Surely this is the terminal spasm of a dying culture. Apparently political discourse is now universally mediated by the visual metaphor of fake walls being breached by fat middle aged white men. We can only hope the cetacean civilisation that will follow our very welcome extinction will be better.
That mallet is so small. Bit cringey tbh
You’re not thinking deep enough.
That a very small mallet demolished the blue wall is the point
She's just like Katie Hopkins, an early and sincere apology would save her so much money and a likely bankruptcy.
And probably stopped writing the fake news pieces every Sunday...of course now she is onto non-Independent SAGE propaganda.
I am sure the Observer say well we get lots of hits on her pieces, but it can't be doing the papers reputation any good. Mail was tarred with Hopkins rants.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
As I said many months ago, Big Pharma has the cleverest people and the best lawyers of any kind of organisation in the world, it was never very likely they had stuffed up on contractual obligations at this level . This was a diversionary tactic by the Commission to detract from Ursula's cock up. Our government, on the other hand, would never engage in such posturing. Remember World Beating Track and Trace. No? You are not meant to.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
OK, OK, this is Dom C going off on one, but a) he was right about this question, wasn't he? b) why did he work so hard to get "a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government" a huge majority?
7/ Pundits: not doing ANeil 'a huge campaign blunder' Me: why the fu*k wd be put a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government up to be grilled for ages, upside=0 for what?! This is not a hard decision... Pundits don't understand comms, power or management. Tune out!
Ah, the central paradox of DC. Total disdain for the politicians he works so hard to get into power.
I think he just enjoys solving the puzzle of “hacking” elections more than he cares to admit - it feeds his ego to work out how to prod the electorate “just so” & confound his opponents. What he’s actually campaining for is beside the point.
Yes I think so. He oozes intellectual arrogance. But not of the comfortable sort. It's all very chippy.
Guido says crowdfunders are paying the bill. Is she still raising money? Or is Guido suggesting that anyone that gave her money to begin with will be landed with the bill?
Maybe Sir Keir is a better 4D chess player than Dominic Cummings? He has done worse in both by Elections than his predecessor managed in the seats, but this shows he is doing better!
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
Knives out for Keir after the Chesham & Amersham by-election disaster. Hearing that supporters of Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1405864465975988227
Total nonsense for the Sun to make Chesham & Amersham into some kind of repudiation of Starmer rather than Johnson.
Hartlepool, fair enough. Batley & Spen, if it's lost, ditto. But Labour and Green voters in Chesham & Amersham simply made what was very obviously the choice best calculated to harm the Conservative Party. Sometimes, things are as simple as they appear.
If the Lib Dems are threatening the Tories in their Home Counties heartlands it is actually great news for Labour. It means the Tories have to shore up their support in the South and so it diminishes their ability to lavish money and attention on the Red Wall. Fighting a war on two fronts is always challenging.
If Labour is going backwards compared even to Corbyn in every single electoral test maybe that is not such great news.
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER. B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
The upper estimate in Scotland is 1 in 380, England 1 in 440.
And the lower bound for Scotland is 1 in 1,070 vs 1 in 620 for England.
You had such a great anti-Nippy point scoring talking point. I feel for you to have it so cruelly yanked away.
On the anniversary of Waterloo I feel Nipoleon should be used at all times on this day.
18th June 1815. Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo leads to peace in Europe and Abba’s first ever number one.
Huzzah for the Seventh Coalition.
A battle won by the Prussians, not to mention the Irish, Dutch-Belgians and assorted Germans, yet claimed exclusively by the British….
In France, it’s seen as a French victory that went wrong at the last moment.
In fairness, the performance of Napoleon and his army during the Waterloo campaign as a whole was outstanding, given the huge odds against them. But winning three battles doesn’t matter if you lose the last and most important.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
The upper estimate in Scotland is 1 in 380, England 1 in 440.
And the lower bound for Scotland is 1 in 1,070 vs 1 in 620 for England.
You had such a great anti-Nippy point scoring talking point. I feel for you to have it so cruelly yanked away.
On the anniversary of Waterloo I feel Nipoleon should be used at all times on this day.
18th June 1815. Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo leads to peace in Europe and Abba’s first ever number one.
Huzzah for the Seventh Coalition.
A battle won by the Prussians, not to mention the Irish, Dutch-Belgians and assorted Germans, yet claimed exclusively by the British….
In France, it’s seen as a French victory that went wrong at the last moment.
In fairness, the performance of Napoleon and his army during the Waterloo campaign as a whole was outstanding, given the huge odds against them. But winning three battles doesn’t matter if you lose the last and most important.
He could easily have won Waterloo, had he (and Ney) played the battle more sensibly. But he was surely doomed anyway, with large Austrian and Russian armies marching towards him.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
As it’s revealed UK food and drink exports to the EU have almost halved, No 10 says it’s only a temporary 15-year blip while we wait for the benefits of the Australian trade deal. https://twitter.com/haveigotnews/status/1405861749895708679
Amazing how spin works :-) .
Huge fall in January - recovery since.
But if you take the average you can make it look worse than it is.
That's what BLM do with deaths-in-custody statistics, to avoid admitting that they are now 75% lower than in 1990.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
Knives out for Keir after the Chesham & Amersham by-election disaster. Hearing that supporters of Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1405864465975988227
Total nonsense for the Sun to make Chesham & Amersham into some kind of repudiation of Starmer rather than Johnson.
Hartlepool, fair enough. Batley & Spen, if it's lost, ditto. But Labour and Green voters in Chesham & Amersham simply made what was very obviously the choice best calculated to harm the Conservative Party. Sometimes, things are as simple as they appear.
If the Lib Dems are threatening the Tories in their Home Counties heartlands it is actually great news for Labour. It means the Tories have to shore up their support in the South and so it diminishes their ability to lavish money and attention on the Red Wall. Fighting a war on two fronts is always challenging.
If Labour is going backwards compared even to Corbyn in every single electoral test maybe that is not such great news.
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER. B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
SKS is a demon strategist.
He has worked out that opposition to the Tories is going nowhere until Labour realises it cannot win a majority alone.
The sooner his party realises this, the better. And you can’t fault him for doing his best to ram the point home.
As soon as governments start talking about listening you know they are fucked. We all remember the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul that was the last days of Gormless Brown's reign of terror. There was a lot of 'listening' going on then too.
I will hear no ill word said against the man who stopped Blair from taking us into the €.
I don't think it was him. It was the good sense and judgement of the British people. Had they been more in favour, he wouldn't have been able to stop Blair.
Also back then we had an opposition that bothered to oppose.
Well I don’t know about that. Hague fought an election on "Save the Pound!" (in that odd voice of his) and got buried.
Just an FYI if any of you ever meet John Bercow tell him that you're a huge fan of his and his political judgment, tell him you really liked his Monday Club days, when they supported apartheid and repatriation of darkies from the UK.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
The upper estimate in Scotland is 1 in 380, England 1 in 440.
And the lower bound for Scotland is 1 in 1,070 vs 1 in 620 for England.
You had such a great anti-Nippy point scoring talking point. I feel for you to have it so cruelly yanked away.
On the anniversary of Waterloo I feel Nipoleon should be used at all times on this day.
18th June 1815. Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo leads to peace in Europe and Abba’s first ever number one.
Huzzah for the Seventh Coalition.
A battle won by the Prussians, not to mention the Irish, Dutch-Belgians and assorted Germans, yet claimed exclusively by the British….
No it isn't. Brits who know about it know very well it was an allied force and combined effort by all involved. Indeed, it's hardly possible to exclude the Prussian element at least.
467,238 new vaccinations in Flag of United Kingdom yesterday
Flag of England 217,157 1st doses / 176,158 2nd doses Flag of Scotland 19,912 / 19,737 Flag of Wales 3,033 / 19,863 NI 3,876 / 7,502
All together now....
England's second jabs are the head scratcher right now. They're running 80 days behind whereas Wales has improved to 75. NI is at 73 and Scotland 77 days. We know there's plenty of Astra supply for them too.
Surprised to hear sour grapes from the Cons today. What a comment "throw the cat at it", obvious riposte is why dfid you not do then same? They used to be so gentlemanly and gracious in defeat!
Just an FYI if any of you ever meet John Bercow tell him that you're a huge fan of his and his political judgment, tell him you really liked his Monday Club days, when they supported apartheid and repatriation of darkies from the UK.
And Secretary to the Immigration and Repatriation Committee.
Surprised to hear sour grapes from the Cons today. What a comment "throw the cat at it", obvious riposte is why dfid you not do then same? They used to be so gentlemanly and gracious in defeat!
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
Surprised to hear sour grapes from the Cons today. What a comment "throw the cat at it", obvious riposte is why dfid you not do then same? They used to be so gentlemanly and gracious in defeat!
A very healthy majority for the Lib Dems, fair play to them. And congrats anyone who bet on the LDs when they were at very long odds.
Knives out for Keir after the Chesham & Amersham by-election disaster. Hearing that supporters of Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1405864465975988227
Total nonsense for the Sun to make Chesham & Amersham into some kind of repudiation of Starmer rather than Johnson.
Hartlepool, fair enough. Batley & Spen, if it's lost, ditto. But Labour and Green voters in Chesham & Amersham simply made what was very obviously the choice best calculated to harm the Conservative Party. Sometimes, things are as simple as they appear.
If the Lib Dems are threatening the Tories in their Home Counties heartlands it is actually great news for Labour. It means the Tories have to shore up their support in the South and so it diminishes their ability to lavish money and attention on the Red Wall. Fighting a war on two fronts is always challenging.
If Labour is going backwards compared even to Corbyn in every single electoral test maybe that is not such great news.
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER. B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
SKS is just the hapless inheritor of the circle that can't be squared that is the Labour Party. He has an impossible task.
Knives out for Keir after the Chesham & Amersham by-election disaster. Hearing that supporters of Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1405864465975988227
Total nonsense for the Sun to make Chesham & Amersham into some kind of repudiation of Starmer rather than Johnson.
Hartlepool, fair enough. Batley & Spen, if it's lost, ditto. But Labour and Green voters in Chesham & Amersham simply made what was very obviously the choice best calculated to harm the Conservative Party. Sometimes, things are as simple as they appear.
If the Lib Dems are threatening the Tories in their Home Counties heartlands it is actually great news for Labour. It means the Tories have to shore up their support in the South and so it diminishes their ability to lavish money and attention on the Red Wall. Fighting a war on two fronts is always challenging.
If Labour is going backwards compared even to Corbyn in every single electoral test maybe that is not such great news.
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER. B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
SKS is a demon strategist.
He has worked out that opposition to the Tories is going nowhere until Labour realises it cannot win a majority alone.
The sooner his party realises this, the better. And you can’t fault him for doing his best to ram the point home.
Jokily delivered but it's a real point. Tactical voting is needed to gain immunity from Tory FPTP majorities.
Surprised to hear sour grapes from the Cons today. What a comment "throw the cat at it", obvious riposte is why dfid you not do then same? They used to be so gentlemanly and gracious in defeat!
The real surprise is that the Tories weren’t even in contention.
The number of people voting Tory this time was fewer than Gillan’s Tory majority last time.
Meanwhile it is pouring down here and I am sure that Osborne House is overwhelmed with visitors today.
Knives out for Keir after the Chesham & Amersham by-election disaster. Hearing that supporters of Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1405864465975988227
Total nonsense for the Sun to make Chesham & Amersham into some kind of repudiation of Starmer rather than Johnson.
Hartlepool, fair enough. Batley & Spen, if it's lost, ditto. But Labour and Green voters in Chesham & Amersham simply made what was very obviously the choice best calculated to harm the Conservative Party. Sometimes, things are as simple as they appear.
If the Lib Dems are threatening the Tories in their Home Counties heartlands it is actually great news for Labour. It means the Tories have to shore up their support in the South and so it diminishes their ability to lavish money and attention on the Red Wall. Fighting a war on two fronts is always challenging.
If Labour is going backwards compared even to Corbyn in every single electoral test maybe that is not such great news.
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER. B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
Let's see what happens at B&S. Losing that would be a very bad sign and a poor reflection indeed on his leadership. I didn't vote for him as leader so I don't particularly hold a candle for him, but I don't think there are any really obviously significantly better candidates on offer right now, sadly. Labour's problems right now come down to a lot more than leadership. My comment was more on the C&A result, which I do think makes the Tories' overall electoral calculation harder and I think has implications for the kind of Northern seats where they have been threatening Labour.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
I have long thought that the failure of planning policy is related to one principle obsession of the British middle class: house prices. Successive governments are terrified of doing what is necessary because if they overheat supply there will be a resultant collapse in the house price bubble, leading to negative equity and very pissed off voters. Therefore better to have high demand and low supply so the bubble remains inflated. Young people therefore get stuffed unless the Bank of Mum and Dad coughs up.
I had that down on my super short list of TBOBS* - a property crash. Ideally you'd want stagnant prices over many years to get a gradual, pain free adjustment, but sadly markets don't work that way. It's up and up until it pops.
* tangible benefits of brexit
Not a terribly nice wish. Property crashes of the past have lead to debt, repossessions, family breakdown and suicide. What else is on your shortlist? A pandemic that reduces the surplus population?
That was number 2. Number 1 is more 100% benign - a collapse of the City of London financial sector. But wait! - to be followed by a new, unbloated, real value-added version.
Ah, ok, I guess that will also have the benefit of most people's pension schemes collapsing, R&D funding on medical and environmental products drying up and insufficient corporation tax to fund the NHS et al. We could call it a "levelling down" agenda, or the Venezuela Project. Interesting Utopia.
You are Jeremy Corbyn and I claim my £5 !
Well I am a fullish fat leftist, Nigel. You and me are strangely sympatico at times but there's some clear blue water there too. Look, can you see me on the other bank? I'm waving.
Possibly the reason for the occasional "symopatico" (sorry if that sound strangely sexual) is a mutual loathing for the current PM. In that case "my enemy's enemy is my friend" principle comes to the fore.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
Knives out for Keir after the Chesham & Amersham by-election disaster. Hearing that supporters of Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1405864465975988227
Total nonsense for the Sun to make Chesham & Amersham into some kind of repudiation of Starmer rather than Johnson.
Hartlepool, fair enough. Batley & Spen, if it's lost, ditto. But Labour and Green voters in Chesham & Amersham simply made what was very obviously the choice best calculated to harm the Conservative Party. Sometimes, things are as simple as they appear.
If the Lib Dems are threatening the Tories in their Home Counties heartlands it is actually great news for Labour. It means the Tories have to shore up their support in the South and so it diminishes their ability to lavish money and attention on the Red Wall. Fighting a war on two fronts is always challenging.
If Labour is going backwards compared even to Corbyn in every single electoral test maybe that is not such great news.
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER. B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
SKS is just the hapless inheritor of the circle that can't be squared that is the Labour Party. He has an impossible task.
Why don't they try protectionism for low paid jobs and higher taxes for big corporations, or are they Tory ideas nowadays?
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Well. The planning bill hasn't yet been published, so you are ahead of the entire industry with this analysis.
Your comments just about make sense if they are a criticism of planning reform since 2012 (ie the NPPF and permitted development rights) which did replace the previous system of PPG's and PPS's. What really changed at this point though was the political removal of regional government and regional planning through which a lot of strategic large scale development was being driven.
It may not have been published in its final form but I have seen much of the consultation material and also had sight of the plans for specific areas such as the downgrading of archaeological protections (removing the need for pre-construction assessments, watching briefs and rescue archaeology) and environmental protections (removing the need for mitigations such as building alternative habitats and conducting impact studies).
The NPPF system was not as good as the old PPG system but it did retain much of the basic assumptions and practices - I know as I have operated under both systems. What is being said at all levels of the new proposals is that much of the sensible protection put in place by the PPG system in the 80s and 90s and carried forward by the NPPF system is to be weakened or scrapped.
Out of interest, what material have you been looking at? Where is the proposal to downgrade archaeology and environmental protections?
Consultation documents being circulated by the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists amongst others.
In some ways it is already too late. The Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 already prevents local authorities from imposing pre-commencement conditions on planning applications without developer agreement. This basically means that the developer can refuse to have archaeological or environmental mitigations included in the planning permission and the only authority the council has is to refuse permission entirely. But the ability to refuse permission is also taken away from the council in many cases so the developer just has to hold out and they get permission anyway.
Nothing against the Chartered Institute of Archeologists and their take on the mood music surrounding planning reform, but for anyone seriously interested in this subject, I recommend reading the actual government proposals:
In laymans terms, the act cited by Richard Tyndall requires Council's to get the agreement of the developer before putting on a planning condition that prevents any work at all taking place until an the Council's Archeologist is happy. If this takes more than 3 years then the whole permission gets lost and the developer has to start again from scratch. It should only be done where there is a good reason to, not cut and pasted on to every decision; and the reforms seem to have achieved this aim by making Council's stop and think. Of course, if you are a commercial archaeologist then you aren't going to be happy about this as it reduces potential sources of work, but some sort of balance has to be struck between the interests of archaoelogy and the interests of development. Until relatively recently there was no requirement at all to carry out archaeological investigations of development sites.
That is a ridiculous objection. The actual investigative work takes weeks not years and there are strict time limits set for getting consultations completed. Moreover the responsibility for getting the investigative work done lies with the developer themselves and they hire and fund the archaeologists doing the work. So if it takes more than three years (I would like to see an example where that has ever been the case) then that is because of a failure by the developer and their own consultants not by the planning legislation or the local council.
And 'relatively recently' was more than 30 years ago. Prior to that huge amounts of archaeology were lost - as we now now from investigation of adjacent or contiguous sites - because there was no requirement for investigation.
You are using straw man arguments.
Again none of these requirements stops development. According to the Government's own figures 0.01% of proposed developments are stopped by archaeological concerns and even in those cases they are then resubmitted with additional mitigations or exclusions.
The point is not the developer has to do the archaeological work, it is the fact that it has to be signed off again by the Council before they can build anything, and that is after 'permission' has been granted. And if it isn't done within 3 years then the permission lapses. This type of problem with pre commencement planning conditions creates nightmares for developers.
In some cases it is not necessary, as there is no evidence of any archaeology. Thats why the 2017 act was passed. It hasn't eroded any environmental protections, that is just misinformation.
At work I've named a new project 'Project Waterloo' and colleagues are arguing is it because of Francophilia (sic) or my undying love of ABBA.
My project names are one of those things that amuse and intrigue people at work.
Have you done Project Wasp's Nest yet ... ?
I've done Project Hornets' Nest, which led to a long and vigorous debate about where the apostrophe should go.
It really made me wonder about the state of education in this country.
It's a biopolitical issue, I think. A Tory would regard the nest as the property of the queen (who might have bought it out as a council nest under Maggie) and go for Hornet's; a commie would see the nest as a kind of loosely structured autonomous collective and use the plural.
At work I've named a new project 'Project Waterloo' and colleagues are arguing is it because of Francophilia (sic) or my undying love of ABBA.
My project names are one of those things that amuse and intrigue people at work.
Sorry to be the pedant, but Waterloo is in Belgium.
Waterloo is in South London! Typical North London propaganda.
In the same way Donegal is further north than Northern Ireland, Waterloo is further north than much of north of the river,
You are only proving my point - now South London is technically North London, apparently. HYUFD will probably turn up soon and try to partition us. Don't mess with the South!
Knives out for Keir after the Chesham & Amersham by-election disaster. Hearing that supporters of Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1405864465975988227
Total nonsense for the Sun to make Chesham & Amersham into some kind of repudiation of Starmer rather than Johnson.
Hartlepool, fair enough. Batley & Spen, if it's lost, ditto. But Labour and Green voters in Chesham & Amersham simply made what was very obviously the choice best calculated to harm the Conservative Party. Sometimes, things are as simple as they appear.
If the Lib Dems are threatening the Tories in their Home Counties heartlands it is actually great news for Labour. It means the Tories have to shore up their support in the South and so it diminishes their ability to lavish money and attention on the Red Wall. Fighting a war on two fronts is always challenging.
If Labour is going backwards compared even to Corbyn in every single electoral test maybe that is not such great news.
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER. B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
SKS is a demon strategist.
He has worked out that opposition to the Tories is going nowhere until Labour realises it cannot win a majority alone.
The sooner his party realises this, the better. And you can’t fault him for doing his best to ram the point home.
Jokily delivered but it's a real point. Tactical voting is needed to gain immunity from Tory FPTP majorities.
It is. Labour desperately needs its own supporters to regard the LDs as de-toxified. 2019 showed some tentative signs. Last night was the full fat version. For all the PM's undoubted appeal, there are more people opposed to his government than in favour of it. And there is evidence from C+A, that, in certain areas at least, the opposition to it is strong, whilst the support for it is soft.
AZ say: LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca AZN.L on Friday said the European Union had lost a legal case against the pharmaceutical firm over the supply of COVID-19 vaccines as a court in Brussels rejected an EU request for more deliveries by the end of June.
The Anglo-Swedish firm committed in a contract to do its best to deliver to the 27-nation bloc 300 million doses by the end of June, but production problems led the pharmaceutical company to revise down its target to 100 million vaccines.
The cuts in the supplies delayed the EU's vaccination drive in the first quarter of the year, when the bloc had initially bet on AstraZeneca to deliver the largest volume of jabs. That led to a bitter dispute and to the EU's legal action to get at least 120 million doses by the end of June.
But the judge said the company should only deliver 80.2 million doses by a deadline of Sept. 27, AstraZeneca said.
EU say: Today, the Court of First Instance of Brussels decided to grant interim measures in the case brought against AstraZeneca by the European Commission and the 27 EU Member States.
The court orders AstraZeneca to urgently deliver 50 million doses of vaccine by 27 September 2021 - according to a binding schedule:
15 million doses by 26 July, at 9 a.m., 20 million doses by 23 August, 15 million doses at 27 September. In the event of non-compliance with these delivery deadlines AstraZeneca will have to pay a penalty of €10 per dose not delivered.
The judge's decision on the requested interim measures is based on the fact, that AstraZeneca committed a serious breach (‘faute lourde') of its contractual obligations with the EU.
The court also holds that AstraZeneca should have deployed all its efforts to deliver the vaccines within the agreed timetable including the British production sites explicitly mentioned in the contract – especially given the big delays in deliveries to the EU.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, welcomes the decision. “This decision confirms the position of the Commission: AstraZeneca did not live up to the commitments it made in the contract. It is good to see that an independent judge confirms this”, President von der Leyen says. “This shows that our European vaccination campaign not only delivers for our citizens day by day. It also demonstrates, that it was founded on a sound legal basis.”
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
At work I've named a new project 'Project Waterloo' and colleagues are arguing is it because of Francophilia (sic) or my undying love of ABBA.
My project names are one of those things that amuse and intrigue people at work.
Have you done Project Wasp's Nest yet ... ?
I've done Project Hornets' Nest, which led to a long and vigorous debate about where the apostrophe should go.
It really made me wonder about the state of education in this country.
It's a biopolitical issue, I think. A Tory would regard the nest as the property of the queen (who might have bought it out as a council nest under Maggie) and go for Hornet's; a commie would see the nest as a kind of loosely structured autonomous collective and use the plural.
Knowing where to put an apostrophe is so elitist. We voted to take back control over our punctuation.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Well. The planning bill hasn't yet been published, so you are ahead of the entire industry with this analysis.
Your comments just about make sense if they are a criticism of planning reform since 2012 (ie the NPPF and permitted development rights) which did replace the previous system of PPG's and PPS's. What really changed at this point though was the political removal of regional government and regional planning through which a lot of strategic large scale development was being driven.
It may not have been published in its final form but I have seen much of the consultation material and also had sight of the plans for specific areas such as the downgrading of archaeological protections (removing the need for pre-construction assessments, watching briefs and rescue archaeology) and environmental protections (removing the need for mitigations such as building alternative habitats and conducting impact studies).
The NPPF system was not as good as the old PPG system but it did retain much of the basic assumptions and practices - I know as I have operated under both systems. What is being said at all levels of the new proposals is that much of the sensible protection put in place by the PPG system in the 80s and 90s and carried forward by the NPPF system is to be weakened or scrapped.
Out of interest, what material have you been looking at? Where is the proposal to downgrade archaeology and environmental protections?
Consultation documents being circulated by the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists amongst others.
In some ways it is already too late. The Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 already prevents local authorities from imposing pre-commencement conditions on planning applications without developer agreement. This basically means that the developer can refuse to have archaeological or environmental mitigations included in the planning permission and the only authority the council has is to refuse permission entirely. But the ability to refuse permission is also taken away from the council in many cases so the developer just has to hold out and they get permission anyway.
Nothing against the Chartered Institute of Archeologists and their take on the mood music surrounding planning reform, but for anyone seriously interested in this subject, I recommend reading the actual government proposals:
In laymans terms, the act cited by Richard Tyndall requires Council's to get the agreement of the developer before putting on a planning condition that prevents any work at all taking place until an the Council's Archeologist is happy. If this takes more than 3 years then the whole permission gets lost and the developer has to start again from scratch. It should only be done where there is a good reason to, not cut and pasted on to every decision; and the reforms seem to have achieved this aim by making Council's stop and think. Of course, if you are a commercial archaeologist then you aren't going to be happy about this as it reduces potential sources of work, but some sort of balance has to be struck between the interests of archaoelogy and the interests of development. Until relatively recently there was no requirement at all to carry out archaeological investigations of development sites.
That is a ridiculous objection. The actual investigative work takes weeks not years and there are strict time limits set for getting consultations completed. Moreover the responsibility for getting the investigative work done lies with the developer themselves and they hire and fund the archaeologists doing the work. So if it takes more than three years (I would like to see an example where that has ever been the case) then that is because of a failure by the developer and their own consultants not by the planning legislation or the local council.
And 'relatively recently' was more than 30 years ago. Prior to that huge amounts of archaeology were lost - as we now now from investigation of adjacent or contiguous sites - because there was no requirement for investigation.
You are using straw man arguments.
Again none of these requirements stops development. According to the Government's own figures 0.01% of proposed developments are stopped by archaeological concerns and even in those cases they are then resubmitted with additional mitigations or exclusions.
The point is not the developer has to do the archaeological work, it is the fact that it has to be signed off again by the Council before they can build anything, and that is after 'permission' has been granted. And if it isn't done within 3 years then the permission lapses. This type of problem with pre commencement planning conditions creates nightmares for developers.
In some cases it is not necessary, as there is no evidence of any archaeology. Thats why the 2017 act was passed. It hasn't eroded any environmental protections, that is just misinformation.
Again straw man argument. The 'sign' off simply means that the county archaeologist has to agree the work has been completed to the required standard and outline what further works are need. And again there is a legally set time for this to be done. Developers can go to court of failure to act in a timely manner by the local authority results in monetary loss. The fact they don't have to shows just what a poor argument this is.
There is no such thing as a site that doesn't have the potential for important archaeology unless it is made ground. Some of the most important sites in the archaeological record have been found in places where nothing was expected. This is just a charter for the developers to go back to the bad old days when they hid any finds from the authorities to make sure they didn't have to do any archaeological work.
At work I've named a new project 'Project Waterloo' and colleagues are arguing is it because of Francophilia (sic) or my undying love of ABBA.
My project names are one of those things that amuse and intrigue people at work.
Have you done Project Wasp's Nest yet ... ?
I've done Project Hornets' Nest, which led to a long and vigorous debate about where the apostrophe should go.
It really made me wonder about the state of education in this country.
It's a biopolitical issue, I think. A Tory would regard the nest as the property of the queen (who might have bought it out as a council nest under Maggie) and go for Hornet's; a commie would see the nest as a kind of loosely structured autonomous collective and use the plural.
Knowing where to put an apostrophe is so elitist. We voted to take back control over our punctuation.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
I have long thought that the failure of planning policy is related to one principle obsession of the British middle class: house prices. Successive governments are terrified of doing what is necessary because if they overheat supply there will be a resultant collapse in the house price bubble, leading to negative equity and very pissed off voters. Therefore better to have high demand and low supply so the bubble remains inflated. Young people therefore get stuffed unless the Bank of Mum and Dad coughs up.
I had that down on my super short list of TBOBS* - a property crash. Ideally you'd want stagnant prices over many years to get a gradual, pain free adjustment, but sadly markets don't work that way. It's up and up until it pops.
* tangible benefits of brexit
Not a terribly nice wish. Property crashes of the past have lead to debt, repossessions, family breakdown and suicide. What else is on your shortlist? A pandemic that reduces the surplus population?
That was number 2. Number 1 is more 100% benign - a collapse of the City of London financial sector. But wait! - to be followed by a new, unbloated, real value-added version.
Ah, ok, I guess that will also have the benefit of most people's pension schemes collapsing, R&D funding on medical and environmental products drying up and insufficient corporation tax to fund the NHS et al. We could call it a "levelling down" agenda, or the Venezuela Project. Interesting Utopia.
You are Jeremy Corbyn and I claim my £5 !
Well I am a fullish fat leftist, Nigel. You and me are strangely sympatico at times but there's some clear blue water there too. Look, can you see me on the other bank? I'm waving.
Possibly the reason for the occasional "symopatico" (sorry if that sound strangely sexual) is a mutual loathing for the current PM. In that case "my enemy's enemy is my friend" principle comes to the fore.
Yes there's that. Plus you're not a raging antiwokie. If you could just get behind phasing out private schools and a brand new model for the economy based on common ownership of life's essentials we'd be cooking with gas.
Villiers: 'This by-election result should pave the way for a reduction in housing targets for the London suburbs and the south east. We need a fairer distribution of new homes across the country, rather than seeking to cram so many thousands more into the crowded south."
In principle I see her point. A problem is that so many jobs are in the south - you can build houses very cheaply on the Yorkshire Moors, but demand is limited, and the sort of places that most developers build in the south are too expensive for lower-income families. There is real demand for inexpensive homes for rent or sale in the north and indeed in the south, but private developers are notably uninterested in those. What's needed is a government initiative to make blocks of flats, especially for rent, an attractive proposition, either by direct finance, through councils or by incentives for private developers.
Point of order: There is a hell of a demand for properties on the Yorkshire Moors, but none get built because they are in National Parks.
AZ say: LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca AZN.L on Friday said the European Union had lost a legal case against the pharmaceutical firm over the supply of COVID-19 vaccines as a court in Brussels rejected an EU request for more deliveries by the end of June.
The Anglo-Swedish firm committed in a contract to do its best to deliver to the 27-nation bloc 300 million doses by the end of June, but production problems led the pharmaceutical company to revise down its target to 100 million vaccines.
The cuts in the supplies delayed the EU's vaccination drive in the first quarter of the year, when the bloc had initially bet on AstraZeneca to deliver the largest volume of jabs. That led to a bitter dispute and to the EU's legal action to get at least 120 million doses by the end of June.
But the judge said the company should only deliver 80.2 million doses by a deadline of Sept. 27, AstraZeneca said.
EU say: Today, the Court of First Instance of Brussels decided to grant interim measures in the case brought against AstraZeneca by the European Commission and the 27 EU Member States.
The court orders AstraZeneca to urgently deliver 50 million doses of vaccine by 27 September 2021 - according to a binding schedule:
15 million doses by 26 July, at 9 a.m., 20 million doses by 23 August, 15 million doses at 27 September. In the event of non-compliance with these delivery deadlines AstraZeneca will have to pay a penalty of €10 per dose not delivered.
The judge's decision on the requested interim measures is based on the fact, that AstraZeneca committed a serious breach (‘faute lourde') of its contractual obligations with the EU.
The court also holds that AstraZeneca should have deployed all its efforts to deliver the vaccines within the agreed timetable including the British production sites explicitly mentioned in the contract – especially given the big delays in deliveries to the EU.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, welcomes the decision. “This decision confirms the position of the Commission: AstraZeneca did not live up to the commitments it made in the contract. It is good to see that an independent judge confirms this”, President von der Leyen says. “This shows that our European vaccination campaign not only delivers for our citizens day by day. It also demonstrates, that it was founded on a sound legal basis.”
Skim read. Hard to find the actual judgment. Did find this in para 79:
Faute d'autre elements la demande a) de l'UE est non fondée et elle en sera déboutée.
I read this as "In the absence of other issue, the EU's complaint a) is unfounded and will be [denied?]
AZ say: LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca AZN.L on Friday said the European Union had lost a legal case against the pharmaceutical firm over the supply of COVID-19 vaccines as a court in Brussels rejected an EU request for more deliveries by the end of June.
The Anglo-Swedish firm committed in a contract to do its best to deliver to the 27-nation bloc 300 million doses by the end of June, but production problems led the pharmaceutical company to revise down its target to 100 million vaccines.
The cuts in the supplies delayed the EU's vaccination drive in the first quarter of the year, when the bloc had initially bet on AstraZeneca to deliver the largest volume of jabs. That led to a bitter dispute and to the EU's legal action to get at least 120 million doses by the end of June.
But the judge said the company should only deliver 80.2 million doses by a deadline of Sept. 27, AstraZeneca said.
EU say: Today, the Court of First Instance of Brussels decided to grant interim measures in the case brought against AstraZeneca by the European Commission and the 27 EU Member States.
The court orders AstraZeneca to urgently deliver 50 million doses of vaccine by 27 September 2021 - according to a binding schedule:
15 million doses by 26 July, at 9 a.m., 20 million doses by 23 August, 15 million doses at 27 September. In the event of non-compliance with these delivery deadlines AstraZeneca will have to pay a penalty of €10 per dose not delivered.
The judge's decision on the requested interim measures is based on the fact, that AstraZeneca committed a serious breach (‘faute lourde') of its contractual obligations with the EU.
The court also holds that AstraZeneca should have deployed all its efforts to deliver the vaccines within the agreed timetable including the British production sites explicitly mentioned in the contract – especially given the big delays in deliveries to the EU.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, welcomes the decision. “This decision confirms the position of the Commission: AstraZeneca did not live up to the commitments it made in the contract. It is good to see that an independent judge confirms this”, President von der Leyen says. “This shows that our European vaccination campaign not only delivers for our citizens day by day. It also demonstrates, that it was founded on a sound legal basis.”
Skim read. Hard to find the actual judgment. Did find this in para 79:
Faute d'autre elements la demande a) de l'UE est non fondée et elle en sera déboutée.
I read this as "In the absence of other issue, the EU's complaint a) is unfounded and will be [denied?]
Thanks.
My French is not up to about 50 pages of legalese from a Belgian Judge.
Villiers: 'This by-election result should pave the way for a reduction in housing targets for the London suburbs and the south east. We need a fairer distribution of new homes across the country, rather than seeking to cram so many thousands more into the crowded south."
In principle I see her point. A problem is that so many jobs are in the south - you can build houses very cheaply on the Yorkshire Moors, but demand is limited, and the sort of places that most developers build in the south are too expensive for lower-income families. There is real demand for inexpensive homes for rent or sale in the north and indeed in the south, but private developers are notably uninterested in those. What's needed is a government initiative to make blocks of flats, especially for rent, an attractive proposition, either by direct finance, through councils or by incentives for private developers.
Point of order: There is a hell of a demand for properties on the Yorkshire Moors, but none get built because they are in National Parks.
Easiest place to build in the Dales is in Cumbria as the South Lakes local plan was so out of date when the park expanded that virtually anything goes.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
The EU has also claimed victory ...
A very quick read seems to indicate that AZN won the big victory (re best reasonable efforts) and the EU won a consolation prize (re court-ordered deliveries from now to September).
Obviously there are a myriad of reasons why the Tory vote collapsed last night, and I'm sure planning laws and HS2 were significant. However, I suspect the Covid restrictions debate was not.
I also have a hypothesis that the Tories are losing some votes because of the cronyism, whiff of corruption, disregard for accountability, disregard for Parliamentary convention and the constitution, and propensity to tell straightforward lies that permeate this government. These matters are compounded by some of the more reactionary rhetoric - for example, the unseemly attacks on asylum seekers and their (illegal) treatment in the Dover barracks - that 'decent' Tories find beyond the pale. There's a certain type of educated, middle-class voter, who is Tory but not tribal Tory, who I suspect is pretty disgusted with the shenanigans of Boris and his mates. Heck, I even wonder if Theresa May could bring herself to vote for Boris's Tories in a secret ballot.
Hope you're right. Think you are.
That begs the question of why Boris swept England in 2019 in the first place. All this stuff was front and centre.
Boris's landslide was built on denigration of Corbyn, even while pinching his 2017 platform.
But he didn't steal Corbyn's 2017 platform. According to the BBC, the key points of Labour 2017 were:
Scrap student tuition fees Nationalisation of England's nine water companies. Re-introduce the 50p rate of tax on the highest earners (above £123,000) Income tax rate 45p on £80,000 and above More free childcare, expanding free provisions for two, three and four year olds Guarantee triple lock for pensioner incomes End to zero hours contracts Hire 10,000 new police officers, 3,000 new firefighters Moves to charge companies a levy on salaries above £330,000 Deliver rail electrification "including in Wales and the South West".
The Conservatives didn't adopt any of those, except hiring more police and rail electrification, which I think were both in their 2017 manifesto as well.
CCHQ examined why May lost and Corbyn almost won, and took the popular parts. Anti-Cameron's austerity. Reverse May's police cuts (where I think the terrorist outrages were crucial to the 2017 outcome.) More hospitals, doctors and nurses. Public sector investment. (And the triple lock was always a Tory policy: I've never understood the animosity to it from the right on here.)
This was combined with personal, under-the-radar, social media attacks on Corbyn himself. JC supported terrorist attacks on Britain; JC would disband the army.
Knives out for Keir after the Chesham & Amersham by-election disaster. Hearing that supporters of Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1405864465975988227
Total nonsense for the Sun to make Chesham & Amersham into some kind of repudiation of Starmer rather than Johnson.
Hartlepool, fair enough. Batley & Spen, if it's lost, ditto. But Labour and Green voters in Chesham & Amersham simply made what was very obviously the choice best calculated to harm the Conservative Party. Sometimes, things are as simple as they appear.
If the Lib Dems are threatening the Tories in their Home Counties heartlands it is actually great news for Labour. It means the Tories have to shore up their support in the South and so it diminishes their ability to lavish money and attention on the Red Wall. Fighting a war on two fronts is always challenging.
If Labour is going backwards compared even to Corbyn in every single electoral test maybe that is not such great news.
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER. B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
SKS is a demon strategist.
He has worked out that opposition to the Tories is going nowhere until Labour realises it cannot win a majority alone.
The sooner his party realises this, the better. And you can’t fault him for doing his best to ram the point home.
Losing deposits in seats where they were second under Corbyn is key to showing how much the party has changed....
Is it too simplistic to say the Conservatives stayed at home and the rest went to the LDs?
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
Tories didn't just stay at home, they voted LD. In my view there were two reasons:
1. HS2 2. House building
In most other constituencies HS2 isn't an issue. House building will be. Most people want more houses to be built to give their kids somewhere to live. Most are also NIMBYs. Prime territory for those parties who can promise the earth and never have to deliver anything.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
The EU has also claimed victory ...
A very quick read seems to indicate that AZN won the big victory (re best reasonable efforts) and the EU won a consolation prize (re court-ordered deliveries from now to September).
Which explains why they bothered I guess - they wanted a legal bauble to wave as a victory, and were confident in a consolation at least that could be spun.
At work I've named a new project 'Project Waterloo' and colleagues are arguing is it because of Francophilia (sic) or my undying love of ABBA.
My project names are one of those things that amuse and intrigue people at work.
Have you done Project Wasp's Nest yet ... ?
I've done Project Hornets' Nest, which led to a long and vigorous debate about where the apostrophe should go.
It really made me wonder about the state of education in this country.
It's a biopolitical issue, I think. A Tory would regard the nest as the property of the queen (who might have bought it out as a council nest under Maggie) and go for Hornet's; a commie would see the nest as a kind of loosely structured autonomous collective and use the plural.
I asked Suzie Dent for an adjudication, she said hornets' nest
AZ say: LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca AZN.L on Friday said the European Union had lost a legal case against the pharmaceutical firm over the supply of COVID-19 vaccines as a court in Brussels rejected an EU request for more deliveries by the end of June.
The Anglo-Swedish firm committed in a contract to do its best to deliver to the 27-nation bloc 300 million doses by the end of June, but production problems led the pharmaceutical company to revise down its target to 100 million vaccines.
The cuts in the supplies delayed the EU's vaccination drive in the first quarter of the year, when the bloc had initially bet on AstraZeneca to deliver the largest volume of jabs. That led to a bitter dispute and to the EU's legal action to get at least 120 million doses by the end of June.
But the judge said the company should only deliver 80.2 million doses by a deadline of Sept. 27, AstraZeneca said.
EU say: Today, the Court of First Instance of Brussels decided to grant interim measures in the case brought against AstraZeneca by the European Commission and the 27 EU Member States.
The court orders AstraZeneca to urgently deliver 50 million doses of vaccine by 27 September 2021 - according to a binding schedule:
15 million doses by 26 July, at 9 a.m., 20 million doses by 23 August, 15 million doses at 27 September. In the event of non-compliance with these delivery deadlines AstraZeneca will have to pay a penalty of €10 per dose not delivered.
The judge's decision on the requested interim measures is based on the fact, that AstraZeneca committed a serious breach (‘faute lourde') of its contractual obligations with the EU.
The court also holds that AstraZeneca should have deployed all its efforts to deliver the vaccines within the agreed timetable including the British production sites explicitly mentioned in the contract – especially given the big delays in deliveries to the EU.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, welcomes the decision. “This decision confirms the position of the Commission: AstraZeneca did not live up to the commitments it made in the contract. It is good to see that an independent judge confirms this”, President von der Leyen says. “This shows that our European vaccination campaign not only delivers for our citizens day by day. It also demonstrates, that it was founded on a sound legal basis.”
Skim read. Hard to find the actual judgment. Did find this in para 79:
Faute d'autre elements la demande a) de l'UE est non fondée et elle en sera déboutée.
I read this as "In the absence of other issue, the EU's complaint a) is unfounded and will be [denied?]
According to Google translate, elle en sera déboutée means 'it will be rejected', so my guess was about right in the context.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
The EU has also claimed victory ...
A very quick read seems to indicate that AZN won the big victory (re best reasonable efforts) and the EU won a consolation prize (re court-ordered deliveries from now to September).
But they were going to deliver that minimum amount of 80.2m anyway so the "victory" is the court saying that AZ will should deliver what they previously said they would, not the original contracted amount.
Knives out for Keir after the Chesham & Amersham by-election disaster. Hearing that supporters of Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1405864465975988227
Total nonsense for the Sun to make Chesham & Amersham into some kind of repudiation of Starmer rather than Johnson.
Hartlepool, fair enough. Batley & Spen, if it's lost, ditto. But Labour and Green voters in Chesham & Amersham simply made what was very obviously the choice best calculated to harm the Conservative Party. Sometimes, things are as simple as they appear.
If the Lib Dems are threatening the Tories in their Home Counties heartlands it is actually great news for Labour. It means the Tories have to shore up their support in the South and so it diminishes their ability to lavish money and attention on the Red Wall. Fighting a war on two fronts is always challenging.
If Labour is going backwards compared even to Corbyn in every single electoral test maybe that is not such great news.
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER. B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
SKS is a demon strategist.
He has worked out that opposition to the Tories is going nowhere until Labour realises it cannot win a majority alone.
The sooner his party realises this, the better. And you can’t fault him for doing his best to ram the point home.
Labour were second in that seat in 2017. They were ahead of the Lib Dems who were fourth there in 2015.
The Labour Party could disband altogether and it would see even more votes going to the Lib Dems. Maybe that should be Keir's next step?
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
And in a beautiful moment for @CarlottaVance the England infection estimate is 1 in 520 whilst the Scotland figures is 1 in 600.
So yes, Nicola should have advised the Tartan army not to travel for their own safety.
You sure about that?
In Scotland, the trend in the percentage of people testing positive remains uncertain in the week ending 12 June 2021; we estimate that 8,800 people in Scotland had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 4,900 to 14,000) equating to around 1 in 600 people.
The upper estimate in Scotland is 1 in 380, England 1 in 440.
And the lower bound for Scotland is 1 in 1,070 vs 1 in 620 for England.
You had such a great anti-Nippy point scoring talking point. I feel for you to have it so cruelly yanked away.
On the anniversary of Waterloo I feel Nipoleon should be used at all times on this day.
18th June 1812. Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo leads to peace in Europe and Abba’s first ever number one.
Huzzah for the Seventh Coalition.
1812?
Hmm. I think Napoleon was still a thousand miles to the East on that date.
Fat fingers.
Short, as well. But something of a military genius.
Actually he was of average height for the time, we only think he was short because of Gillray's cartoons and Anglo-Saxon historians not realising that the French inch was bigger than the British one.
Going back on topic, this analysis from a LibDem on the ground seems pretty plausible. Yes HS2 & Brecit were part of it but far from all of it - Tory complacency, LD ground game etc. Interesting that she highlights the importance of education in an area with grammar schools, government handling of schools seen as poor, and it's got a lot of oldies for whom handling of Covid & elderly has resonated very badly. And see lots of problems with modern Tories, from treatment of neighbouring Grieve to personality of Johnson.
Is it too simplistic to say the Conservatives stayed at home and the rest went to the LDs?
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
Tories didn't just stay at home, they voted LD. In my view there were two reasons:
1. HS2 2. House building
In most other constituencies HS2 isn't an issue. House building will be. Most people want more houses to be built to give their kids somewhere to live. Most are also NIMBYs. Prime territory for those parties who can promise the earth and never have to deliver anything.
Is it too simplistic to say the Conservatives stayed at home and the rest went to the LDs?
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
Tories didn't just stay at home, they voted LD. In my view there were two reasons:
1. HS2 2. House building
In most other constituencies HS2 isn't an issue. House building will be. Most people want more houses to be built to give their kids somewhere to live. Most are also NIMBYs. Prime territory for those parties who can promise the earth and never have to deliver anything.
Is it too simplistic to say the Conservatives stayed at home and the rest went to the LDs?
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
Tories didn't just stay at home, they voted LD. In my view there were two reasons:
1. HS2 2. House building
In most other constituencies HS2 isn't an issue. House building will be. Most people want more houses to be built to give their kids somewhere to live. Most are also NIMBYs. Prime territory for those parties who can promise the earth and never have to deliver anything.
Johnson will surely be up to that task. He does it in his sleep.
Is it too simplistic to say the Conservatives stayed at home and the rest went to the LDs?
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
Tories didn't just stay at home, they voted LD. In my view there were two reasons:
1. HS2 2. House building
In most other constituencies HS2 isn't an issue. House building will be. Most people want more houses to be built to give their kids somewhere to live. Most are also NIMBYs. Prime territory for those parties who can promise the earth and never have to deliver anything.
Is it too simplistic to say the Conservatives stayed at home and the rest went to the LDs?
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
Turnout down 18,024; Tory vote down 17,361.
Does look that way !
Yes, if that isn't the case, who were the 18024 who didn't vote? Surely not 2019 Lib Dem or Labour voters?
The big danger for the tories here is they learn the wrong lessons from the wrong people. The Soubrys. The Grieves.
Yes
When your party has an 80 seat majority and you are a bit pissed off with them, I think you stay at home rather than vote. Cons should be odds on at the next GE I reckon.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
The EU has also claimed victory ...
A very quick read seems to indicate that AZN won the big victory (re best reasonable efforts) and the EU won a consolation prize (re court-ordered deliveries from now to September).
The market has delivered its judgment: the AZN share price is virtually unchanged.
You know what gets me about this clip? The fella is moving along, in common with most land-based mammals. Use LANDSCAPE, people. Portrait is for up/down movement. Or portraits.
Is it too simplistic to say the Conservatives stayed at home and the rest went to the LDs?
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
Tories didn't just stay at home, they voted LD. In my view there were two reasons:
1. HS2 2. House building
In most other constituencies HS2 isn't an issue. House building will be. Most people want more houses to be built to give their kids somewhere to live. Most are also NIMBYs. Prime territory for those parties who can promise the earth and never have to deliver anything.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
The EU has also claimed victory ...
A very quick read seems to indicate that AZN won the big victory (re best reasonable efforts) and the EU won a consolation prize (re court-ordered deliveries from now to September).
The market has delivered its judgment: the AZN share price is virtually unchanged.
EU “victory” seems to have consisted of court ordering AZ (under threat of penalty) to deliver doses by September that they say they will have delivered by end of June.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
The EU has also claimed victory ...
A very quick read seems to indicate that AZN won the big victory (re best reasonable efforts) and the EU won a consolation prize (re court-ordered deliveries from now to September).
The market has delivered its judgment: the AZN share price is virtually unchanged.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
The EU has also claimed victory ...
A very quick read seems to indicate that AZN won the big victory (re best reasonable efforts) and the EU won a consolation prize (re court-ordered deliveries from now to September).
The market has delivered its judgment: the AZN share price is virtually unchanged.
EU “victory” seems to have consisted of court ordering AZ (under threat of penalty) to deliver doses by September that they say they will have delivered by end of June.
There is still a potential second suit for damages in respect of the late deliveries. It seems equally unlikely to go anywhere, but I expect the parties back in court, if only because UVDL is a numpty.
Is it too simplistic to say the Conservatives stayed at home and the rest went to the LDs?
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
Tories didn't just stay at home, they voted LD. In my view there were two reasons:
1. HS2 2. House building
In most other constituencies HS2 isn't an issue. House building will be. Most people want more houses to be built to give their kids somewhere to live. Most are also NIMBYs. Prime territory for those parties who can promise the earth and never have to deliver anything.
Is it too simplistic to say the Conservatives stayed at home and the rest went to the LDs?
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
Turnout down 18,024; Tory vote down 17,361.
Does look that way !
Yes, if that isn't the case, who were the 18024 who didn't vote? Surely not 2019 Lib Dem or Labour voters?
No doubt there will be more Conservatives in the group (because there were more Conservatives by far in 2019 for a start).
But turnout being around a third lower in a by-election than a General Election is actually pretty standard as a rule of thumb in a competitive by-election (more, generally, in a low key one). Indeed, those figures are very close to Richmond Park in 2015, Peterborough in 2019 and others.
So the stay-at-homes will absolutely include reasonable numbers of Lib Dems, Labour etc. I know it's amazing as political types, but there are quite a few people who say "we're not choosing a Government, so I'm not bovvered" as well as people who see it's raining and decide not to trek out.
Comments
You’re not thinking deep enough.
That a very small mallet demolished the blue wall is the point
I am sure the Observer say well we get lots of hits on her pieces, but it can't be doing the papers reputation any good. Mail was tarred with Hopkins rants.
But something of a military genius.
My project names are one of those things that amuse and intrigue people at work.
AstraZeneca has claimed victory in its legal case against the EU after a court in Brussels found that the bloc should not be given priority over other countries for jabs....
In the period of a few weeks we have lost Hartlepool with a massive swing. Lost 400 councillors in LE2021, recorded the worst ever result in the history of the Labour Party EVER.
B&S will be lost next.
SKS is a loser worse than even useless Corbyn on every single test.
'From the outside it appears Napoleon had a John Bercow complex.'
Flag of England 217,157 1st doses / 176,158 2nd doses
Flag of Scotland 19,912 / 19,737
Flag of Wales 3,033 / 19,863
NI 3,876 / 7,502
All together now....
In fairness, the performance of Napoleon and his army during the Waterloo campaign as a whole was outstanding, given the huge odds against them. But winning three battles doesn’t matter if you lose the last and most important.
Next you'll be telling me Mers El Kébir isn't in France.
Huge fall in January - recovery since.
But if you take the average you can make it look worse than it is.
That's what BLM do with deaths-in-custody statistics, to avoid admitting that they are now 75% lower than in 1990.
He has worked out that opposition to the Tories is going nowhere until Labour realises it cannot win a majority alone.
The sooner his party realises this, the better. And you can’t fault him for doing his best to ram the point home.
Much harder to beat Gordon's 5 tests.
Downplaying contributions is something else.
It really made me wonder about the state of education in this country.
The number of people voting Tory this time was fewer than Gillan’s Tory majority last time.
Meanwhile it is pouring down here and I am sure that Osborne House is overwhelmed with visitors today.
My comment was more on the C&A result, which I do think makes the Tories' overall electoral calculation harder and I think has implications for the kind of Northern seats where they have been threatening Labour.
In some cases it is not necessary, as there is no evidence of any archaeology. Thats why the 2017 act was passed. It hasn't eroded any environmental protections, that is just misinformation.
For all the PM's undoubted appeal, there are more people opposed to his government than in favour of it.
And there is evidence from C+A, that, in certain areas at least, the opposition to it is strong, whilst the support for it is soft.
In French
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/attachment/869224/Court Decision 18-06-2021.pdf
AZ say:
LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca AZN.L on Friday said the European Union had lost a legal case against the pharmaceutical firm over the supply of COVID-19 vaccines as a court in Brussels rejected an EU request for more deliveries by the end of June.
The Anglo-Swedish firm committed in a contract to do its best to deliver to the 27-nation bloc 300 million doses by the end of June, but production problems led the pharmaceutical company to revise down its target to 100 million vaccines.
The cuts in the supplies delayed the EU's vaccination drive in the first quarter of the year, when the bloc had initially bet on AstraZeneca to deliver the largest volume of jabs. That led to a bitter dispute and to the EU's legal action to get at least 120 million doses by the end of June.
But the judge said the company should only deliver 80.2 million doses by a deadline of Sept. 27, AstraZeneca said.
EU say:
Today, the Court of First Instance of Brussels decided to grant interim measures in the case brought against AstraZeneca by the European Commission and the 27 EU Member States.
The court orders AstraZeneca to urgently deliver 50 million doses of vaccine by 27 September 2021 - according to a binding schedule:
15 million doses by 26 July, at 9 a.m.,
20 million doses by 23 August,
15 million doses at 27 September.
In the event of non-compliance with these delivery deadlines AstraZeneca will have to pay a penalty of €10 per dose not delivered.
The judge's decision on the requested interim measures is based on the fact, that AstraZeneca committed a serious breach (‘faute lourde') of its contractual obligations with the EU.
The court also holds that AstraZeneca should have deployed all its efforts to deliver the vaccines within the agreed timetable including the British production sites explicitly mentioned in the contract – especially given the big delays in deliveries to the EU.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, welcomes the decision. “This decision confirms the position of the Commission: AstraZeneca did not live up to the commitments it made in the contract. It is good to see that an independent judge confirms this”, President von der Leyen says. “This shows that our European vaccination campaign not only delivers for our citizens day by day. It also demonstrates, that it was founded on a sound legal basis.”
https://twitter.com/REWearmouth/status/1405880833764954112
There is no such thing as a site that doesn't have the potential for important archaeology unless it is made ground. Some of the most important sites in the archaeological record have been found in places where nothing was expected. This is just a charter for the developers to go back to the bad old days when they hid any finds from the authorities to make sure they didn't have to do any archaeological work.
Faute d'autre elements la demande a) de l'UE est non fondée et elle en sera déboutée.
I read this as "In the absence of other issue, the EU's complaint a) is unfounded and will be [denied?]
My French is not up to about 50 pages of legalese from a Belgian Judge.
https://twitter.com/mralexthfc/status/1405851256229445634?s=20
The Con 2019>Con 2021 & Turnout 2019>Turnout 2021 numbers are very similar
This was combined with personal, under-the-radar, social media attacks on Corbyn himself. JC supported terrorist attacks on Britain; JC would disband the army.
1. HS2
2. House building
In most other constituencies HS2 isn't an issue. House building will be. Most people want more houses to be built to give their kids somewhere to live. Most are also NIMBYs. Prime territory for those parties who can promise the earth and never have to deliver anything.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/anna-soubry-chesham-and-amersham-byelection-result-boris-johnson-1059924
Anytime you find yourself on the same side of an argument as Anna bloody Soubry you have to start questioning your own beliefs.
Does look that way !
The Labour Party could disband altogether and it would see even more votes going to the Lib Dems. Maybe that should be Keir's next step?
Going back on topic, this analysis from a LibDem on the ground seems pretty plausible. Yes HS2 & Brecit were part of it but far from all of it - Tory complacency, LD ground game etc. Interesting that she highlights the importance of education in an area with grammar schools, government handling of schools seen as poor, and it's got a lot of oldies for whom handling of Covid & elderly has resonated very badly. And see lots of problems with modern Tories, from treatment of neighbouring Grieve to personality of Johnson.
https://twitter.com/BridgetFox/status/1405773253705011211
https://twitter.com/mralexthfc/status/1405851256229445634?s=20
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-warned-over-alarming-24343003 https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1405879771867889666/photo/1
When your party has an 80 seat majority and you are a bit pissed off with them, I think you stay at home rather than vote. Cons should be odds on at the next GE I reckon.
And rightly so. Spectacularly inaccurate.
https://twitter.com/EuRollout/status/1405889655703281670?s=20
Lib Dem lead off by 25 points.
Embarrassing.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/astrazeneca-vaccine-bruce-springsteen-on-broadway-concert-new-york-b941311.html
But turnout being around a third lower in a by-election than a General Election is actually pretty standard as a rule of thumb in a competitive by-election (more, generally, in a low key one). Indeed, those figures are very close to Richmond Park in 2015, Peterborough in 2019 and others.
So the stay-at-homes will absolutely include reasonable numbers of Lib Dems, Labour etc. I know it's amazing as political types, but there are quite a few people who say "we're not choosing a Government, so I'm not bovvered" as well as people who see it's raining and decide not to trek out.