Why Tories, including the PM, have got to be careful with comments about the elderly – politicalbett
Why Tories, including the PM, have got to be careful with comments about the elderly – politicalbetting.com
Undoubtedly today’s big political event will be the broadcast by the BBC of the Laura Kuenssberg interview with Dom Cummings. As part of the build-up some choice comments are being circulated. The ones that stands out are these reported in the Sun:
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Cummings is full of s**t. We had three lockdowns to protect the elderly. We've interrupted kids education to protect the elderly. We've added hundreds of billions to our debt that the young will be paying with forever to protect the elderly.
Though yes Boris needs to be careful how he phrases it, he did of course backdown over the pre vaccination autumn and winter lockdowns and impose them anyway
Of course the Tories worst age bracket is 50% higher than the Lib Dems best one.
It rather demonstrates the problem with Cummings leaking individual messsages and comments out of context to a media slavering for this kind of nonsense. He knows exactly what he is doing and how to feed the monster but it completely delusional to believe that any kind of truth is being disclosed here, far from it. This is sophisticated spin from a past master of the out of context quote.
But the idea that we've just had a year and a bit of letting the elderly die off and protecting the young is completely nonsense. He's been driven stark raving bonkers if that's what he thinks, or more likely he's just out for revenge for being sacked.
On a purely coldblooded utilitarian basis for the youngest letting the virus spread, allowing education to continue but wiping out the need to pay so much in pension costs could have been the best for the youngest.
But we've all sacrificed the last 16 months to save the eldest from the virus. To see this span as anything other than that is completely offensive.
To undergo a lockdown when its not necessary would be destructive. To not have a lockdown when it was necessary would be destructive. The government rightly waited as long as it could and tried other solutions until it reached the last resort, that is the right thing to do.
The government has a clear bias towards normality as far as can be allowed given the risks. That that has resulted in any number of "screeching half-baked U -turns" is beyond doubt but it is still the right approach. Do what you absolutely need to do and no more. I am more worried about the current excess of caution.
What's Cummings's motivation?
1. Career, e.g. book contract, or looking good to Apple, Google, Peter Thiel, Laszlo Szombatfalvy, or whoever else might fund him.
2. Revenge and never mind the risks. Kinda "Sicilian". (I really hope he doesn't mention Carrie Symonds in the interview. I've heard enough about her. She's not Carrie Antoinette.)
3. Hope of riding back to No.10 with Michael Gove (or, if he's lost it completely, Keir Starmer) as his sidekick this time.
4. Self-defence.
5. A "weird mix". (Joke!)
Edit: DC on his blog, 4 March 2019:
"A hypothesis that should be tested: With a) <£1million to play with, b) the ability to recruit a team from among special forces/intel services/specialist criminals/whoever, and c) no rules (so for example they could deploy honey traps on the head of security), a Red Team would break into the most secure UK bio-research facilities and acquire material that could be released publicly in order to cause deaths on the scale of millions.</i>"
They agree to take on anyone who illegally crosses the Channel (which won't be many people anymore because they don't want to end up simply being deported to whichever country we've agreed this with), they agree to maintain the rule of law etc and they get billions to help be developed up. We ensure there's the rule of law here and no people smugglers causing people to drown in the Channel. It doesn't cost us anything, since its coming from the Aid budget and is still going on Aid just reserved to a specific nation that needs it.
We then take our fair share of genuine refugees safely from frontline nations.
A safe, humane, legal system. Courts stay out of it, as ruled by an Act of Parliament in my system, until any illegal migrants have safely landed in the destination nation.
What's more he's doing a repeat of the same type of mismanagement based on wishful thinking at this very moment. Fortunately it won't be as bad as last year's in terms of deaths, but it's still an unnecessary hit. He's an unmitigated shambles (not that anyone on this earth can be surprised at that)..
I distinctly remember posting in August/September last year about the need for another lockdown and several people above laughed at me
If you get a vaccine certificate PDF with a QR code on it from the NHS [England & Wales only, not Scotland or NI yet], you can log this in the German official "Corona-Warn" App on your phone, and it issues you an EU vaccine certificate. It works.
https://twitter.com/jonworth/status/1417427744468750348
The public have had sufficient of him. He is in the same position as Jezza was or Katie Hopkins or Meghan Markle or Trump is with most ordinary people: even when they are right they are still wrong, just because.
He has no credibility, not least because he is breaking a rule of civilised conduct - which is that even when you fall out big time with someone you still don't talk in public about what was understood at the time to be private. In that metaphorical sense he is engaging in small time revenge porn.
Lots of PBers will talk among certain selected people (and a few in the public domain but that's another matter!) in a code and using language which in public would be an outrage and a destroyer of reputations and careers. It is impossible that Boris is not one of them. It is inconceivable that Cummings is not another.
The older you get the more you know these things are true. It will affect some younger people, and of course those who are against Tories anyway. But not the average older voter.
Our government in the UK tried the Rule of 6, Tiers etc in September/October before reaching for the lockdown lever which is absolutely the right thing to do. If that was enough instead of a lockdown then going for a lockdown is damaging.
As it happens the NHS never collapsed so no there was absolutely no requirement to go sooner. The NHS didn't collapse in the Autumn, there was no Autumn catastrophy.
Its a shame they were necessary later on.
I called for one later on and the same people laughed at me then, including you!
He does have a lot of good ideas, but also a lot of terrible ones, and he’s now unemployed and trying to raise his profile.
Having a premature lockdown before its needed serves no purpose since as soon as you lift it, it will become needed again. Unless you intend to just have a lockdown forever, in which case you're just doing even more damage than was done by having one when it was actually needed.
What Cummings says is chip paper. What he proves about what the Clown said / did could be very different. I don't give a crap what Cummings says or thinks. I do give a crap about what the PM said / did. Evidence is all, and by the look of it that evidence we were promised is explosive.
Yes Cummings is a lunatic out for blood. And having scalped Mancock as a distraction from Gove's quest for mancock you could argue he has had some success. If anything brings about the end of the Boris cult it will be Boris. So lets see what Boris said about the pox, the Queen and the old. And judge him by his own words.
Unless you mean we should have remained locked down from September 2020 until July 2021, in which case you've had an even more damaging lockdown, then the second you lift lockdown in September 2020 after a fortnightly firebreak the cases start rising again and we still have the issue at Christmas.
And since people have a "last night of freedom" at the start of the fortnight and a "hooray we're free we beat Covid" after it, there's no dip in cases in that fortnight.
Which is precisely what happened in Labour ran Wales. 🤦♂️
To argue against the above just shows Boris Johnson's enemies for what they are.
So really, the argument would have been for a 1 year never ending full lockdown..
The purpose of lockdown changed when vaccines became generally available because infection and death were no longer merely deferred but preventable which is why we have had a lock down through most of this year. But the economic costs of that are horrendous and we still need to end it as soon as possible, even if we do not have full protection yet.
The delusion in your thinking is that in a world without vaccines lockdowns saved lives. They didn't. They changed the timing so that the NHS could cope. That's all.
"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."
The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.
But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.
They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.
Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.
I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.
Of course he’s after vengeance, it is obvious, and the same people in the media who lambasted him over barnard castle now fall over themselves to fawn over him. People are not stupid. They see through it.
Premature lockdowns would do squat.
BoJo knew this, he just didn't do anything. It wasn't just me saying this either, it was the BoJo fans who refused to acknowledge the truth
https://twitter.com/Yachtbreezy/status/1417431394972807168
More investigation needed if you're going to be relying on this.
Let's be clear. Deaths are hideous. Lockdowns are also hideous. The question is at what point the hideousness of the deaths outweigh those of lockdown: and that has to be judged a few weeks in advance.
Locking down - and indeed, the type and length of the lockdown - are not easy decisions. And it certainly is not, as you imply, a 'truth'.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?
EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).
EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!
My money would be on the latter.
I really do not like the idea of vaccine passports at all, I have to say.
Labour moving back to the centre ground in terms of membership, can only be a good thing
Vaccines changed the game and thus changed the policy.
Hard to dismiss proof that "Johnson said let Covid kill your Granny" just because the source of that proof is Cummings.
But isn't it the case that most of the 'elderly' have children/grandchildren, whose interests they care about very deeply? Even OAPs who are Tory voters whose children don't vote Conservative? I want a government whose priorities are in the interest of all age groups, not just my own. I want my children to have the same, or better, opportunities as I did. And yes, if I have to pay more tax/NI to bring this about, then so be it, I'm comfortable about this. Even though my 'public sector fatcat pension is' actually a very modest amount.
If and when that happens, I can wave goodbye both to my freedom and my livelihood. I will be a second class citizen. Ostrasized. Frozen out.
With every dose of freedom, this government delivers a punch in the stomach.
Then, a few days later, there was a change in tone. Two friends of theirs (husband and wife) were in hospital with Covid. Then one of them died. After that, they were adamant that Christmas was not going ahead.
It is the randomness of it all: they knew the couple well, and didn't think they had been doing anything different, taking any other risks. It made it all much more immediate. If it could happen to their friends, it could happen to them.
(As an aside, another elderly friend of theirs has been ill for some time, and midway through last year had to go into hospital for cancer treatment. Whilst there, she got Covid and became seriously ill. She pulled through, and came out of hospital 'clear' of both cancer and Covid. How can a cancer sufferer pull through, but a younger man die? It seems utterly random.)
Mr. Contrarian, unable to be vaccinated? My sympathies.
understand it was very poor at Chesham. Watch this space, you heard it first here!!!!
(And the answer as to when to lockdown is what it's always been- do the minimum restrictions needed to keep virus levels roughly constant. That way you don't need a full-blown lockdown. But if you let cases rise, they will keep rising until even idiots can't ignore them. And it doesn't take long.)
Pandemics are complex. Presenting counterfactuals is speculative at best.
It's abhorrent.
PBers with long memories may recall I first signed up here in the latter half, I think, of 2007, when Gordon Brown was plotting ID cards and an associated database. It was vile then and it's vile now. And if you think these so-called passports will end once COVID-19 is over then you're an unvarnished baboon of ill-repute.
I didn't sign this letter and it may be telling that you didn't even check before publicly 'accusing' me of it. You're a populist and a political ideologue, and should stay out of public health debates. Besides, I find it tiring when someone as vocal as you is oblivious to facts
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1417437678031806466?s=20
YOu will need a booster, a flu jab and goodness knows what else, soon. And that is just the start of it. Luckily for me I am close to retirement and so can drop off the radar if I want.
Many will not be so lucky.
1. Lockdown is an inexact science, particularly early on - and given the rate of increase in cases and hospitalisations in the early waves, the margin for error was tiny. We had to lockdown in time to not get close to overwhelming the health service, as pushing it closer would have had a large risk of significant overwhelming (as it is, in some areas it was touch and go - I know from clinician contacts that things got very tight in some hospitals)
2. In a world in which vaccines never arrive, lockdowns save some lives by averting overwhelmig of health services and enabling time for studies to establish best treatment patterns, useful medications etc. In the world we live in, the lockdowns will have saved many thousands of lives among the many elderly people who had exposure to Covid delayed past the point of full vaccination. With development of vaccines uncertain, it was of course a gamble either way.
Locking down earlier would have meant smaller waves and fewer deaths before vaccinations came along. It would also have possible additional economic costs. The interesting question is whether there was a level of restrictions - or cycling restrictions short of full lockdown - that would have kept R close to 1 for the original variant with minimal economic costs - if there was, then doing that long term would probably have been the best course, until alpha turned up at least. But there may not have been and I don't think it was feasible really to find that point at the time - the government tried with the tier system.
But, much of it is hindsight. The government were a bit late in March last year, but I want a government that is sceptical of doing what has been done and resists it if possible. I do think they cocked up in the Autumn and over Christmas and in particular with the dithering over schools going back in January. But every government would have made mistakes. I was broadly supportive in March; I thought they were getting it wrong in Autumn and over Christmas/early January. I support, broadly, the actions now (I'd maybe mandate masks on public transport, but that's about it).
@NewStatesman
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28m
Labour’s membership has become less Corbynite since Keir Starmer’s election.
@bnhwalker
looks at the latest polling: https://newstatesman.com/politics/polling/2021/07/how-labour-s-membership-has-become-less-corbynite-keir-starmer-s-election
SINGAPORE, July 20 (Reuters) - Singapore will halt restaurant dining and ban gatherings of more than two people for one month from Thursday, the health ministry said, as a further rise in coronavirus cases deals a blow to the country's reopening plans.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-tighten-coronavirus-curbs-again-cases-rise-2021-07-20/
Olympics in doubt
Might be cancelled
They have none of the self-sacrifice of their parents who fought and lived through the war and are happy to leech off the next generation by sucking them dry with rent and tax.
The continual pandering to them by the Tories is one of the major reasons I've not been tempted to rejoin the party. They are happy to entrench inter-generational unfairness that means working people just continue to be seen as money-piñatas by anyone aged 60 or over.
After summer, where case levels were very low, and before vaccinations were available, the optimal strategy was to keep R as close to 1 as possible. Any significant growth rate was going to inevitably lead us back to proper lockdown.
Cases went from 1,000 per day through August to 7,000 per day at the end of September. It didn't take a genius to have identified where we were heading in mid-September and tighten restrictions.
Undercooking things led to the first 1-month Autumn lockdown, while the desire for Christmas to be normal despite cases skyrocketing led to the long lockdown we've had early this year.