The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
I am completely over voting remain and support Brexit
Of course.
You supported Cameron and Remain now support Johnson and Brexit.
When the party changes policy, you change. We have always been at war with Eastasia...
I support the democratic vote
It is fine to accept a democratic vote, but to do a complete volte face and support it? What if there were a vote to kill all the first born, or seriously, something genuinely awful? Do you say "oh its the willothepeople, and must support the leader". FFS, Big G, therein lies the path to the Chinese system!
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
I guess thats why I am a LibDem these days...
Who arranged the exchange to swap you for williamglenn?
Philip - I can see you posting that exact same sentence in a year or two as Boris and Priti continue to tighten the authoritarian screw and Ed Davey campaigns vehemently against it.
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The remainer's attitude is turning into the longest sulk in history.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
I thought the government was never going to loosen its grip on us and it was embarrassingly naive to think it would?
Coincides with when the end of the vaccine programme is expected for all over 18s. I think Javid is being smart to avoid claims of intergenerational unfairness that younger people who were deprioritised for vaccines for the good of the country are now being treated unfairly with isolation orders as many haven't had their chance to be double jabbed.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
I guess thats why I am a LibDem these days...
Who arranged the exchange to swap you for williamglenn?
Philip - I can see you posting that exact same sentence in a year or two as Boris and Priti continue to tighten the authoritarian screw and Ed Davey campaigns vehemently against it.
I would like nothing more than to see Ed Davey campaigning against authoritarianism.
Really good news story and good work by Kwasi Kwarteng
You're milking it now.
While good news, in terms of vehicle manufacturing, the investment is peanuts (and the UK govt. seems to providing at least 20% of the money). ...Stellantis has held discussions with the UK government over options for its Cheshire factory and the company has secured UK government financial support understood to be in the tens of millions of pounds. The £100m is the total amount of investment, and includes the UK government support...
Note Stellantis are building two large battery plants on the continent, with a third planned. None here.
Nissan is still the only committed investment of any size for electric vehicles, and even that isn't massive.
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The remainer's attitude is turning into the longest sulk in history.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
So the Medical Deep State and its enabling cabal of freedom-hating Marxist scientists have crumbled in the face of ... of what?
Pubs to stay open on Sunday to 11.15pm to cover possibility of extra time and penalties
In Wales? You're not going to be in the final. Or will you all be supporting Italy/Spain?
Denmark.
I suspect everyone in England will be supporting the winner of tomorrow's semi-final in the final. Christian Eriksen's story has made sure of that.
Italy have played some great football, as good as I can remember in a major tournament this century at least, so would have my support if England don't make it.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
Indeed and Rejoin has just begun. If the demographics are as stated and the old continue to die before the young it shouldn't take long
Government modelling was crap back in the early 2000s, too.
The forecasts indicate that net immigration from the AC-10 to the UK after the current enlargement of the EU will be relatively small, at between 5,000 and 13,000 immigrants per year up to 2010. (although they do caveat this, this is the central prediction).
The vast, vast majority of those Rumanians will be a fantastic asset to our country, along with all the other eastern Europeans who have come here to make a life.
If it was me, I'd set up a trestle table in Red Square to see if we can get some of the best Russians too. Amazing people, badly led. And it would annoy the sh8te out of Putin.
The government is being forced to subsidise car manufacturers to keep them open post-Brexit.
We all know this.
Car manufacturing was always going to become less profitable post Brexit. Add them to the list along with fishers etc, who are also in receipt of various bungs.
Let’s save £350m a week and spend it on no-longer productive business instead!
Not quite - the Government is subsidising car manufacturers at a time of total structural change in that industry.
When everything is up in the air you need to offer subsidies to keep both the existing companies and encourage new ones.
I suspect Tesla is regretting building their factory in Germany.
Funny how there’s always non-Brexit reasons.
This is an industry where subsidies have always exists - no-one has built or modernised a car factory in decades without incentives to do so.
The govt has always subsidised car manufacturers. Yet, all of a sudden, it’s an issue to diehard remainers. Labour bailed out British Leyland in the seventies. Money was given to Nissan, Honda and Toyota to come here in the eighties. Money has been given to Ford, BMW, Vauxhall, Nissan, JLR and others As far back as I can remember to Help them build new models locally. Yet suddenly it’s an issue to some people as if it has never happened before.
Funny how it’s happening all at once, though, innit.
Yeah because the industry is moving from petrol and diesel to electrical powertrains en masse. I guess if you want to hack a Brexit narrative in it then a lot of that is because of VW and their dodgy diesels which has forced the whole industry to dump diesel 10 years earlier than expected.
I hadn’t realised (or had forgotten), but the gilet jaune movement - analogous in some ways to Brexitism - was sparked by a hamfisted attempt by Macron to raise steep taxes on diesel.
Honestly mate, you need to move on from Brexit. I mean you're a kiwi right, I don't even know why you care so much?
As a quasi-outsider I can see perhaps more clearly how deranged it is. Besides, like any historical phenomenon it is open to endless interpretations.
You might as well ask why people don’t move on from the French Revolution.
It is daft. We lost a lot through it. In years to come people will realise how valuable freedom of movement was. However it is done and Blair is correct in saying we need to make it work if we aim to rejoin as we need to do so in a strong position.
Blair is correct. Although I don’t think we should rejoin. At least not to “this” EU.
In fact I think we need to make a “better” EU. That would have been much easier inside the institution, but it would also have required some independence of thought and coherence of policy-making by successive governments.
The sole benefit that Brexit provides is the pressure - PERHAPS - to avoid complacency in our economic and geopolitical settlement.
We have tried before to remake the EU in what the UK thought it should be, but I think it clear that that was not the vision of many of the other European leaders. So we left. We will miss many of the good things - ease of access to the markets, freedom of travel and so on. Other things less so, but we have made our bed and now must lie in it. Like with Covid its best to ignore the shrill on both sides of the debate (zero-covid vs let it rip), and try to build a new path. Something we often miss on PB is that many people just don't care. For them its done. They rarely think about politics. The audience on Question Time is not the population of the UK, its a very special subset.
No, I don’t think we did “try”.
The key moment was after the financial crisis, but neither Cameron nor Osborne were especially interested, and the Tory party at large had stopped thinking anything about the EU except as a bogeyman “other”,
Nobody did which is why ultimately Britain made the right choice.
Even Blair and Brown when push came to shove treated Europe as other. They never even tried to have a referendum to join the Euro, spending political capital on going to war alongside the Americans instead, despite all Blair's pretensions of taking Britain into the centre of Europe.
Britain was never philosophically interested in ever closer union and ultimately a federal single European nation state. The EU is. So ultimately we were the wrong fit for the project, Britain being in the EU is like someone who wants an ample supply of chocolate cakes joining Weightwatchers, it just didn't work.
There was a thread on Twitter the other day in response to one of the GB News presenters rattling on about how all we ever wanted was to be a member of a trading bloc and didn’t want the political union.
I can’t be arsed to find the thread, but the writer showed reams and reams of newspaper articles about the project from it’s earliest days, through the referendum when we joined, contemporary interviews with politicians, etc, etc, etc, and it has always been clear, totally unambiguous, even when we joined, that ever closer union was the goal.
For anyone to say that this ever closer union was something we weren’t aware of, that the perfidious EU was trying to foist it upon us after we joined a simple trading bloc, is wrong.
It was more perfidious Albion than perfidious EU.
The EU never kept a secret of the fact they wanted Ever Closer Union and the EU's evolution into being a Federal nation state has never been a secret.
But in the UK over the past 35 years, arguably from Delors speech to the TUC onwards, the EEC/EU and the UK have drifted apart.
Its ended up suiting both sides in the UK to rewrite history to claim that the EU is/was about economics rather than a nascent federation. For Eurosceptics it suited them to pretend we'd joined a trade bloc and it had changed - its true it had changed but that it would change was never a secret when we joined. For Europhiles it suited them to pretend the EU is still primarily a trade bloc, because they knew that the majority of Britons now don't want ever closer union and a federal Europe.
You can't pull the wool over people's eyes for long though. Europhiles needed to make an argument for Ever Closer Union, not pretend it didn't exist or that Dave had abolished it. They didn't, so they lost and deservedly so.
I think perfidious Albion hits the nail on the head. The behaviour of the right-wing in this country, since free market fundamentalism became the lodestar of Conservative thought, sickens me. They have ripped us out of Europe, and they will happily tear the union asunder and throw NI to the wolves, in their pursuit of unfettered, amoral profit without responsibility.
Way to miss the point.
The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum, which is why they won. They said they didn't want ever closer union and they campaigned against it and they won a majority to ensure we no longer had any future in it.
It was the Remainers who were most dishonest in the referendum. They couldn't bring themselves to actually campaign for Ever Closer Union. They couldn't bring themselves to campaign for a Federal EU.
The British public were entirely correct to "rip us out of Europe" when even the Europhiles couldn't be arsed to campaign for Europe, to campaign for Ever Closer Union. Instead pretending that David Cameron had abolished it.
If you think "The "right" on this debate were entirely truthful and honest in the referendum", you are even more gullible idiot than I thought, or a complete liar. As you as an apologist for Johnson I suspect it is the latter. You are also too stupid to understand that "ever closer union" was an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle. If you think the French are about to go into full political union with the rest of Europe, particularly Germany you really are as thick as a plank.
Still, as you say, your side "won". Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn "won" and so did Vladimir Putin. The habitual liars won. Well done.
You are the habitual liar not me.
The entire point of the conversation with northern_monkey is that "Ever Closer Union" is literally the raison d'etre of the EU and something they never kept a secret even before we joined or before the 1975 referendum. Yet here you are now pretending that it was 'an aspiration shared by only a few Euro federalists and was massively on the wane as a guiding principle.'
Deep down in your heart even you don't support Ever Closer Union it seems, you're unwilling to even attempt to argue in favour of it instead lying and casting aspersions that its not real or only a fringe aspiration. Which is why your side of habitual liars deservedly lost.
Philip, I have never supported "Ever Closer Union", because it was always a meaningless anachronism. Anyone that knows anything about the EU (you clearly know jackshit about it ) knows that it was, exactly as I said, an aspiration of a few diehard euro-federalists, and it remains so. It was an anachronism like Labour's Clause 4, though unlike clause 4 no Tony Blair was ever going to remove it because it was and is bland and meaningless.
As I previously said (which you conveniently ignored) France is never going into a full political union with Germany. Ever. Period. But your small EU hating mind will never be able to understand, Duh!
I feel sorry for you, because you're just embarrassing yourself now.
You're in denial of that which everyone sane and honest can see: The EU is about Ever Closer Union. It is the very first line, very first principle of the project. You wish to deny that the French and Germans are seeking a political union while they make no secret of the fact that is what they want. Macron is up front, open and honest about his desire to see more EU integration so why do you hate that or deny that? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/15/emmanuel-macron-sets-out-10-year-vision-for-eu-with-call-for-more-integration
That you are in denial just makes you look silly and petulant, not wise. It seems that you are the one who hates what the EU really is so you're trying to deny it and turn it into something it isn't. I don't hate the EU - I wish them well. If the French and Germans want a political union and integrated defence policies etc as Macron is calling for and as they've been building for the better part of three quarters of a century now then good luck to them. It is the logical end point of a single currency and unlike you it seems I wish them well. I just wish them well as our neighbours instead of trying to bring their project down from the inside like you seem to want.
Haha, psychological projection writ large! You, Philip, embarrass yourself with every post. Do you actually have any experience of anything that you pontificate about?
A 24/7 keyboard warrior accuses someone else of embarrassing themselves! LOL! You know jackshit about the EU and pretty much everything else you write on here. Do something useful, learn a trade, get a job, but please stop writing shit on here every day!
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
I guess thats why I am a LibDem these days...
Who arranged the exchange to swap you for williamglenn?
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The remainer's attitude is turning into the longest sulk in history.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
So the Medical Deep State and its enabling cabal of freedom-hating Marxist scientists have crumbled in the face of ... of what?
Coincides with when the end of the vaccine programme is expected for all over 18s. I think Javid is being smart to avoid claims of intergenerational unfairness that younger people who were deprioritised for vaccines for the good of the country are now being treated unfairly with isolation orders as many haven't had their chance to be double jabbed.
Hmm, but it's not very rational in epidemiological terms, is it? About the only thing that can be said in favour of such an irrational policy is that it might encourage higher vaccine take-up.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
I guess thats why I am a LibDem these days...
Who arranged the exchange to swap you for williamglenn?
Philip - I can see you posting that exact same sentence in a year or two as Boris and Priti continue to tighten the authoritarian screw and Ed Davey campaigns vehemently against it.
I would like nothing more than to see Ed Davey campaigning against authoritarianism.
Let me know if he starts.
I'll keep you informed. I really look forward to signing you up. Might take a year or two.
Coincides with when the end of the vaccine programme is expected for all over 18s. I think Javid is being smart to avoid claims of intergenerational unfairness that younger people who were deprioritised for vaccines for the good of the country are now being treated unfairly with isolation orders as many haven't had their chance to be double jabbed.
Hmm, but it's not very rational in epidemiological terms, is it? About the only thing that can be said in favour of such an irrational policy is that it might encourage higher vaccine take-up.
It wouldn't exactly be fair if they have no opportunity to get vaccinated. Either no quarantine, or vaccination.
I welcome it, but it raises all sorts of questions, and as yet I’ve seen no answers.
One wonders about government figures. For a long time I read that there were an estimated 20,000 NZers here which seemed like a gross underestimate.
Yes, I remember seeing suggestions that the population of the UK was about 10% bigger than official figures. This seemed far fetched at the time.
900,000 Romanians is about 4% of the Romanian population. Imagine that - 4% of the Romanian population is here!
We don't actually know that they are here. What is stopping someone living in Romania applying at the address of a friend in the UK, so that they can work here in future if and when they want to?
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The remainer's attitude is turning into the longest sulk in history.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
So the Medical Deep State and its enabling cabal of freedom-hating Marxist scientists have crumbled in the face of ... of what?
They have crumbled in the face of an alarming rise in cases of conservative voters not turning up to vote conservative in conservative heartlands like Surrey and Bucks.
See that's the sort of rise in cases that the government has to act on.
There are some curiosities in the polling figures presented. Leave voters are 82-10 (right-wrong) Remain voters are 9-84 Average based on 52:48 Leave:Remain weighting would be 47-45.5 Headline result from poll is 42-46
So there's a fair amount of swing, from some combination of new voters, non-voters, dead voters and false recall.
In any case, it's interesting that, for those who did vote in 2016, there is little sign of any change of opinion. The lead for Brexit wrong is not being caused by people who voted Leave deciding it was wrong and changing their mind.
I welcome it, but it raises all sorts of questions, and as yet I’ve seen no answers.
One wonders about government figures. For a long time I read that there were an estimated 20,000 NZers here which seemed like a gross underestimate.
Yes, I remember seeing suggestions that the population of the UK was about 10% bigger than official figures. This seemed far fetched at the time.
900,000 Romanians is about 4% of the Romanian population. Imagine that - 4% of the Romanian population is here!
We don't actually know that they are here. What is stopping someone living in Romania applying at the address of a friend in the UK, so that they can work here in future if and when they want to?
Good to see the Brexit debate continuing to be so horrifically entrenched. On here and in the wider public.
Take the Nissan / Ellesmere announcement. Leavers will point at the remainer warnings and (probably justifiably) point out that the predictions were wrong. On the other side, remainers will point to huge government bungs to keep the business in the UK
Rinse and repeat with every announcement
Who would have thought that foreign companies investing huge sums here was indeed bad news?
Coincides with when the end of the vaccine programme is expected for all over 18s. I think Javid is being smart to avoid claims of intergenerational unfairness that younger people who were deprioritised for vaccines for the good of the country are now being treated unfairly with isolation orders as many haven't had their chance to be double jabbed.
Hmm, but it's not very rational in epidemiological terms, is it? About the only thing that can be said in favour of such an irrational policy is that it might encourage higher vaccine take-up.
It wouldn't exactly be fair if they have no opportunity to get vaccinated. Either no quarantine, or vaccination.
No, this argument is wrong, wrong, wrong. There is nothing at all unfair about objectively-justified differential policy. We really do need to get away from this childishness; in this case, damaging the economy simply because we're unwilling to take on the childishness.
I welcome it, but it raises all sorts of questions, and as yet I’ve seen no answers.
One wonders about government figures. For a long time I read that there were an estimated 20,000 NZers here which seemed like a gross underestimate.
Yes, I remember seeing suggestions that the population of the UK was about 10% bigger than official figures. This seemed far fetched at the time.
900,000 Romanians is about 4% of the Romanian population. Imagine that - 4% of the Romanian population is here!
We don't actually know that they are here. What is stopping someone living in Romania applying at the address of a friend in the UK, so that they can work here in future if and when they want to?
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
I think you're forgetting something, in your haste to blame Remain. From about the mid 90's onwards there was a drip drip drip of anti Brussels material from the Telegraph, Mail and Express and virulently from the Sun. Boris' articles about bendy bananas and the like created a mind-set.
I think the bigger question wrt EU is that it is a pig-in-a-poke.
No common idea amongst its members as to what it wants, no idea how to get there (obviously), and a leadership that could be improved on by the Goodies singing Funky Gibbon.
That at least implies a union in which members may have some input on what they want and how to get there, rather than the big, fat boorish member telling them.
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The remainer's attitude is turning into the longest sulk in history.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
So the Medical Deep State and its enabling cabal of freedom-hating Marxist scientists have crumbled in the face of ... of what?
Hancock's Todger.
It's down to the Saj? Nice humanizing take on things but I don't think so. I think it's more that June 21st very nearly happened and so it would've taken something big and unexpected to delay again.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 27m Some people telling me Labour’s policy is to simply prevent all “avoidable” deaths. But then that requires a total and immediate lockdown. Given every loosening potentially increases transmission, infection rates, hospitalisations and deaths.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
Indeed and Rejoin has just begun. If the demographics are as stated and the old continue to die before the young it shouldn't take long
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
87% of adults
Given that this is only a few percent different to the number vaccinated, I would expect that number to be much lower among the under 18 cohorts
Hmm. ONS ought to rewrite their top level blurb then (and there is no link from that page)
Antibodies against coronavirus (COVID-19) The presence of antibodies to COVID-19 suggests that a person previously had the infection or has been vaccinated. In the week beginning 7 June 2021, the percentage of people that would have tested positive for antibodies is estimated to be: 86.6% in England 88.7% in Wales 85.4% in Northern Ireland 79.1% in Scotland
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
Completely agreed. I agree with every single word of this.
The sad reality is that some today would rather lie and pretend that Ever Closer Union is not a thing despite the Euro, see the dishonest remarks from Nigel earlier in this thread, than actually advocate for a democratic European federation as the end state to be in favour of.
The only thing I'm not certain of is if the dishonest people claiming that Ever Closer Union isn't real are just lying to us, or if they're lying to themselves and actually believe that too.
Once there is a Euro and an ECB it isn't possible to believe that there is no intention of a single state, whatever you tell other people. Overriding law making powers, a parliament, currency, central bank, a court which overrides state courts, flag, anthem, cabinet, treaty making powers, embassies....all add up. This is not the stuff of a glorified Hanseatic League
It's no good to pretend it has no such ambitions because it doesn't have cricket team. And there is nothing wrong with the vision in itself. it's the denial that is the killer, because that involves failing to develop a coherent idea of the European future.
It would be rather good to have all the good bits of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Western Church of Erasmus, a shared classical and Judeo Christian culture together with robust British empiricism, with all the bad bits removed and democracy added. But that was not offered to us.
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
Is this really the kind of reasoning that the optimism is founded on, though?
Not understanding that you can have antibodies and still be infected and still pass the infection one and still - as far as I know - get severely ill and even die?
Not allowing for spread of the virus through unvaccinated children? Even though unvaccinated children are known to be currently the most highly infected group?
I mean - I have seen comments in the news from some people who do know something about the facts - and who think the government's plan is the least worst option. But they are definitely not of the "Vaccines are magic - vaccines will make it all go away" variety.
What those people are saying is essentially this: the Delta variant is so transmissible that vaccines alone aren't going to get us to herd immunity. The population has only been half immunised through vaccination. But the virus will be even more transmissible in the Autumn, so it's best to bite the bullet now rather than waiting for the vaccination programme to finish.
Maybe that's right. Maybe it's wrong. It depends on the modelling, which not many people here seem to have any time for.
But it's not a happy-clappy "everything's fine" message. It's a message that things are going to be very grim indeed, but if we leave it any longer they will be even grimmer.
That doesn't seem to make any sense to me. There are only 2 policy approaches that I can see.
Zero Covid where you go into lockdown for months to get back to zero cases.
Herd Immunity where the population is protected by vaccines (older populations) and previous infection (youngsters)
The first option when we currently have so few deaths should not in my view be considered. The negatives are so much higher than the positives.
This leaves us with the herd immunity approach. We have vaccinated all the most vulnerable. It makes more sense for the rest to acquire immunity in the Summer to reduce potential impacts in the Autumn and Winter. The isolation is probably there to help "flatten the curve", to re-use an expression used extensively in Spring 2020.
It is quite clear to me that we are going with this herd immunity option. We shouldn't be scared of saying it. Achieving it primarily with vaccines is our way out of this.
I fear for Australia and NZ because unless they get vaccinating very quickly Delta will eventually get in and then they will be in all sorts of trouble. The one thing this government got really right throughout this whole pandemic was to realise that the only way out was through vaccinating as quickly as possible. They gambled on it but the cost of the gamble (i.e. supporting vaccine development and buying vaccines) was miniscule compared to other pandemic costs.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
Indeed and Rejoin has just begun. If the demographics are as stated and the old continue to die before the young it shouldn't take long
But the young get wiser as they get older.
Lifelong conservatives are always saying that.
Maybe they just look at the age categories in polling data. Matthew Goodwin said recently that the cross over age for a Tory lead is now 37.
And but for older people Jezza would have been PM for some time.
Coincides with when the end of the vaccine programme is expected for all over 18s. I think Javid is being smart to avoid claims of intergenerational unfairness that younger people who were deprioritised for vaccines for the good of the country are now being treated unfairly with isolation orders as many haven't had their chance to be double jabbed.
Hmm, but it's not very rational in epidemiological terms, is it? About the only thing that can be said in favour of such an irrational policy is that it might encourage higher vaccine take-up.
Realistically it doesn't make any difference because hardly anyone actually isolates after getting COVID let alone being a contact. But in general officially making being double jabbed have real benefits such as not having to isolate for COVID contact is probably something to nudge refusers to get the vaccine, definitely.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
I am completely over voting remain and support Brexit
Of course.
You supported Cameron and Remain now support Johnson and Brexit.
When the party changes policy, you change. We have always been at war with Eastasia...
So they're making that a Step 5 it seems? Seems logical to me, though I think I'll be tempted to delete the app on the 19th.
What app?
ROFL. Indeed.
The conservatives do seem, out of nowhere, to have contracted a nasty bout of conservatism. The type of conservatism that makes the assumption the louder the Rigbys, the Piers Morgans and the Alistair Campbells etc screech, the better we are doing.
We may have to accept that the Conservative party may have been infiltrated by some conservatives.
Government modelling was crap back in the early 2000s, too.
The forecasts indicate that net immigration from the AC-10 to the UK after the current enlargement of the EU will be relatively small, at between 5,000 and 13,000 immigrants per year up to 2010. (although they do caveat this, this is the central prediction).
The vast, vast majority of those Rumanians will be a fantastic asset to our country, along with all the other eastern Europeans who have come here to make a life.
If it was me, I'd set up a trestle table in Red Square to see if we can get some of the best Russians too. Amazing people, badly led. And it would annoy the sh8te out of Putin.
Will they? Most people are pretty average, including most Romanians. No need to sound as if you want to fell8 (as you would presumably write it) them all.
Also see this desperate attempt to present a qtwtaiy as a qtwtain.
I thought the only reason we delayed opening up completely was the worry over the variant formerly known as Indian being less resistant to the vaccines, so we bought a bit more time? Deaths haven’t gone up much, intensive cares are not overwhelmed, so why are people, including those who moaned when the re opening was delayed, calling it a gamble now?
Because the UK, almost uniquely in the developed world, seems to have Zerocovidians at the very highest level of public discourse.
It's a real shame. It's OK to have even 50,000 cases of Covid a day *if* they are not leading to particularly heightened levels of hospitalisations and deaths.
Indeed, it would probably be more useful for the government to target hospitalisations and deaths rather than cases per se, because the reality is that people *aren't* getting really sick right now, because the most vulnerable have been vaccinated.
Yes
Sir Keir is saying it’s reckless, it should be done gradually etc, but that is what’s happening! We were meant to be fully open a month earlier, but the government were cautious. I don’t see why he is calling for even more caution on the back of the vaccines working as intended. It really is a case of being paralysed by fear. I live with an unvaccinated vulnerable person, we have to be careful, but that doesn’t mean the whole of society has to join us
He’s thinking about it politically
If it goes well Boris was “reckless but lucky”
If it doesn’t then he capitalises on all the downside
It’s vile
Calling for an incremental approach, which was government policy until the conservatives lost a couple of by-elections, is hardly vile.
Ashcroft was setting up to blame Boris personally for all future deaths
Johnson takes the credit where it is due on the vaccine, he also gets the blame when things go wrong. Welcome to politics, leadership and responsibility, Charles.
Yes and no.
The vaccine program was fully within the government's command. It set up the relevant groups, chose a portfolio of vaccines, procured them, and greased the wheels of industry. There have been issues, but on the whole they've done a very good job. The vaccine messaging has also been generally good, with a few small wobbles IMO.
Similarly (and this gets much less coverage), the excellent genomics work at COG-UK. Literally a world-beater.
The spread of the virus is much less under the government's control: the virus does what it 'wants'. The government can tell the public what to do, but absent a police state, it depends on the public's behaviour in following those rules. They are not helpless against the virus, but they have to be reactive - whereas the vaccine rollout has been much more under their control.
Too many people also ignore the negatives of lockdown: not just fiscally, but also mentally and physically to the population.
Of course, all this is right. But the government has made a decision to end all legal restrictions at a time when the virus is spreading at a rapid rate. All or nothing were not the only two options. The PM, though, has decided that they were. He must take responsibility for that. There is no-one else to blame.
That was my point: the PM should take responsibility for the systemic decisions. If he gets it wrong blame him for that.
Agreed.
I can't see what's "snooty" about calling the PM's action "vile" when the PM is not showing much leadership at all but demonstrating that his principal interest is in covering his capacious arse and taking personal credit, rather in the manner that an ambitious estate agent might.
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
Is this really the kind of reasoning that the optimism is founded on, though?
Not understanding that you can have antibodies and still be infected and still pass the infection one and still - as far as I know - get severely ill and even die?
Not allowing for spread of the virus through unvaccinated children? Even though unvaccinated children are known to be currently the most highly infected group?
I mean - I have seen comments in the news from some people who do know something about the facts - and who think the government's plan is the least worst option. But they are definitely not of the "Vaccines are magic - vaccines will make it all go away" variety.
What those people are saying is essentially this: the Delta variant is so transmissible that vaccines alone aren't going to get us to herd immunity. The population has only been half immunised through vaccination. But the virus will be even more transmissible in the Autumn, so it's best to bite the bullet now rather than waiting for the vaccination programme to finish.
Maybe that's right. Maybe it's wrong. It depends on the modelling, which not many people here seem to have any time for.
But it's not a happy-clappy "everything's fine" message. It's a message that things are going to be very grim indeed, but if we leave it any longer they will be even grimmer.
The number of people who have antibodies and who are getting seriously ill and die is very very low, and almost all fall into the category of 'would have died anyway'. We can't lock the whole country down on the basis of this. It's madness that there are people even considering it.
Anybody else getting a strong sense of deja vu about this thread?
I'd love to contribute, but I really can't think of anything to say about Brexit that hasn't already been said ad infinitum.
Good call. Otherwise you have to hunker down and say for the umpteenth time what you have said before - to the same people - then see if they say anything in response that's different to what they've said before. When it becomes clear they aren't, that it's the same old sh ... shebang, you switch topics and that was 45 minutes you will not be getting back, lockdown or no lockdown.
I welcome it, but it raises all sorts of questions, and as yet I’ve seen no answers.
One wonders about government figures. For a long time I read that there were an estimated 20,000 NZers here which seemed like a gross underestimate.
Do most countries count people in and out of country fairly accurately? Regardless of different views on migration etc why dont we do this?
With digital passports nowadays it should be fairly easy, but we don't even try as far as I understand it.
How would it be easy? We stopped collecting and consolidating the data years ago for reasons...
Scanning each passport in and out tells you if someone is in the country or not.
If 500k Swiss have arrived in the UK and 450k have left, shouldnt there be 50k more Swiss than when you started tracking? Excluding births and deaths which should be tracked, and nationality changes, which can be tracked if Swiss-UK and would be negligible numbers otherwise.
I am sure I am missing a lot but getting close to an accurate picture does not seem hard or intrusive on visitors or migrants.
Government modelling was crap back in the early 2000s, too.
The forecasts indicate that net immigration from the AC-10 to the UK after the current enlargement of the EU will be relatively small, at between 5,000 and 13,000 immigrants per year up to 2010. (although they do caveat this, this is the central prediction).
The vast, vast majority of those Rumanians will be a fantastic asset to our country, along with all the other eastern Europeans who have come here to make a life.
If it was me, I'd set up a trestle table in Red Square to see if we can get some of the best Russians too. Amazing people, badly led. And it would annoy the sh8te out of Putin.
Will they? Most people are pretty average, including most Romanians. No need to sound as if you want to fell8 (as you would presumably write it) them all.
Also see this desperate attempt to present a qtwtaiy as a qtwtain.
You can imagine they went into that one thinking Farage must surely be wrong (because he's a bigoted idiot, right), only to find out he was broadly correct.
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
Is this really the kind of reasoning that the optimism is founded on, though?
Not understanding that you can have antibodies and still be infected and still pass the infection one and still - as far as I know - get severely ill and even die?
Not allowing for spread of the virus through unvaccinated children? Even though unvaccinated children are known to be currently the most highly infected group?
I mean - I have seen comments in the news from some people who do know something about the facts - and who think the government's plan is the least worst option. But they are definitely not of the "Vaccines are magic - vaccines will make it all go away" variety.
What those people are saying is essentially this: the Delta variant is so transmissible that vaccines alone aren't going to get us to herd immunity. The population has only been half immunised through vaccination. But the virus will be even more transmissible in the Autumn, so it's best to bite the bullet now rather than waiting for the vaccination programme to finish.
Maybe that's right. Maybe it's wrong. It depends on the modelling, which not many people here seem to have any time for.
But it's not a happy-clappy "everything's fine" message. It's a message that things are going to be very grim indeed, but if we leave it any longer they will be even grimmer.
I don't think it's grim. As vaccines continue to be rolled out fewer and fewer people will be susceptible. And those people will be those at least risk. If we have reduced the risk to that from other popular respiratory infections, what is the problem? And it's possible that Delta is so transmissible that lockdown of the form we had it in the UK won't work either.
So they're making that a Step 5 it seems? Seems logical to me, though I think I'll be tempted to delete the app on the 19th.
What app?
ROFL. Indeed.
The conservatives do seem, out of nowhere, to have contracted a nasty bout of conservatism. The type of conservatism that makes the assumption the louder the Rigbys, the Piers Morgans and the Alistair Campbells etc screech, the better we are doing.
We may have to accept that the Conservative party may have been infiltrated by some conservatives.
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
Is this really the kind of reasoning that the optimism is founded on, though?
Not understanding that you can have antibodies and still be infected and still pass the infection one and still - as far as I know - get severely ill and even die?
Not allowing for spread of the virus through unvaccinated children? Even though unvaccinated children are known to be currently the most highly infected group?
I mean - I have seen comments in the news from some people who do know something about the facts - and who think the government's plan is the least worst option. But they are definitely not of the "Vaccines are magic - vaccines will make it all go away" variety.
What those people are saying is essentially this: the Delta variant is so transmissible that vaccines alone aren't going to get us to herd immunity. The population has only been half immunised through vaccination. But the virus will be even more transmissible in the Autumn, so it's best to bite the bullet now rather than waiting for the vaccination programme to finish.
Maybe that's right. Maybe it's wrong. It depends on the modelling, which not many people here seem to have any time for.
But it's not a happy-clappy "everything's fine" message. It's a message that things are going to be very grim indeed, but if we leave it any longer they will be even grimmer.
I welcome it, but it raises all sorts of questions, and as yet I’ve seen no answers.
One wonders about government figures. For a long time I read that there were an estimated 20,000 NZers here which seemed like a gross underestimate.
Do most countries count people in and out of country fairly accurately? Regardless of different views on migration etc why dont we do this?
With digital passports nowadays it should be fairly easy, but we don't even try as far as I understand it.
How would it be easy? We stopped collecting and consolidating the data years ago for reasons...
We should know how many *foreigners* are living and working in the country as they get issued discriminatory National Insurance numbers (such as starting SG, there are others).
Is it just me, or spelling it "Rumanian" gives it a 1908, Times of London feel?
Did the Times not use "Roumania"? Adoption of the spelling "Romania" as standard in the 1970s allegedly had something to do with the dictator's Caesarism.
[Note to self: find time to check out what kind of insane stuff Ceausescu was into.]
Coincides with when the end of the vaccine programme is expected for all over 18s. I think Javid is being smart to avoid claims of intergenerational unfairness that younger people who were deprioritised for vaccines for the good of the country are now being treated unfairly with isolation orders as many haven't had their chance to be double jabbed.
Hmm, but it's not very rational in epidemiological terms, is it? About the only thing that can be said in favour of such an irrational policy is that it might encourage higher vaccine take-up.
It wouldn't exactly be fair if they have no opportunity to get vaccinated. Either no quarantine, or vaccination.
No, this argument is wrong, wrong, wrong. There is nothing at all unfair about objectively-justified differential policy. We really do need to get away from this childishness; in this case, damaging the economy simply because we're unwilling to take on the childishness.
It's unlikely to make any real difference. Most people I know are fully intending to uninstall the app on the 19th, I know I am. My wife has already done so after being pinged despite not being in the country at the time when it said she had come in contact with someone and had gone through the amber list rigmarole of PCR testing on entry and arrival etc...
I think it's actually a politically savvy move from Javid knowing that it makes no difference economically. For months the Tories have been painted as favouring the old (fairly) and finally they have a policy which fucks the old farts off a bit for fairness to the young who have had their lives ruined for 18 months to protect the old. I fully expect that the end of isolation for contacts will be pitched as a fairness issue as well with the 4 week delay intended to give under 40s time to get double jabbed and a huge expansion of walk-in facilities.
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
Is this really the kind of reasoning that the optimism is founded on, though?
Not understanding that you can have antibodies and still be infected and still pass the infection one and still - as far as I know - get severely ill and even die?
Not allowing for spread of the virus through unvaccinated children? Even though unvaccinated children are known to be currently the most highly infected group?
I mean - I have seen comments in the news from some people who do know something about the facts - and who think the government's plan is the least worst option. But they are definitely not of the "Vaccines are magic - vaccines will make it all go away" variety.
What those people are saying is essentially this: the Delta variant is so transmissible that vaccines alone aren't going to get us to herd immunity. The population has only been half immunised through vaccination. But the virus will be even more transmissible in the Autumn, so it's best to bite the bullet now rather than waiting for the vaccination programme to finish.
Maybe that's right. Maybe it's wrong. It depends on the modelling, which not many people here seem to have any time for.
But it's not a happy-clappy "everything's fine" message. It's a message that things are going to be very grim indeed, but if we leave it any longer they will be even grimmer.
"as far as I know"
Is there a limit on that, Chris?
Completely ignoring the absolutely massive reduction of the risk of getting severely ill and death.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
They should be campaigning for the 3rd way - rejoin the EEA.
LD policy is that, with a longer term aim of rejoin.
I am expecting it to take over a decade to achieve, but am ready for a long campaign.
I guess thats why I am a LibDem these days...
Who arranged the exchange to swap you for williamglenn?
Philip - I can see you posting that exact same sentence in a year or two as Boris and Priti continue to tighten the authoritarian screw and Ed Davey campaigns vehemently against it.
I would like nothing more than to see Ed Davey campaigning against authoritarianism.
Let me know if he starts.
I'll keep you informed. I really look forward to signing you up. Might take a year or two.
I'm with Philip here.
To be fair to the Lib Dems, of the three main English parties they have been marginally the most liberal over the last 18 months. The Tories have been busy abolishing freedom of movement, freedom of association, parliamentary democracy, parliamentary scrutiny free speech and scores of other things we once took for granted in a liberal democracy, and the Labour Party have been sniping at them for not being even more illiberal. From the little I have heard from the Lib Dems, there have been a few reservations expressed about all this. Not enough, for my tastes, and the actual opposition has still had to come from Steve Baker, Graham brady, etc (who to be fair have greater absolute numbers) - but enough for me to give the Lib Dems a look. And then when I do give them a look Layla Moran says something absolutely idiotic again.
But anyway Barnesian, keep plugging away. We have taken liberal democracy for granted for too long and we need a party who truly advocate it. Unfortunately for the Lib Dems for a long time it appeared to most who didn't look too hard that we did have a robust liberal democracy, so it wasn't an argument that saw many votes and the party had to look elsewhere for its battles. But the events of the last 18 months have shown us how valuable liberal democracy really is and the extent to which it needs protecting. I am persuadable.
I welcome it, but it raises all sorts of questions, and as yet I’ve seen no answers.
One wonders about government figures. For a long time I read that there were an estimated 20,000 NZers here which seemed like a gross underestimate.
Do most countries count people in and out of country fairly accurately? Regardless of different views on migration etc why dont we do this?
With digital passports nowadays it should be fairly easy, but we don't even try as far as I understand it.
How would it be easy? We stopped collecting and consolidating the data years ago for reasons...
We should know how many *foreigners* are living and working in the country as they get issued discriminatory National Insurance numbers (such as starting SG, there are others).
Can you back that up with any actual evidence and documentation.
Because that ain't how NI numbers are allocated - it's literally current office code followed by sequential number from 1 to 999999
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
Is this really the kind of reasoning that the optimism is founded on, though?
Not understanding that you can have antibodies and still be infected and still pass the infection one and still - as far as I know - get severely ill and even die?
Not allowing for spread of the virus through unvaccinated children? Even though unvaccinated children are known to be currently the most highly infected group?
I mean - I have seen comments in the news from some people who do know something about the facts - and who think the government's plan is the least worst option. But they are definitely not of the "Vaccines are magic - vaccines will make it all go away" variety.
What those people are saying is essentially this: the Delta variant is so transmissible that vaccines alone aren't going to get us to herd immunity. The population has only been half immunised through vaccination. But the virus will be even more transmissible in the Autumn, so it's best to bite the bullet now rather than waiting for the vaccination programme to finish.
Maybe that's right. Maybe it's wrong. It depends on the modelling, which not many people here seem to have any time for.
But it's not a happy-clappy "everything's fine" message. It's a message that things are going to be very grim indeed, but if we leave it any longer they will be even grimmer.
On a similar note, I'm calling the peak for positive tests in Greater Manchester this week. That doesn't mean the peak for positive tests in England - other areas will follow our trajectory - but it does mean the peak won't get too high or be too far away.
Really good news story and good work by Kwasi Kwarteng
You're milking it now.
While good news, in terms of vehicle manufacturing, the investment is peanuts (and the UK govt. seems to providing at least 20% of the money). ...Stellantis has held discussions with the UK government over options for its Cheshire factory and the company has secured UK government financial support understood to be in the tens of millions of pounds. The £100m is the total amount of investment, and includes the UK government support...
Note Stellantis are building two large battery plants on the continent, with a third planned. None here.
Nissan is still the only committed investment of any size for electric vehicles, and even that isn't massive.
The U.K. has always been tiny in comparison to the continent Where this OEM is concerned. There have been concerns about the long term viability of this plant going back many years. This is good news especially given the potential for parts distribution in the area similar to what we see adjacent to NMUK.
Of course this means the end of Vauxhall Car production in the U.K.
Remains to be seen what future Luton/IBC has.
The battery production will be a JV with Total. A French multinational. No prizes for guessing where most of the batteries will be made.
NEW: Indonesia reports 31,189 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase so far, and a record 728 deaths
And their positivity rate is over 20%.......two people I know there have died - one incredibly a diabetic surgeon who refused the jab.
I know a doctor here, who spent a week in the ICU of his own hospital, having declined the vaccine. His wife also got quite sick. Makes no sense to me whatsoever. Vaccines work!
Government modelling was crap back in the early 2000s, too.
The forecasts indicate that net immigration from the AC-10 to the UK after the current enlargement of the EU will be relatively small, at between 5,000 and 13,000 immigrants per year up to 2010. (although they do caveat this, this is the central prediction).
The vast, vast majority of those Rumanians will be a fantastic asset to our country, along with all the other eastern Europeans who have come here to make a life.
If it was me, I'd set up a trestle table in Red Square to see if we can get some of the best Russians too. Amazing people, badly led. And it would annoy the sh8te out of Putin.
Will they? Most people are pretty average, including most Romanians. No need to sound as if you want to fell8 (as you would presumably write it) them all.
Also see this desperate attempt to present a qtwtaiy as a qtwtain.
Coincides with when the end of the vaccine programme is expected for all over 18s. I think Javid is being smart to avoid claims of intergenerational unfairness that younger people who were deprioritised for vaccines for the good of the country are now being treated unfairly with isolation orders as many haven't had their chance to be double jabbed.
Hmm, but it's not very rational in epidemiological terms, is it? About the only thing that can be said in favour of such an irrational policy is that it might encourage higher vaccine take-up.
It wouldn't exactly be fair if they have no opportunity to get vaccinated. Either no quarantine, or vaccination.
No, this argument is wrong, wrong, wrong. There is nothing at all unfair about objectively-justified differential policy. We really do need to get away from this childishness; in this case, damaging the economy simply because we're unwilling to take on the childishness.
It's unlikely to make any real difference. Most people I know are fully intending to uninstall the app on the 19th, I know I am. My wife has already done so after being pinged despite not being in the country at the time when it said she had come in contact with someone and had gone through the amber list rigmarole of PCR testing on entry and arrival etc...
I think it's actually a politically savvy move from Javid knowing that it makes no difference economically. For months the Tories have been painted as favouring the old (fairly) and finally they have a policy which fucks the old farts off a bit for fairness to the young who have had their lives ruined for 18 months to protect the old. I fully expect that the end of isolation for contacts will be pitched as a fairness issue as well with the 4 week delay intended to give under 40s time to get double jabbed and a huge expansion of walk-in facilities.
It still startles me to hear of people having actually downloaded the app in the first place. I know lots did but I don’t understand why?
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 27m Some people telling me Labour’s policy is to simply prevent all “avoidable” deaths. But then that requires a total and immediate lockdown. Given every loosening potentially increases transmission, infection rates, hospitalisations and deaths.
That's the point I keep making. Labour's position is illogical. Current measures aren't stopping Delta, so if you want to stop Delta you need to tighten not loosen measures.
Really good news story and good work by Kwasi Kwarteng
You're milking it now.
While good news, in terms of vehicle manufacturing, the investment is peanuts (and the UK govt. seems to providing at least 20% of the money). ...Stellantis has held discussions with the UK government over options for its Cheshire factory and the company has secured UK government financial support understood to be in the tens of millions of pounds. The £100m is the total amount of investment, and includes the UK government support...
Note Stellantis are building two large battery plants on the continent, with a third planned. None here.
Nissan is still the only committed investment of any size for electric vehicles, and even that isn't massive.
The U.K. has always been tiny in comparison to the continent Where this OEM is concerned. There have been concerns about the long term viability of this plant going back many years. This is good news especially given the potential for parts distribution in the area similar to what we see adjacent to NMUK.
Of course this means the end of Vauxhall Car production in the U.K.
Remains to be seen what future Luton/IBC has.
The battery production will be a JV with Total. A French multinational. No prizes for guessing where most of the batteries will be made.
Have you read any of the articles regarding the investment - Luton is running at full capacity producing 100,000 vans a year.
It was going to 30k of course, and when Farage said 300k he was a total clown.
The people in favour of mass immigration always grossly underestimate the amount of immigrants, whether out of deceit or ignorance. When they are inevitably shown to be wrong, the normal move is to say ‘but look at all the good they’ve done for the economy”
Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says the lifting of coronavirus restrictions is a "calculated risk".
The professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool tells Times Radio: "I wouldn't say this is a gamble, it's more of a calculated risk."
"I should point out, looking at the data last night, 88% of people in hospital, from what I could see, had not been vaccinated or had had the vaccine but hadn't had the chance to develop immunity, so that's within 28 days of the vaccine.
"There's now an incredibly strong signal that the vaccination is working and protecting the vast majority of people."
From the BBC live feed
88% of people in hospital are currently from the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated cohort which shrinks every day. This is the stat we've all been waiting for and once again justifies reopening. The vaccine is basically freely available to anyone who wants it. What we're seeing is the virus burning through the unvaccinated population. There was never a scenario where we could stay locked down because people have refused the vaccine.
BUT BUT the idiot at the Times has stuck his ruler through the data and said if this continues when we hit 200k cases we will have 4000+ a day going into hospital....
Someone was suggesting 1 million a day on here but I cannot remember who
That will happen in about a month at current rates of growth, and at current rates of hospitalisation the January peak of hospital admissions will be exceeded around that time.
But you've all been hypnotised into thinking numbers don't matter any more, and who am I to spoil the party? Good luck.
The ONS reckons 87% of people have abtobodies. There's only 9 million to go. It has to burn itself out sooner rather than later.
Is this really the kind of reasoning that the optimism is founded on, though?
Not understanding that you can have antibodies and still be infected and still pass the infection one and still - as far as I know - get severely ill and even die?
Not allowing for spread of the virus through unvaccinated children? Even though unvaccinated children are known to be currently the most highly infected group?
I mean - I have seen comments in the news from some people who do know something about the facts - and who think the government's plan is the least worst option. But they are definitely not of the "Vaccines are magic - vaccines will make it all go away" variety.
What those people are saying is essentially this: the Delta variant is so transmissible that vaccines alone aren't going to get us to herd immunity. The population has only been half immunised through vaccination. But the virus will be even more transmissible in the Autumn, so it's best to bite the bullet now rather than waiting for the vaccination programme to finish.
Maybe that's right. Maybe it's wrong. It depends on the modelling, which not many people here seem to have any time for.
But it's not a happy-clappy "everything's fine" message. It's a message that things are going to be very grim indeed, but if we leave it any longer they will be even grimmer.
Moron and Lineker...its all very Lawerence Fox...they constantly looking for outrage / validation on the twitters.
I am coming to the conclusion it is the new mid life crisis. Forget the penis extension sports car and the new younger girlfriend, it is now all about the retweets....
Sir Keir framing the 21st July easing of the remaining restrictions as ‘all or nothing recklessness’ is the equivalent of telling a driver, who has slowed down from 100mph to 5mph, that slamming on the brakes is risking whiplash & sending themselves through the windscreen
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The remainer's attitude is turning into the longest sulk in history.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
What you can't seem to understand is that it is not a sulk it is a difference of opinion. Just because we have left the EU that does not mean the issue is dead. You simply want to ignore the inconvenient fact that already a plurality of the electorate think we made the wrong decision. I'll be very surprised if there isn't a major push to rejoin or join EFTA/EEA in 10 years time. Once the free unicorns fail to arrive the gap will widen.
It still startles me to hear of people having actually downloaded the app in the first place. I know lots did but I don’t understand why?
I wouldn't have thought it would be very hard to understand that we wanted to do our bit to help reduce the spread of a very nasty, often fatal, disease.
Good to see the Brexit debate continuing to be so horrifically entrenched. On here and in the wider public.
Take the Nissan / Ellesmere announcement. Leavers will point at the remainer warnings and (probably justifiably) point out that the predictions were wrong. On the other side, remainers will point to huge government bungs to keep the business in the UK
Rinse and repeat with every announcement
My thoughts specifically on automotive and Brexit. Nissan seem to have thought of a way of making Brexit work for them. Which is very good news as they were giving serious consideration to closing Sunderland. Ellesmere Port is obviously also good news. An open car plant is better than a closed one. But it feels very tactical in comparison with Nissan. £100 million is a tiny investment by automotive standards, presumably be offset by land sales as they reduce the plant area by over half. It seems the UK government subsidy genuinely was make or break, which also suggests a lack of commitment. Production of the electric van is currently in the former Opel HQ at Ruesselsheim, but they are repurposing that plant for the core new electric enabled platform where they can switch models flexibly for scale and where they are clearing out niche products that don't fit the platform such as this electric van.
In general there seems to be little electric investment going into the UK beyond Nissan and probably JLR. The electric bits are imported for this van, as are they are for the electric Mini. Meanwhile BMW is offloading ICE stuff to its factory in Hams Hall, while keeping the core products and key technologies in Bavaria . Toyota have ruled out electric car production in the UK for the next investment period. Which maybe suggests that the Brexit future is in niche products, while the core products are kept in the EU for regulatory and strategic reasons. But if, for example, ICE goes on for longer than people think, it may be OK
Sir Keir framing the 21st July easing of the remaining restrictions as ‘all or nothing recklessness’ is the equivalent of telling a driver, who has slowed down from 100mph to 5mph, that slamming on the brakes is risking whiplash & sending themselves through the windscreen
And his own position really isn't any different...masks on trains...something something ventalation... pay people more to isolate, when the vast majority don't has nothing to do with money.
The people in favour of mass immigration always grossly underestimate the amount of immigrants, whether out of deceit or ignorance. When they are inevitably shown to be wrong, the normal move is to say ‘but look at all the good they’ve done for the economy”
Or call the people who were right ‘racists’
Who remembers Remain’s ‘EURacists’?
Given that we don't seem to know what the population of the UK is I wonder how we can be certain that there has been an economic benefit, as at the very least any per capita stat is going to be wrong by quite a bit.
The most striking thing for me is how convinced most Labour voters are that Brexit was wrong.
Not only is Starmer not very convincing in his appeals to former Labour Leavers, he is out of line with the majority of his existing voters.
It is also quite striking that despite the press histrionics over vaccines (see PB passim ad nauseum) that opinion over Brexit has not shifted. There is little sign of Remainers changing their minds.
If he was being honest he and Labour would campaign to rejoin
Why?
That bridge has been crossed.
I don’t believe in rejoining. At least not given the current circumstances.
As usual you suggest your political opponents are mendacious while Boris is widely considered the biggest liar in Westminster.
Labour are the party of remain as is Starmer but politically it would be toxic to be honest with the public
Remain is over. You lost, get over it!
I am completely over voting remain and support Brexit
Of course.
You supported Cameron and Remain now support Johnson and Brexit.
When the party changes policy, you change. We have always been at war with Eastasia...
I support the democratic vote
and if the Tories switch back again to be pro-EU in a few years then you will no doubt adjust your views accordingly.
Conservatives and [Boris] Johnson supporters are less ecstatic. Some seem to believe that Southgate is becoming a tool of deep Woke — with one Tory strategist telling me that the England manager’s patriotism essay was “suspiciously well-written”. https://www.ft.com/content/f177cfd0-24b8-49ba-bdd8-99b975828d23
Conservatives and [Boris] Johnson supporters are less ecstatic. Some seem to believe that Southgate is becoming a tool of deep Woke — with one Tory strategist telling me that the England manager’s patriotism essay was “suspiciously well-written”. https://www.ft.com/content/f177cfd0-24b8-49ba-bdd8-99b975828d23
Southgate was very academic at school, fancied a career as a journalist, and did work experience at his local paper, but sure it's "suspiciously well-written" because all footballers must be thick. https://twitter.com/HannahAlOthman/status/1412360347726626816
We have reduced our on air talent bill....haven't we done well....yeah but you bumped a load of big earners off that list and onto another one that we can't see and doesn't count for your on air talent bill.
It’s almost as if they’re moving production of most of their output to Studios, purely to avoid reporting how much they’re paying to entertainers from money extracted under threat of imprisonment.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
Completely agreed. I agree with every single word of this.
The sad reality is that some today would rather lie and pretend that Ever Closer Union is not a thing despite the Euro, see the dishonest remarks from Nigel earlier in this thread, than actually advocate for a democratic European federation as the end state to be in favour of.
The only thing I'm not certain of is if the dishonest people claiming that Ever Closer Union isn't real are just lying to us, or if they're lying to themselves and actually believe that too.
Once there is a Euro and an ECB it isn't possible to believe that there is no intention of a single state, whatever you tell other people. Overriding law making powers, a parliament, currency, central bank, a court which overrides state courts, flag, anthem, cabinet, treaty making powers, embassies....all add up. This is not the stuff of a glorified Hanseatic League
It's no good to pretend it has no such ambitions because it doesn't have cricket team. And there is nothing wrong with the vision in itself. it's the denial that is the killer, because that involves failing to develop a coherent idea of the European future.
It would be rather good to have all the good bits of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Western Church of Erasmus, a shared classical and Judeo Christian culture together with robust British empiricism, with all the bad bits removed and democracy added. But that was not offered to us.
Its not only not possible to believe it, it runs completely against history.
If you read the US Constitution the Federal state never originally had that many powers and the 10th Amendment is much clearer on the principle of subsidiarity than the EU Treaties have ever been, but over time the ratchet effect has driven powers too the centre. The same is happening with the nascent European state just as it did with the nascent American one in the past.
The only element of a federal state the EU currently lacks is the ability to raise its own tax rates, though developments are ongoing in that already as per the two trillion Euro Covid recovery fund.
To believe that the EU is not going to have any further integration runs completely against the past few decades of European history, the past couple of centuries of federal history globally, and the stated desires of European leaders like President Macron and others.
It still startles me to hear of people having actually downloaded the app in the first place. I know lots did but I don’t understand why?
I wouldn't have thought it would be very hard to understand that we wanted to do our bit to help reduce the spread of a very nasty, often fatal, disease.
Yes exactly. I downloaded it for that reason. I've now turned off contact tracing on it and will probably delete it shortly because I feel I've done my bit and no longer agree with ongoing restrictions.
Comments
I welcome it, but it raises all sorts of questions, and as yet I’ve seen no answers.
One wonders about government figures.
For a long time I read that there were an estimated 20,000 NZers here which seemed like a gross underestimate.
Let me know if he starts.
...Stellantis has held discussions with the UK government over options for its Cheshire factory and the company has secured UK government financial support understood to be in the tens of millions of pounds.
The £100m is the total amount of investment, and includes the UK government support...
Note Stellantis are building two large battery plants on the continent, with a third planned. None here.
Nissan is still the only committed investment of any size for electric vehicles, and even that isn't massive.
If it was me, I'd set up a trestle table in Red Square to see if we can get some of the best Russians too. Amazing people, badly led. And it would annoy the sh8te out of Putin.
A 24/7 keyboard warrior accuses someone else of embarrassing themselves! LOL! You know jackshit about the EU and pretty much everything else you write on here. Do something useful, learn a trade, get a job, but please stop writing shit on here every day!
I'd love to contribute, but I really can't think of anything to say about Brexit that hasn't already been said ad infinitum.
900,000 Romanians is about 4% of the Romanian population. Imagine that - 4% of the Romanian population is here!
With digital passports nowadays it should be fairly easy, but we don't even try as far as I understand it.
See that's the sort of rise in cases that the government has to act on.
Leave voters are 82-10 (right-wrong)
Remain voters are 9-84
Average based on 52:48 Leave:Remain weighting would be 47-45.5
Headline result from poll is 42-46
So there's a fair amount of swing, from some combination of new voters, non-voters, dead voters and false recall.
In any case, it's interesting that, for those who did vote in 2016, there is little sign of any change of opinion. The lead for Brexit wrong is not being caused by people who voted Leave deciding it was wrong and changing their mind.
Wouldn’t you?
@DPJHodges
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27m
Some people telling me Labour’s policy is to simply prevent all “avoidable” deaths. But then that requires a total and immediate lockdown. Given every loosening potentially increases transmission, infection rates, hospitalisations and deaths.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc1434/syoa/index.html
from this page
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyantibodyandvaccinationdatafortheuk/latest#percentage-of-adults-testing-positive-for-covid-19-antibodies-by-single-year-of-age-in-england-wales-northern-ireland-and-scotland
With data download at
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc1434/syoa/datadownload.xlsx
Remainersvotingagainsttheresamay'sdealwillofthepeopleevercloseruniononlyopinionpollthatmattersoptoutfromevercloserunionnotabouteconomicsaboutsovereigntywewerealwayssovereign.
Should about do it.
Next.
It's no good to pretend it has no such ambitions because it doesn't have cricket team. And there is nothing wrong with the vision in itself. it's the denial that is the killer, because that involves failing to develop a coherent idea of the European future.
It would be rather good to have all the good bits of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Western Church of Erasmus, a shared classical and Judeo Christian culture together with robust British empiricism, with all the bad bits removed and democracy added. But that was not offered to us.
Not understanding that you can have antibodies and still be infected and still pass the infection one and still - as far as I know - get severely ill and even die?
Not allowing for spread of the virus through unvaccinated children? Even though unvaccinated children are known to be currently the most highly infected group?
I mean - I have seen comments in the news from some people who do know something about the facts - and who think the government's plan is the least worst option. But they are definitely not of the "Vaccines are magic - vaccines will make it all go away" variety.
What those people are saying is essentially this: the Delta variant is so transmissible that vaccines alone aren't going to get us to herd immunity. The population has only been half immunised through vaccination. But the virus will be even more transmissible in the Autumn, so it's best to bite the bullet now rather than waiting for the vaccination programme to finish.
Maybe that's right. Maybe it's wrong. It depends on the modelling, which not many people here seem to have any time for.
But it's not a happy-clappy "everything's fine" message. It's a message that things are going to be very grim indeed, but if we leave it any longer they will be even grimmer.
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1412377157628743685
That doesn't seem to make any sense to me. There are only 2 policy approaches that I can see.
- Zero Covid where you go into lockdown for months to get back to zero cases.
- Herd Immunity where the population is protected by vaccines (older populations) and previous infection (youngsters)
The first option when we currently have so few deaths should not in my view be considered. The negatives are so much higher than the positives.This leaves us with the herd immunity approach. We have vaccinated all the most vulnerable. It makes more sense for the rest to acquire immunity in the Summer to reduce potential impacts in the Autumn and Winter. The isolation is probably there to help "flatten the curve", to re-use an expression used extensively in Spring 2020.
It is quite clear to me that we are going with this herd immunity option. We shouldn't be scared of saying it. Achieving it primarily with vaccines is our way out of this.
I fear for Australia and NZ because unless they get vaccinating very quickly Delta will eventually get in and then they will be in all sorts of trouble. The one thing this government got really right throughout this whole pandemic was to realise that the only way out was through vaccinating as quickly as possible. They gambled on it but the cost of the gamble (i.e. supporting vaccine development and buying vaccines) was miniscule compared to other pandemic costs.
And but for older people Jezza would have been PM for some time.
The conservatives do seem, out of nowhere, to have contracted a nasty bout of conservatism. The type of conservatism that makes the assumption the louder the Rigbys, the Piers Morgans and the Alistair Campbells etc screech, the better we are doing.
We may have to accept that the Conservative party may have been infiltrated by some conservatives.
Also see this desperate attempt to present a qtwtaiy as a qtwtain.
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-romanian-crimewave
I can't see what's "snooty" about calling the PM's action "vile" when the PM is not showing much leadership at all but demonstrating that his principal interest is in covering his capacious arse and taking personal credit, rather in the manner that an ambitious estate agent might.
If 500k Swiss have arrived in the UK and 450k have left, shouldnt there be 50k more Swiss than when you started tracking? Excluding births and deaths which should be tracked, and nationality changes, which can be tracked if Swiss-UK and would be negligible numbers otherwise.
I am sure I am missing a lot but getting close to an accurate picture does not seem hard or intrusive on visitors or migrants.
I just stayed at home, washed my hands and rode out the pandemic.... Now I've had my two jabs I'm moving on lol!
Is there a limit on that, Chris?
Adoption of the spelling "Romania" as standard in the 1970s allegedly had something to do with the dictator's Caesarism.
[Note to self: find time to check out what kind of insane stuff Ceausescu was into.]
None of the criteria here suggest a person resident outside of the UK can apply:
https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens-families/eligibility
I think it's actually a politically savvy move from Javid knowing that it makes no difference economically. For months the Tories have been painted as favouring the old (fairly) and finally they have a policy which fucks the old farts off a bit for fairness to the young who have had their lives ruined for 18 months to protect the old. I fully expect that the end of isolation for contacts will be pitched as a fairness issue as well with the 4 week delay intended to give under 40s time to get double jabbed and a huge expansion of walk-in facilities.
To be fair to the Lib Dems, of the three main English parties they have been marginally the most liberal over the last 18 months. The Tories have been busy abolishing freedom of movement, freedom of association, parliamentary democracy, parliamentary scrutiny free speech and scores of other things we once took for granted in a liberal democracy, and the Labour Party have been sniping at them for not being even more illiberal. From the little I have heard from the Lib Dems, there have been a few reservations expressed about all this. Not enough, for my tastes, and the actual opposition has still had to come from Steve Baker, Graham brady, etc (who to be fair have greater absolute numbers) - but enough for me to give the Lib Dems a look.
And then when I do give them a look Layla Moran says something absolutely idiotic again.
But anyway Barnesian, keep plugging away. We have taken liberal democracy for granted for too long and we need a party who truly advocate it. Unfortunately for the Lib Dems for a long time it appeared to most who didn't look too hard that we did have a robust liberal democracy, so it wasn't an argument that saw many votes and the party had to look elsewhere for its battles. But the events of the last 18 months have shown us how valuable liberal democracy really is and the extent to which it needs protecting. I am persuadable.
BBC TV = £6.42 (plus some allocated costs, let's say £6.99) a month
Same as Netflix/Amazon/etc.
Because that ain't how NI numbers are allocated - it's literally current office code followed by sequential number from 1 to 999999
Let's see if I'm right!
The U.K. has always been tiny in comparison to the continent Where this OEM is concerned. There have been concerns about the long term viability of this plant going back many years. This is good news especially given the potential for parts distribution in the area similar to what we see adjacent to NMUK.
Of course this means the end of Vauxhall Car production in the U.K.
Remains to be seen what future Luton/IBC has.
The battery production will be a JV with Total. A French multinational. No prizes for guessing where most of the batteries will be made.
Here it is, right on cue, the gimmicking nonsense story about licensing laws being extended.
Yet again, yet again: there is NO national law preventing pubs opening past 11pm. None.
That law was abolished in 2005. Sixteen effing years ago. Most pubs around me open until 12am anyway, as a matter of course.
Why does the BBC persist in repeating this myth that English pubs have to close at 11pm? It is utter rubbish.
Can you imagine his reaction if Emma Raducanu had reacted to her stress by say storming off the tennis court.
Or call the people who were right ‘racists’
Who remembers Remain’s ‘EURacists’?
I am coming to the conclusion it is the new mid life crisis. Forget the penis extension sports car and the new younger girlfriend, it is now all about the retweets....
In general there seems to be little electric investment going into the UK beyond Nissan and probably JLR. The electric bits are imported for this van, as are they are for the electric Mini. Meanwhile BMW is offloading ICE stuff to its factory in Hams Hall, while keeping the core products and key technologies in Bavaria . Toyota have ruled out electric car production in the UK for the next investment period. Which maybe suggests that the Brexit future is in niche products, while the core products are kept in the EU for regulatory and strategic reasons. But if, for example, ICE goes on for longer than people think, it may be OK
and if the Tories switch back again to be pro-EU in a few years then you will no doubt adjust your views accordingly.
https://www.ft.com/content/f177cfd0-24b8-49ba-bdd8-99b975828d23
https://twitter.com/HannahAlOthman/status/1412360347726626816
https://twitter.com/OvePM/status/1412354865716731907
If you read the US Constitution the Federal state never originally had that many powers and the 10th Amendment is much clearer on the principle of subsidiarity than the EU Treaties have ever been, but over time the ratchet effect has driven powers too the centre. The same is happening with the nascent European state just as it did with the nascent American one in the past.
The only element of a federal state the EU currently lacks is the ability to raise its own tax rates, though developments are ongoing in that already as per the two trillion Euro Covid recovery fund.
To believe that the EU is not going to have any further integration runs completely against the past few decades of European history, the past couple of centuries of federal history globally, and the stated desires of European leaders like President Macron and others.