat any trans-woman as an honorary female, and use whatever pronouns etc... I wouldn’t try to hurt anyone’s feelings" (see page 5 of the judgment).
The judgment does make a significant difference because it establishes the principle that:- - someone stating what is biological fact is a belief worthy of protection under the relevant legislation - it is irrelevant what others may think of that belief or indeed how dogmatically or firmly it is held - it is not for the court to determine the legitimacy of the belief (one of the errors which the Employment Tribunal made) - such protection is not dependant on whether others may be offended by such a belief (another error of the tribunal) - the tribunal was wrong to impose a requirement that she must refer to a trans woman as a woman to avoid harassment as this was a blanket restriction and it could not be said that failing to do so would in all circumstances and without knowing the context amount to harassment - see paras.103 and 104. This is a very important wider principle because it effectively states that limits on the expressions of one's belief should be the bare minimum ie that merely avoiding offence is not a sufficient reason for limiting what people can say. " the accepted evidence before the Tribunal was that she believed that it is not “incompatible to recognise that human beings cannot change sex whilst also protecting the human rights of people who identify as transgender”: see para 39.2 of the Judgment. That is not, on any view, a statement of a belief that seeks to destroy the rights of trans persons. It is a belief that might in some circumstances cause offence to trans persons, but the potential for offence cannot be a reason to exclude a belief from protection altogether."
The court went on to say that her belief that sex is immutable and binary is in fact in accordance with the law - "Where a belief or a major tenet of it appears to be in accordance with the law of the land, then it is all the more jarring that it should be declared as one not worthy of respect in a democratic society."
The whole lengthy judgment is worth reading.
I've read it. It's rigorous and coherent. But not sure it changes much. If you deliberately misgender a transperson - from their viewpoint - it may or may not be a violation of the Equality Act depending on situation and context. No change there.
What struck me in general was that - contrary to what many believe - there's a high bar for what is deemed illegal speech. There's little you can say that will get you into legal trouble, ie convicted of an offence in a court of law.
As it should be. The problem is more around workplaces, some of which have installed a very low and continually lowering bar on speech that gets you fired.
NB: That's not quite right. The young are not invulnerable; it's not a binary of "vulnerable" and "not vulnerable."
They are less vulnerable. Considerably so in most cases, but a non-negligible number will still get seriously ill. I do worry that the focus on emphasising how vulnerable the old were has led to that binary being implied and many seem to believe that the young are not at all vulnerable, or it is invariably nothing more than a sniffle.
About one in a hundred will need hospitalisation. If we're talking 10 million or so, that's on the order of a hundred thousand or so.
Somewhere between 5% and 20% will have long-term symptoms; a hopefully very small proportion of these will have long-lasting organ damage. That's still an unpleasant outcome, even if they're not dead.
A lot of the time people keep saying they're "not really at risk" and seem to be under the impression that the above risks don't exist. That's a bit worrying.
Yes, exactly. This is a very nasty disease. Even the 'mild' cases can be really quite bad: a relative of mine is a first-year student, and contracted Covid in her first term, last Autumn. Even now, seven months later, she's still not fully recovered. And that's a 'mild' case.
"Mild" has been misused, but I have known people with genuinely very mild cases. I half wonder if those are described as asymptomatic when in fact they aren't, but they are mild. There's been a failure of language all around.
Scotland players decide they WON'T take the knee at Euro 2020 and will STAND opposite England's kneeling stars in their Auld Enemy clash at Wembley after saying the anti-racism gesture's meaning has been 'diluted'
Scotland players decide they WON'T take the knee at Euro 2020 and will STAND opposite England's kneeling stars in their Auld Enemy clash at Wembley after saying the anti-racism gesture's meaning has been 'diluted'
Another day on PB, another 24 hours obsessing about positive tests and not the real problem – the pisspoor vaccination rate. Absolutely shite numbers today. No excuses.
Half a million a day is not poor.
Not when we're finishing this up now, have the over 50s all double jabbed and are down to the under-30s being first jabbed.
Our cumulative vaccination rate is one of the best in the entire world, past 100 doses per 100 population, better than any other major economy on the planet and catching up now with Israel. Yet you've called it pisspoor since it began.
We have all the over 50s double jabbed? Not unless we've finished since Tuesday, we don't. Cos at least 75% of the people I saw then at the Vax centre were 50+. Some by quite some way.
From the ONS antibodies survey, as of the 23rd of May, it was estimated that around 50% of 50-59s and 60% of 60-64s had been double-jabbed (so should now have gained the benefit of that).
It's around age 65 that it jumps up over 90% by then
Indeed. I'm 54. I booked my jab for the first available date. And brought forward my second to the earliest date available. That got me done on Tuesday. Yet I often see "all the vulnerable have been double jabbed" asserted. It simply isn't so. Moreover, there were a few there two days ago who couldn't walk unaided, plenty obese, and some who couldn't stand in the queue for 15 minutes. So it isn't even that we are down to the otherwise healthy over 50's either. So we are looking at June 21 at the earliest for protection.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
This is a constant GC talking point: that Stonewall gave incorrect & misleading advice on the law on sex based rights.
Can you point to the actual text that you believe overstepped the legal stipulation? I’d like to compare it with the recent judgement in the High Court where the attempt to have a judicial review of the EHRC guidance on the Equality Act & it’s implications was refused by the judge on the grounds that the EHRC’s interpretation of the law was the correct one.
“Schools, colleges and settings should ensure that a trans child or young person is supported to use the toilets and changing rooms they feel most comfortable with, including the facilities matching their gender.
Under the Equality Act a trans child or young person can use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender.
Under the Act, a school can only prevent a trans child or young person from using the facilities matching their gender if they can demonstrate that doing so is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, which is a high legal bar to clear. Schools, colleges and settings should also support trans children and young people to use gender-neutral facilities or a private space, if that is what they prefer. The most important thing is to talk to the child or young person rather than making assumptions about the facilities they would like to use.”
Which seems in line with the judgement in AEA vs EHRC - i.e. this is a “should”, not a “must” & exceptions can & do apply - but it’s posible that this is not the original document & that Stonewall has (rightly if so) updated the text since the judgement in that case was published.
There is this. The report for Essex University concluded that Stonewall was misrepresenting the law on free speech/
So the statement that Stonewall had misrepresented the EHRC advice is the opinion of one barrister & not a court judgement?
Obviously, a barrister’s opinion of the law carries more weight than the average numpty, but it’s not exactly definitive.
(NB. “Lesbian and Gay News” appears to be an anti-trans organisation from a quick scan of their Twitter, so I would imagine their reporting carries the same slant.)
Well this is what Stonewall themselves have said - https://twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/1307598543729852416?s=21. Now, while it is correct that trans people get the benefit of the Equality Act, it is also correct that there are some important exceptions and those are sex-based not gender-based exemptions. Stonewall is campaigning to remove such sex-based rights and exemptions and its statement here is inaccurate. It is describing the law as it wants it to be not as it is.
Stonewall gets money from lots of organisations for advising on their policies etc. The very least it should be expected to do is not misrepresent the law when giving out that advice. It is not, after all, hard to get legal advice on what the current law actually says.
When called out on these mistakes its reaction is not to apologise and correct them but to accuse those pointing these mistakes out of conducting some bad faith campaign against it. It seems to think that it should be beyond criticism and that to do so is to make one a bigot.
"Mild" has been misused, but I have known people with genuinely very mild cases.
Oh, certainly. Most cases, in fact, even in the older groups. But a few percent of a very large number is still a lot of people. And that's the point - it may well drive the government to lock down everyone (including the young that @Philip_Thompson is rightly concerned about) for longer, because of fear of a theoretical and temporary 'unfairness'.
England bowler Ollie Robinson will miss Sussex's first two T20 Blast games as he takes a "short break" from cricket.
The 27-year-old seamer was suspended from international cricket on Sunday after racist and sexist tweets he posted in 2012 and 2013 were shared online.
He will miss Sussex's matches against Gloucestershire and Hampshire on Friday and Saturday respectively.
There is currently no indication when he will play again.
Does anyone know what he actually said in these tweets when he was a teenager?
You can look them up, they are widely available. From recollection there is one what I would say really bad one, many of the others highlighted are more stupid jokey ones like women can't play video games.
OK, seen them, the worst one not nice, but I think he said sorry and seemed to mean it? Is apology and rehabilitation not a thing anymore? If this is a disciplinary matter, which it is fair it should be, there should be an adjudication in short order and punishment of some sort that reflects gravity but also mitigates against the fact he was 18 perhaps? To leave it unresolved will be terrible mentally for him and his family.
Just switched on TV to see Boris and Joe with their wives at Carbis Bay, and to be honest very good media coverage until Boris and Joe sat down in front of their flags
The media, led by Laura Kuenssberg, went completely out of control, hysterically shouting questions and were an utter embarrassment, so much so Boris shaking his head turned to Joe with a look of utter dismay
"Mild" has been misused, but I have known people with genuinely very mild cases. I half wonder if those are described as asymptomatic when in fact they aren't, but they are mild. There's been a failure of language all around.
The original author whose paper so much of the coverage of what percentage get a "mild" case has said he really regrets using that term. He used it to refer to the group, whose reaction was mild enough that they didn't need hospital treatment, he didn't mean that it was mild in the sense of man flu.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
This is a constant GC talking point: that Stonewall gave incorrect & misleading advice on the law on sex based rights.
Can you point to the actual text that you believe overstepped the legal stipulation? I’d like to compare it with the recent judgement in the High Court where the attempt to have a judicial review of the EHRC guidance on the Equality Act & it’s implications was refused by the judge on the grounds that the EHRC’s interpretation of the law was the correct one.
“Schools, colleges and settings should ensure that a trans child or young person is supported to use the toilets and changing rooms they feel most comfortable with, including the facilities matching their gender.
Under the Equality Act a trans child or young person can use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender.
Under the Act, a school can only prevent a trans child or young person from using the facilities matching their gender if they can demonstrate that doing so is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, which is a high legal bar to clear. Schools, colleges and settings should also support trans children and young people to use gender-neutral facilities or a private space, if that is what they prefer. The most important thing is to talk to the child or young person rather than making assumptions about the facilities they would like to use.”
Which seems in line with the judgement in AEA vs EHRC - i.e. this is a “should”, not a “must” & exceptions can & do apply - but it’s posible that this is not the original document & that Stonewall has (rightly if so) updated the text since the judgement in that case was published.
There is this. The report for Essex University concluded that Stonewall was misrepresenting the law on free speech/
So the statement that Stonewall had misrepresented the EHRC advice is the opinion of one barrister & not a court judgement?
Obviously, a barrister’s opinion of the law carries more weight than the average numpty, but it’s not exactly definitive.
(NB. “Lesbian and Gay News” appears to be an anti-trans organisation from a quick scan of their Twitter, so I would imagine their reporting carries the same slant.)
(also they link to Graham Lineham’s blog as a source in the article you link to, which is really nailing your colours to this particular mast...)
One can assume that Akua Reindorf knows her stuff. She is very much a leader in her field, employment and discriminatiion law.
Unless the Stonewall document has been updated (which is entirely possible) I /think/ the implication of the High Court judgement on whether AEA vs EHRC can go forward (which was “Nope, get lost.”) implies that the text in Stonewall’s document was a correct interpretation of the law.
But that text includes some very specific legal language which makes me think they might have changed it, hence my request to Cyclefree for a link to the original text she was complaining about.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if this is just another soundbite opinion that Cyclefree has picked up from GC social media without actually looking at the source documents. GC social media seems very prone to spreading legal opinions that end up falling apart when they actually get into court & this is exactly the kind of hearsay smear that GC social media loves to spread around.)
My understanding of this is the same as yours, ie Stonewall have done nothing scandalous at all here. Indeed the scandal is how they are suddenly being monstered by all and sundry. But I'm open to further info/debate on it.
Just switched on TV to see Boris and Joe with their wives at Carbis Bay, and to be honest very good media coverage until Boris and Joe sat down in front of their flags
The media, led by Laura Kuenssberg, went completely out of control, hysterically shouting questions and were an utter embarrassment, so much so Boris shaking his head turned to Joe with a look of utter dismay
We deserve better, much better, from our media
I hate this importation of the American media way of just screaming questions at people.
England bowler Ollie Robinson will miss Sussex's first two T20 Blast games as he takes a "short break" from cricket.
The 27-year-old seamer was suspended from international cricket on Sunday after racist and sexist tweets he posted in 2012 and 2013 were shared online.
He will miss Sussex's matches against Gloucestershire and Hampshire on Friday and Saturday respectively.
There is currently no indication when he will play again.
Does anyone know what he actually said in these tweets when he was a teenager?
You can look them up, they are widely available. From recollection there is one what I would say really bad one, many of the others highlighted are more stupid jokey ones like women can't play video games.
OK, seen them, the worst one not nice, but I think he said sorry and seemed to mean it? Is apology and rehabilitation not a thing anymore? If this is a disciplinary matter, which it is fair it should be, there should be an adjudication in short order and punishment of some sort that reflects gravity but also mitigates against the fact he was 18 perhaps? To leave it unresolved will be terrible mentally for him and his family.
The ECB have totally thrown him under the bus. Before the first test, he did media saying well when I was 18/19, I was a total bellend, I was sacked, it was the kick up the arse I needed and I have rebuilt my career. Then these tweets were highlighted, the ECB made him go out and do a hostage style video to apologise.
One would have thought that would be the end of it.
Instead, the ECB then said, no, not enough, suspended while we investigate. I mean, surely they could have a) asked him and b) doesn't take more than a few days to check out his past social media and c) rung round some county people and said, is he still a bellend, have you ever heard him make racist comments.
They could have resolved all this by the end of the first test. Drawn a line under it, with perhaps an interview with a friendly journalist where he again tells his story and apologises.
"Mild" has been misused, but I have known people with genuinely very mild cases. I half wonder if those are described as asymptomatic when in fact they aren't, but they are mild. There's been a failure of language all around.
The original author whose paper so much of the coverage of what percentage get a "mild" case has said he really regrets using that term. He used it to refer to the group, whose reaction was mild enough that they didn't need hospital treatment, he didn't mean that it was mild in the sense of man flu.
What was his "moderate" meaning - requires oxygen ?!
"Mild" has been misused, but I have known people with genuinely very mild cases.
Oh, certainly. Most cases, in fact, even in the older groups. But a few percent of a very large number is still a lot of people. And that's the point - it may well drive the government to lock down everyone (including the young that @Philip_Thompson is rightly concerned about) for longer, because of fear of a theoretical and temporary 'unfairness'.
Politically, I don't think any tightening of restrictions will be stomached. Most definitely not from the backbenches. Gove and Boris are still talking of removal of restrictions. This is the direction of travel.
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.
That's the Brits with Irish passports :-) .
From a historical military perspective it is Canada, Australia and then USA. In terms of useful proximity and relative shared values Ireland has a reasonable claim. Really depends how you define "ally"? France is probably the least reliable.
Comments
And in fact he is a member of Independent SAGE.
But don't let any of that deter you from believing just what you want to believe.
I presume now those getting AZN are told to go straight to hospital should certain symptoms arise.
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
https://www.facebook.com/groups/143520235831162/?multi_permalinks=1791885304327972¬if_id=1622937181815067¬if_t=group_highlights&ref=notif
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-uk-herd-immunity-vaccine-latest-b1828491.html
Kucharski pointed out that Friston's model had predicted that the second wave would peak at no more than 31 deaths per day.
The fact that covid did not become extinct in this country in the two months since also points towards that (with widespread herd immunity, yet with ongoing restrictions that drove R down still further, it should have collapsed and only exist in one or two isolated areas).
If we end up at 80%-90%+ take up as seems very likely not sure we need separate rules anyway.
Coupled with the global minimum tax shaving some edge off the tax benefits of being the SIS countries (Switz, Ireland, Singapore) we're expecting to see HQs sprawl ever further across multiple countries.
Is keeping me very busy this year.
The Lake District, Peak District, Yorkshire Dales, Antrim Coast, South Devon Coast Isles of Arran and Mull are as beautiful as anywhere.
That's clearly not the case, but we have vaccinated the old and vulnerable preferentially (for good reason) and they're probably not the major spreaders. So if your crude calculation for herd immunity is 80% it might be that you actually need a fair bit above 80% to prevent a big wave in the youngsters (how far does the chain of infection go before it gets stopped by someone in the 80%?).
(All of which is just academic observation that practical herd immunity is not that easy to determine. Not an argument eiter way on 21 June. The above was more of an issue when most mums and dads were not vaccinated at all as there's a clear child - > child -> parent -> child route aross families, schools etc which is even now being shut down. If the hospitalisation ratio is low enough for those who would get infected now then it desn't really matter anyway).
The clinicians have made the decision, trying to overturn it for political reasons could end very badly.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/57425746
There is going to be a competition now who can boo or clap the loudest. Strange how they report the survey on what people think about who the England team is open to, but not the polling on what the public think about the gesture.
Is that also your understanding of this?
Funny how it is Kick It Out behind this and not the Marxist Party of GB as some people would imply.
But that text includes some very specific legal language which makes me think they might have changed it, hence my request to Cyclefree for a link to the original text she was complaining about.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if this is just another soundbite opinion that Cyclefree has picked up from GC social media without actually looking at the source documents. GC social media seems very prone to spreading legal opinions that end up falling apart when they actually get into court & this is exactly the kind of hearsay smear that GC social media loves to spread around.)
Molecular evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in New York before the first pandemic wave
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23688-7.pdf
Numerous reports document the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but there is limited information on its introduction before the identification of a local case. This may lead to incorrect assumptions when modeling viral origins and transmission. Here, we utilize a sample pooling strategy to screen for previously undetected SARS-CoV-2 in de-identified, respiratory pathogen-negative nasopharyngeal specimens from 3,040 patients across the Mount Sinai Health System in New York. The patients had been previously evaluated for respiratory symptoms or influenza-like illness during the first 10 weeks of 2020. We identify SARS-CoV- 2 RNA from specimens collected as early as 25 January 2020, and complete SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from multiple pools of samples collected between late February and early March, documenting an increase prior to the later surge. Our results provide evidence of sporadic SARS-CoV-2 infections a full month before both the first officially documented case and emergence of New York as a COVID-19 epicenter in March 2020.
https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1402971799059632131
Also, because I see many people commenting that they already had SARS-CoV-2 in December. We actually did serology in several cases that seemed plausible (travel to China followed by respiratory disease in December) in NY and California. All negative.
I very rarely bring the subject up myself, but I do reply to those like Scott whining about it. Then you call me a keyboard warrior for doing so, but say nothing to him since you agree with him.
I'm very happy with how things are going. Very, very happy. So when I see people whinging, why shouldn't I reply to them?
Evil 1: Let rip, and damn the consequences. Quite apart from the moral and economic impact of rapidly rising cases and hospitalisations, the headlines wouldn't be too good in that scenario, would they?
Evil 2: Screw down further or for longer, with continued very dire consequences for the economy, especially the hospitality sector, the arts, sport and entertainment, plus other knock-on effects to education and health. The headlines in that scenario? Screaming ones about how Boris broke his promise, about cancelled events, restaurants going bust etc etc.
Evil 3: Better targeted rules which allow a lot of re-opening to the vaccinated but with some 'unfairness' to those who haven't been vaccinated. Sure, screaming headlines in that case too, but it's actually the least of the three evils (and, especially, the least damaging of the three to exactly those to whom it is 'unfair'). Almost everyone who has argued against this has failed to explain why it's worse that the other two evils.
$200k salary in the Bay Area buys you a 1 bed apartment there but a f***ton of property almost anywhere else in the US. Dropping the salary to $180k if you want to live in the Boonies makes little difference to your standard of living. Dropping it to $80k, on the other hand...
Was told to call 111 however.
We locked down the young quite explicitly to protect the elderly, knowing they weren't vulnerable. We've quite explicitly refused to vaccinate the young, because they weren't vulnerable, to protect the vulnerable.
Now that the vulnerable are protected you want to keep the young locked down. Why? Who are you trying to protect now?
If its the young themselves, who aren't really at risk, then let them make their own choices and risk assessment. If its the elderly, despite being vaccinated, then tell the elderly who are afraid to stay at home not the young.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/covid-certificates-inequality-checkpoint-britain-government-1039519
You can't, because I was right all along. I called Brexit right and consistently from Chequers onwards - and that gets under your skin.
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1402993204983603206?s=20
Not when we're finishing this up now, have the over 50s all double jabbed and are down to the under-30s being first jabbed.
Our cumulative vaccination rate is one of the best in the entire world, past 100 doses per 100 population, better than any other major economy on the planet and catching up now with Israel. Yet you've called it pisspoor since it began.
I agree that the risks to those who choose not to be vaccinated for non-medical reasons should be left of the calculation. That is their problem.
I have been a vax hawk – admittedly – but I have also given credit when the numbers have been high.
Yet this last few days they have not been high, they have been poor.
No dressing that up.
I recon most people are like me, the silent majority.
Let the youngish and the young make their own choices. If they wish to stay at home and shield let them do so, but we're down to under-30s now and they've never been high risk. What sort of levels of risk are we talking about for the young now in reality and how does it compare to eg the risk they have in being inexperienced drivers going on the road?
Lockdown was never to protect under-30s from themselves. It shouldn't be about that now.
However, we must also bear in mind that as it's not a binary on/off, we're still getting considerable benefit on the spread slowing. If we get to around the herd immunity threshold for Alpha (probably 75% or so), we'll slow it by a factor of 4, anyway.
With vaccination and acquired immunity, I can see us getting to that level by sometime this month, and at least it slows R from 5-6 to 1.25-1.5 or so. Which can help considerably in slowing the spread to buy time for vaccinating yet more.
....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up"
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
Very well articulated.
Not unless we've finished since Tuesday, we don't.
Cos at least 75% of the people I saw then at the Vax centre were 50+. Some by quite some way.
The young are not invulnerable; it's not a binary of "vulnerable" and "not vulnerable."
They are less vulnerable. Considerably so in most cases, but a non-negligible number will still get seriously ill.
I do worry that the focus on emphasising how vulnerable the old were has led to that binary being implied and many seem to believe that the young are not at all vulnerable, or it is invariably nothing more than a sniffle.
About one in a hundred will need hospitalisation. If we're talking 10 million or so, that's on the order of a hundred thousand or so.
Somewhere between 5% and 20% will have long-term symptoms; a hopefully very small proportion of these will have long-lasting organ damage. That's still an unpleasant outcome, even if they're not dead.
A lot of the time people keep saying they're "not really at risk" and seem to be under the impression that the above risks don't exist. That's a bit worrying.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402995180509171717?s=20
The 27-year-old seamer was suspended from international cricket on Sunday after racist and sexist tweets he posted in 2012 and 2013 were shared online.
He will miss Sussex's matches against Gloucestershire and Hampshire on Friday and Saturday respectively.
There is currently no indication when he will play again.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/57432180
It's around age 65 that it jumps up over 90% by then
What struck me in general was that - contrary to what many believe - there's a high bar for what is deemed illegal speech. There's little you can say that will get you into legal trouble, ie convicted of an offence in a court of law.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-9672949/Scotland-confirm-NOT-knee-Euro-2020-manager-Steve-Clarke-held-meeting.html
I caught an old clip from a few years ago of Mock the Week and Russell Howard was doing an African voice, making the insinuation that all Somali's are pirates. Now he is one of the most right on comedians these days. Paul Chowdary still does similar gags about African taxi drivers.
So no one who has not yet had the opportunity to be vaccinated should be forced to return to work. Either working from home or Furlough should remain available to them until they have been offered both jabs (or one in the case of the single jab vaccine). Nor should any employer be allowed to discriminate against anyone who has not yet been offered their jabs. No one should lose their job because they have not yet been given the opportunity to be protected.
Apart from that I would agree with you about Lockdown ending as planned.
Yet I often see "all the vulnerable have been double jabbed" asserted.
It simply isn't so.
Moreover, there were a few there two days ago who couldn't walk unaided, plenty obese, and some who couldn't stand in the queue for 15 minutes.
So it isn't even that we are down to the otherwise healthy over 50's either.
So we are looking at June 21 at the earliest for protection.
The review by Essex University can be read here - https://www.essex.ac.uk/blog/posts/2021/05/17/review-of-two-events-with-external-speakers.
Stonewall gets money from lots of organisations for advising on their policies etc. The very least it should be expected to do is not misrepresent the law when giving out that advice. It is not, after all, hard to get legal advice on what the current law actually says.
When called out on these mistakes its reaction is not to apologise and correct them but to accuse those pointing these mistakes out of conducting some bad faith campaign against it. It seems to think that it should be beyond criticism and that to do so is to make one a bigot.
Just switched on TV to see Boris and Joe with their wives at Carbis Bay, and to be honest very good media coverage until Boris and Joe sat down in front of their flags
The media, led by Laura Kuenssberg, went completely out of control, hysterically shouting questions and were an utter embarrassment, so much so Boris shaking his head turned to Joe with a look of utter dismay
We deserve better, much better, from our media
One would have thought that would be the end of it.
Instead, the ECB then said, no, not enough, suspended while we investigate. I mean, surely they could have a) asked him and b) doesn't take more than a few days to check out his past social media and c) rung round some county people and said, is he still a bellend, have you ever heard him make racist comments.
They could have resolved all this by the end of the first test. Drawn a line under it, with perhaps an interview with a friendly journalist where he again tells his story and apologises.
And then we move on.
US President Joe Biden tells Boris Johnson he is "thrilled" to meet his new wife Carrie Johnson
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1403000551105728512
https://order-order.com/2021/06/10/time-to-break-up-the-murdoch-media-empire/
Sounds like a good plot for a tv show...it could be called succession or something ;-)