Sorry but its just not true that having a premature lockdown works and the SAGE experts are right on this, because the second that you lift a premature lockdown cases start rising again.
But the cases rise from a lower base, meaning you have fewer cases overall. This is the key thing to understand -> an earlier lockdown means fewer cases.
No it doesn't, because they just restart rising with exponential growth.
Exponential growth means that whatever amount of cases you start with is pretty irrelevant, before long you end up back at high numbers again.
Unless you can find a way to break the back of exponential growth, then premature lockdowns are useless.
No, initial seed numbers make a huge difference.
Exponential doesn't mean big, it means proportional to what we have.
If you have a population with 1 case and another with 10 then the first population is over 3 doubling behind the second.
1 vs 100 means over 6 doubling behind.
If the doubling period is 2 weeks then that's 3 months difference before the first population gets to the initial value of the second.
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
Running the country is too much like hard work?
To be fair, he has probably faced more 51-49 decisions than anyone in peacetime.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
A typical nightclub will be far more of a superspreader than a typical pub tbh too. IF you're going to bring in for pubs then you need to bring in for gigs as well. Gigs are 14+, not 18+ typically - whether the Gov't have realised this is another matter.
Those under 18 have their own superspreader venues: they are called schools.
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
He has a sense of history: is there a PM whose term he would want to beat (e.g. Cameron) that might give a clue as to when he might retire? Cameron might be a bit too far at just over six years, but it would be embarrassing for him to serve less time that May or Brown.
To match Thatcher and Blair he needs to do 10 years, which would suggest if he is re elected he stands down in spring 2029
Really can't see Boris staying that long.
And there is zero point doing so - with Brexit and Covid the world is a very different place to the one back in 2018. Whether that's for good or bad it's irrelevant.
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I could have written a header about all the things the Tories are getting wrong. In fact, I've already written a few of those.
But I wanted to challenge myself to understand why the Tories are in the lead. And in fact it wasn't that hard to do.
I am not a Boris supporter. But I simply cannot drum up any enthusiasm for Labour and Starmer has done some things which actively repel me from voting Labour.
A lot of the things you mention above are perfectly valid. But most people will not pay them much attention or will take the view that any government would probably have made similar mistakes. Is there any evidence at all that Starmer has or had any better plan for dealing with Covid, for instance?
For now, the government is getting the benefit of the doubt. How long that will last I have no idea. There are a lot of things which could go wrong and which could lead to the electorate turning against it. But Labour are simply unable to describe coherently the following:-
- This is who we are - This is what we're for - This is how we behave - This is where we're going and the sort of country we want to lead - This is how we're going to get there
Stringing together a lot of adjectives: "progressive" "fair" is not an answer.
In fact, I am deeply sceptical of any group which includes a lot of adjectives in its description or mission statement. It seems to me to act as a bar to any sort of critical intelligent thought. The word "progressive", in particular, is used as a battering ram to shut down objections as if it is a magic incantation which should stop anyone querying whether the reality of what is being proposed is really as wonderful as claimed.
Say what you are going to do, how you are going to to do these things and explain the consequences of what you are going to do.
The audience can - and will - supply their own adjectives.
The omission from your analysis was that similar problems are facing the left across the developed world. So many of the UK- and Starmer/Johnson-specific issues are secondary details,
Yes - that is a fair point. I was writing specifically about the U.K. not attempting a tour d'horizon of politics in the Western world.
I'm not sure what the reason is. The left seems to have lost its raison d'etre despite conditions (an economic model which has reinforced inequality and led to financial collapse, for instance, insecurity for workers in a way which echoes earlier times etc) being propitious for it. Why is that?
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far. 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!
But the things the ILEA were criticised for, like anti racism and gay rights, are mainstream now, precisely because some brave politicians were willing to make the case in the face of much hostility from the press, the Tories and indeed the public. Attitudes do change, personally I think that's a good thing. Nobody has a monopoly on common sense or wisdom, but I think over the sweep of postwar history, the progressive side have got more of the big calls on social and cultural issues right than the conservative one.
That is selection bias I think. Overall and in a lumpy fashion society has progressed in terms of social norms. Most of those reforms and changes were opposed and resisted to some extent so you can point at the resistors, label them conservatives and then make the incorrect jump to resistance to change is always wrong. Look at eugenics as a counter-example of a major cause supported enthusiastically by most "progressive opinion ". Some of the sexual liberation politics of the '60s and 70's looks very iffy now. Then there is the key question of reform "overreach". Once decent democratic norms have been achieved the restless need for causes means that the production line of ideological battles from academia does not cease. Latest example is Critical Race Theory that has an uncanny resemblance to the theories propounded by Afrikaner academics to justify Apartheid.
It’s possible to pinpoint the exact date that the transgender stuff went mainstream in the US - 27th June, 2015. The day after the Supreme Court ruled for gay marriage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefell_v._Hodges
For the activists, they win one battle then move to the next one.
It is an article of faith for some that we "couldn't see it coming" in Autumn and Winter despite the masses of signals that "it" was indeed coming.
Personally I think the tiers were working to an extent, right up to the point that the Kent (alpha) variant hit. Again, if we knew the vaccines were coming so soon and so good, we would have been happier to lockdown earlier and longer. We didn't, even in November, know for sure that we would be able to vaccinate everyone who wants it by end of August 2021 in the UK.
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
He has a sense of history: is there a PM whose term he would want to beat (e.g. Cameron) that might give a clue as to when he might retire? Cameron might be a bit too far at just over six years, but it would be embarrassing for him to serve less time that May or Brown.
To match Thatcher and Blair he needs to do 10 years, which would suggest if he is re elected he stands down in spring 2029
Has he ever stuck at anything for 10 years? Job? Monogamy?
Sorry but its just not true that having a premature lockdown works and the SAGE experts are right on this, because the second that you lift a premature lockdown cases start rising again.
But the cases rise from a lower base, meaning you have fewer cases overall. This is the key thing to understand -> an earlier lockdown means fewer cases.
No it doesn't, because they just restart rising with exponential growth.
Exponential growth means that whatever amount of cases you start with is pretty irrelevant, before long you end up back at high numbers again.
Unless you can find a way to break the back of exponential growth, then premature lockdowns are useless.
No, initial seed numbers make a huge difference.
Exponential doesn't mean big, it means proportional to what we have.
If R is high enough then the seed numbers make little difference.
Had we had a fortnightly firebreak in September then the same scenario that played out in Wales would have happened. There would have been big scenes of "last night of freedom" parties before the firebreak began spreading cases. There would have been a pretty meaningless fortnight lockdown during which time cases wouldn't have much of a chance to fall. Then people would have partied like we'd just defeated Covid, causing a spike in new cases again - and exponential growth would have resumed.
Firebreaks don't work. Keeping R down consistently, or lockdowns at the peak, is the only non-vaccine related way to get through.
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I could have written a header about all the things the Tories are getting wrong. In fact, I've already written a few of those.
But I wanted to challenge myself to understand why the Tories are in the lead. And in fact it wasn't that hard to do.
I am not a Boris supporter. But I simply cannot drum up any enthusiasm for Labour and Starmer has done some things which actively repel me from voting Labour.
A lot of the things you mention above are perfectly valid. But most people will not pay them much attention or will take the view that any government would probably have made similar mistakes. Is there any evidence at all that Starmer has or had any better plan for dealing with Covid, for instance?
For now, the government is getting the benefit of the doubt. How long that will last I have no idea. There are a lot of things which could go wrong and which could lead to the electorate turning against it. But Labour are simply unable to describe coherently the following:-
- This is who we are - This is what we're for - This is how we behave - This is where we're going and the sort of country we want to lead - This is how we're going to get there
Stringing together a lot of adjectives: "progressive" "fair" is not an answer.
In fact, I am deeply sceptical of any group which includes a lot of adjectives in its description or mission statement. It seems to me to act as a bar to any sort of critical intelligent thought. The word "progressive", in particular, is used as a battering ram to shut down objections as if it is a magic incantation which should stop anyone querying whether the reality of what is being proposed is really as wonderful as claimed.
Say what you are going to do, how you are going to to do these things and explain the consequences of what you are going to do.
The audience can - and will - supply their own adjectives.
The omission from your analysis was that similar problems are facing the left across the developed world. So many of the UK- and Starmer/Johnson-specific issues are secondary details,
Yes - that is a fair point. I was writing specifically about the U.K. not attempting a tour d'horizon of politics in the Western world.
I'm not sure what the reason is. The left seems to have lost its raison d'etre despite conditions (an economic model which has reinforced inequality and led to financial collapse, for instance, insecurity for workers in a way which echoes earlier times etc) being propitious for it. Why is that?
There's a header for someone!
Because the Left does not have an economic model that works. The only one they have loads an unsustainable level of tax and borrowing on the private sector to fund the public sector. It breaks down, every time.
Every Labour Govt leaves office with higher unemployment/fewer employed than they inherited. That is the Left's epitaph in this country.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
A typical nightclub will be far more of a superspreader than a typical pub tbh too. IF you're going to bring in for pubs then you need to bring in for gigs as well. Gigs are 14+, not 18+ typically - whether the Gov't have realised this is another matter.
Those under 18 have their own superspreader venues: they are called schools.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
Running the country is too much like hard work?
To be fair, he has probably faced more 51-49 decisions than anyone in peacetime.
May, of course, had a big 52-48 decision to deal with
Sorry but its just not true that having a premature lockdown works and the SAGE experts are right on this, because the second that you lift a premature lockdown cases start rising again.
But the cases rise from a lower base, meaning you have fewer cases overall. This is the key thing to understand -> an earlier lockdown means fewer cases.
No it doesn't, because they just restart rising with exponential growth.
Exponential growth means that whatever amount of cases you start with is pretty irrelevant, before long you end up back at high numbers again.
Unless you can find a way to break the back of exponential growth, then premature lockdowns are useless.
See this is where you're wrong.
Mathematical exercise for you:
Put 100 in a column in excel. Double it for five rows, then halve it. Put 100 in a column in excel. Halve it. Then double it for five rows.
In both columns you will have the same number in the last row.
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
He has a sense of history: is there a PM whose term he would want to beat (e.g. Cameron) that might give a clue as to when he might retire? Cameron might be a bit too far at just over six years, but it would be embarrassing for him to serve less time that May or Brown.
To match Thatcher and Blair he needs to do 10 years, which would suggest if he is re elected he stands down in spring 2029
Really can't see Boris staying that long.
And there is zero point doing so - with Brexit and Covid the world is a very different place to the one back in 2018. Whether that's for good or bad it's irrelevant.
I think ten years is unrealistic too. In fact I’d be amazed if he ends up beating Cameron. If he goes at his own time (meaning not due to some scandal, which is a non-trivial probability even if his shame threshold is unusually high) then I suggest that if you are betting on a departure date looking at PMs he might want to beat in terms of time in offices might be a good clue. In mid-August next year he will have beaten Brown (just under three years) and May (just over), while sometime early ‘23 gets him past Heath.
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far. 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?
Takes more than one side to have a war, don't disagree with that. I also think it's fair to say the Right is reactive and the Left proactive, by and large, not just on this, on most things. But the topic was the Tory poll lead (over Labour) and so I was talking about our 2 main political parties rather than the wider front. And there, it's surely beyond dispute that the Conservatives - least this manifestation of them - are the ones stimulating the strife and surfing on it, with Labour seeking to disengage.
You can't blame the Cons for this. They do it because it accrues electoral advantage. The message is seductive. "We are the party to protect all of you solid and decent salt-of-the-earths from the outre nonsense of post modern crazies in black polo necks who think a man can wake up one day and decide to be a woman and everyone has to pretend he really is. I mean, c'mon."
So, the million dollar question, the one you put your finger on here - how to stop large parts of the electorate confusing Keir Starmer's deeply centrist Labour Party with Pol Pot? I don't know the answer but let's hope Keir does. It's obviously priority number 1 for him at the moment. You can tell that from pretty much everything he does and says.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
After 14 months of SKS You get a Party out-placed,, out dated and irrelevant to the real needs and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour Leadership, a Labour Leadership, hiring taxis to scuttle round the city handing out redundancy notice to its own staff
A quarter of all staff to be cut as in 14 months the financial stability achieved by Jezza is completely destroyed. Income down by a quarter, Membership subs down by a quarter, Union income down by 20%
Labour on the brink of financial and Electoral ruin.
Oh well
Starmer needs to replace Unite's money. Should go and speak to big private sector donors instead.
After 14 months of SKS You get a Party out-placed,, out dated and irrelevant to the real needs and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour Leadership, a Labour Leadership, hiring taxis to scuttle round the city handing out redundancy notice to its own staff
A quarter of all staff to be cut as in 14 months the financial stability achieved by Jezza is completely destroyed. Income down by a quarter, Membership subs down by a quarter, Union income down by 20%
Labour on the brink of financial and Electoral ruin.
Oh well
Starmer needs to replace Unite's money. Should go and speak to big private sector donors instead.
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
He has a sense of history: is there a PM whose term he would want to beat (e.g. Cameron) that might give a clue as to when he might retire? Cameron might be a bit too far at just over six years, but it would be embarrassing for him to serve less time that May or Brown.
To match Thatcher and Blair he needs to do 10 years, which would suggest if he is re elected he stands down in spring 2029
Really can't see Boris staying that long.
And there is zero point doing so - with Brexit and Covid the world is a very different place to the one back in 2018. Whether that's for good or bad it's irrelevant.
I think ten years is unrealistic too. In fact I’d be amazed if he ends up beating Cameron. If he goes at his own time (meaning not due to some scandal, which is a non-trivial probability even if his shame threshold is unusually high) then I suggest that if you are betting on a departure date looking at PMs he might want to beat in terms of time in offices might be a good clue. In mid-August next year he will have beaten Brown (just under three years) and May (just over), while sometime early ‘23 gets him past Heath.
Edit: that should have been early summer ‘23.
October 22 would allow him to go while given the next leader a while (6 months, 12 months) to bed in. Summer 23 and Boris will need to remain into the next election unless the Tories plan to stay until May 24 and the risk there is just too great.
So I suspect second half of next year is a very good bet - especially as Boris needs cash.
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
Running the country is too much like hard work?
To be fair, he has probably faced more 51-49 decisions than anyone in peacetime.
I’m not sure anyone around the world went into politics to be confronted with a pandemic. It’s been a terrible time for political leaders everywhere, through no fault of their own.
There’s a really interesting counterfactual where there was no pandemic, and the news has been filled with Brexit Bad stories for the last six months. Boris might well find that the pandemic has made him lucky as PM.
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I could have written a header about all the things the Tories are getting wrong. In fact, I've already written a few of those.
But I wanted to challenge myself to understand why the Tories are in the lead. And in fact it wasn't that hard to do.
I am not a Boris supporter. But I simply cannot drum up any enthusiasm for Labour and Starmer has done some things which actively repel me from voting Labour.
A lot of the things you mention above are perfectly valid. But most people will not pay them much attention or will take the view that any government would probably have made similar mistakes. Is there any evidence at all that Starmer has or had any better plan for dealing with Covid, for instance?
For now, the government is getting the benefit of the doubt. How long that will last I have no idea. There are a lot of things which could go wrong and which could lead to the electorate turning against it. But Labour are simply unable to describe coherently the following:-
- This is who we are - This is what we're for - This is how we behave - This is where we're going and the sort of country we want to lead - This is how we're going to get there
Stringing together a lot of adjectives: "progressive" "fair" is not an answer.
In fact, I am deeply sceptical of any group which includes a lot of adjectives in its description or mission statement. It seems to me to act as a bar to any sort of critical intelligent thought. The word "progressive", in particular, is used as a battering ram to shut down objections as if it is a magic incantation which should stop anyone querying whether the reality of what is being proposed is really as wonderful as claimed.
Say what you are going to do, how you are going to to do these things and explain the consequences of what you are going to do.
The audience can - and will - supply their own adjectives.
The omission from your analysis was that similar problems are facing the left across the developed world. So many of the UK- and Starmer/Johnson-specific issues are secondary details,
Yes - that is a fair point. I was writing specifically about the U.K. not attempting a tour d'horizon of politics in the Western world.
I'm not sure what the reason is. The left seems to have lost its raison d'etre despite conditions (an economic model which has reinforced inequality and led to financial collapse, for instance, insecurity for workers in a way which echoes earlier times etc) being propitious for it. Why is that?
There's a header for someone!
Good question. Off the top of my head: - The loss of the communitarian ethos. We're not all in it together any more. We don't work in the same factory as everyone else in town, and spend our evenings with the same faces. We don't even talk about what we saw on the telly last night. Our commonality of experience and culture has splintered. - Specifically, the big employers which can be taken on collectively are no longer part of the scene. The single industry towns are no more. - The big problems have been solved. Poverty 100 years ago was a much tougher gig than poverty today. - Workers no longer perceive employers as automatically inimical to their interests. Going and working elsewhere is much more easy than it was two or three generations ago. It no longer necessarily makes sense to understand society as a clash of class interests.
- Because of the above, the parties of the left have moved on to other issues - but these are not issues which connect with their voters in the same way. - Almost as a consequence, parties of the left are no longer necessarily parties of the workers. They are a much broader, but much less deep, coalition of interests.
- Funding: parties of the left were funded by trade unions. By trade union membership has evaporated everywhere, not just the UK.
Sorry but its just not true that having a premature lockdown works and the SAGE experts are right on this, because the second that you lift a premature lockdown cases start rising again.
But the cases rise from a lower base, meaning you have fewer cases overall. This is the key thing to understand -> an earlier lockdown means fewer cases.
No it doesn't, because they just restart rising with exponential growth.
Exponential growth means that whatever amount of cases you start with is pretty irrelevant, before long you end up back at high numbers again.
Unless you can find a way to break the back of exponential growth, then premature lockdowns are useless.
See this is where you're wrong.
Mathematical exercise for you:
Put 100 in a column in excel. Double it for five rows, then halve it. Put 100 in a column in excel. Halve it. Then double it for five rows.
In both columns you will have the same number in the last row.
But the total will not be the same.
I blame the lily pad example. Once people grasped that they can't let go of it.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
Because they really want the 18-25 group to go and get themselves vaccinated, as opposed to acquiring herd immunity the old-fashioned way.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
Getting people to check 2 things rather than 1 does make things more complex as they can't just have things out ready to go.
Bywire News™ @bywirenews · 1h NEW: Keir Starmer has almost bankrupted the Labour Party.
The party’s financial reserves are down to just one months’ payroll - with senior staff blaming a huge swathe of lost members and legal fees.
Labour were the richest party in Britain under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
So with a reduction in subs from fly by night Trots who have scabbed off, and a reduction in union subs from Red Len, Starmer needs to go after private sector benefactors. No problem.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
Of course it it. Why would that stop the government imposing an impractical and costly requirement though?
Since they have already asked pubs and cafes etc to take a record of the names / contact details of customers, I can easily see them extending this to checking of vaccination status. Any promises or statements to the contrary are simply not to be relied on.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
A typical nightclub will be far more of a superspreader than a typical pub tbh too. IF you're going to bring in for pubs then you need to bring in for gigs as well. Gigs are 14+, not 18+ typically - whether the Gov't have realised this is another matter.
I can see it now.
New rules for gigs: you will either need to show you have been double vaccinated or prove you are of the age 14 -18.
Sorry but its just not true that having a premature lockdown works and the SAGE experts are right on this, because the second that you lift a premature lockdown cases start rising again.
But the cases rise from a lower base, meaning you have fewer cases overall. This is the key thing to understand -> an earlier lockdown means fewer cases.
No it doesn't, because they just restart rising with exponential growth.
Exponential growth means that whatever amount of cases you start with is pretty irrelevant, before long you end up back at high numbers again.
Unless you can find a way to break the back of exponential growth, then premature lockdowns are useless.
See this is where you're wrong.
Mathematical exercise for you:
Put 100 in a column in excel. Double it for five rows, then halve it. Put 100 in a column in excel. Halve it. Then double it for five rows.
In both columns you will have the same number in the last row.
But the total will not be the same.
Ignoring of course that a fortnight's lockdown, with pre-lockdown and post-lockdown parties being the natural response to you taking away and restoring civil liberties, does not in fact halve the number of cases in society.
Plus the only point is about keeping within NHS capacity, that is the only non-vaccination purpose of a lockdown. That was achieved via the UK's lockdowns.
Either way with enough exponential growth you're back at the point of the same peak number - which is what you are trying to avoid. Some people at low volumes getting it but not causing the NHS to collapse is frankly unavoidable unless you wish to go for permanent lockdown or can permanently keep R<1.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
Shows how long it is since I went to a night club: when did they start checking ID on the door?
If the choice is between losing money and getting rid of the people that only lead Labour to being racist and losing, then lose the money. Well done Keir, if nothing else he will reform the party so it can once again win again.
Reform the voting next please, a Corbyn-type must never be able to win again and I say that as a former Corbynite. Prevent my stupidity in voting
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I could have written a header about all the things the Tories are getting wrong. In fact, I've already written a few of those.
But I wanted to challenge myself to understand why the Tories are in the lead. And in fact it wasn't that hard to do.
I am not a Boris supporter. But I simply cannot drum up any enthusiasm for Labour and Starmer has done some things which actively repel me from voting Labour.
A lot of the things you mention above are perfectly valid. But most people will not pay them much attention or will take the view that any government would probably have made similar mistakes. Is there any evidence at all that Starmer has or had any better plan for dealing with Covid, for instance?
For now, the government is getting the benefit of the doubt. How long that will last I have no idea. There are a lot of things which could go wrong and which could lead to the electorate turning against it. But Labour are simply unable to describe coherently the following:-
- This is who we are - This is what we're for - This is how we behave - This is where we're going and the sort of country we want to lead - This is how we're going to get there
Stringing together a lot of adjectives: "progressive" "fair" is not an answer.
In fact, I am deeply sceptical of any group which includes a lot of adjectives in its description or mission statement. It seems to me to act as a bar to any sort of critical intelligent thought. The word "progressive", in particular, is used as a battering ram to shut down objections as if it is a magic incantation which should stop anyone querying whether the reality of what is being proposed is really as wonderful as claimed.
Say what you are going to do, how you are going to to do these things and explain the consequences of what you are going to do.
The audience can - and will - supply their own adjectives.
The omission from your analysis was that similar problems are facing the left across the developed world. So many of the UK- and Starmer/Johnson-specific issues are secondary details,
Yes - that is a fair point. I was writing specifically about the U.K. not attempting a tour d'horizon of politics in the Western world.
I'm not sure what the reason is. The left seems to have lost its raison d'etre despite conditions (an economic model which has reinforced inequality and led to financial collapse, for instance, insecurity for workers in a way which echoes earlier times etc) being propitious for it. Why is that?
There's a header for someone!
Because the Left does not have an economic model that works. The only one they have loads an unsustainable level of tax and borrowing on the private sector to fund the public sector. It breaks down, every time.
Every Labour Govt leaves office with higher unemployment/fewer employed than they inherited. That is the Left's epitaph in this country.
As a potential middle ground, pubs could ask for vaxport ID upon purchase of alcohol... I had to provide ID right through till when I was about 30, was that a massive infringement on my liberties for looking youngish ? Licensing laws have always been discriminatory
Bywire News™ @bywirenews · 1h NEW: Keir Starmer has almost bankrupted the Labour Party.
The party’s financial reserves are down to just one months’ payroll - with senior staff blaming a huge swathe of lost members and legal fees.
Labour were the richest party in Britain under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
So with a reduction in subs from fly by night Trots who have scabbed off, and a reduction in union subs from Red Len, Starmer needs to go after private sector benefactors. No problem.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
Shows how long it is since I went to a night club: when did they start checking ID on the door?
The did it when I was an eighteen year old student in 2000.
I believe they're even more rigorous on it nowadays, but my clubbing days are behind me.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
Shows how long it is since I went to a night club: when did they start checking ID on the door?
With challenge 25 in place, and given most customers around this age. It's been since forever.
1. Axe golf, football, rugby sevens, and tennis, for whom the Olympics is already overshadowed by other competitions. (Also baseball/softball but I believe 2020 is a one-off). Query basketball and hockey for this reason.
2. Review if the number of athletes competing in any particular sport can be trimmed, either in terms of number of events/medals or having more pre-qualification for the tournament.
3. Abolish the emphasis on the Host City and instead place the emphasis on a host nation. Fans will still turn up and besides, most fans are at home. This reduces the number of stadia needed dramatically, because you could already host your e.g. rowing event and your country's existing facilities more often.
$13.2bn was the cost of Rio - just a huge and wasteful sum. If part of the ethos is bringing together people from different nations then surely the irony of a bill the size of the GDP of 20 of the smallest ones put together is obvious.
You can add road cycling to that list: Olympics holds lower status than the grand tours and the monuments, and arguably the world championship.
Greg Van Avermaet likes his gold helmet and gold shoes though...
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
He has a sense of history: is there a PM whose term he would want to beat (e.g. Cameron) that might give a clue as to when he might retire? Cameron might be a bit too far at just over six years, but it would be embarrassing for him to serve less time that May or Brown.
To match Thatcher and Blair he needs to do 10 years, which would suggest if he is re elected he stands down in spring 2029
Really can't see Boris staying that long.
And there is zero point doing so - with Brexit and Covid the world is a very different place to the one back in 2018. Whether that's for good or bad it's irrelevant.
Having done Brexit and beaten Covid, there isn't much left for him to hang around for.
With respect the original purpose of a lockdown was to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed. The evidence is that we never got close to that so we locked down too much and too long but better safe than sorry, I suppose.
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.
Agree your point that lockdowns essentially buy time for other remedies, eg vaccines. But I don't know where you're coming from with "we didn't get close to the NHS being overwhelmed". We damn well did. There was brutal triaging. Full ICUs. Ambulances backed up and not available. Strokes and coronaries untreated till too late. Hospitals declaring states of emergency. It really was on the edge in places. I'd say the evidence is we did the lockdowns too late but JUST in time to prevent something truly sickening.
Bywire News™ @bywirenews · 1h NEW: Keir Starmer has almost bankrupted the Labour Party.
The party’s financial reserves are down to just one months’ payroll - with senior staff blaming a huge swathe of lost members and legal fees.
Labour were the richest party in Britain under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
So with a reduction in subs from fly by night Trots who have scabbed off, and a reduction in union subs from Red Len, Starmer needs to go after private sector benefactors. No problem.
Why would private sector benefactors want to donate to Keir "13 points behind" Starmer though?
Blair found it easier to attract private sector benefactors as he looked like a winner and not a miserable bore.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
Why don’t you except that despite the success of vaccines, this isn’t over, years of authoritarian methods to steer behaviours are ahead?
They are clearly now intending to coerce behaviours to support vaccines?
Bywire News™ @bywirenews · 1h NEW: Keir Starmer has almost bankrupted the Labour Party.
The party’s financial reserves are down to just one months’ payroll - with senior staff blaming a huge swathe of lost members and legal fees.
Labour were the richest party in Britain under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
So with a reduction in subs from fly by night Trots who have scabbed off, and a reduction in union subs from Red Len, Starmer needs to go after private sector benefactors. No problem.
He has being trying to make good the shortfall from wealthy individuals ever since he became leader.
Unsurprisingly he has failed as he inspires nobody but a few anti Corbyn cranks
I am sure the staff losing their jobs will be extremely impressed by the success of your plan.
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far. 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?
That is an excellent comment @Cookie. I admire @kinabalu for the way he expresses his views (I don't agree with them) but there is this disingenuous view from many on the left that it is the Right that is amplifying the changes. I suspect this goes back to their (likely) Marxist interpretation of History that such changes are "inevitable" and that anyone who stands in the way of "progress" is an out of date reactionary. What is particularly toxic though about their behaviour compared with previous times is the hounding of opponents. One shudders to think what these types would have been saying in the 1970s when quite a few of their equivalents were promoting the rights of paedophiles.
Those 1970s paedophiles don't half do some work for you, Ed.
Bywire News™ @bywirenews · 1h NEW: Keir Starmer has almost bankrupted the Labour Party.
The party’s financial reserves are down to just one months’ payroll - with senior staff blaming a huge swathe of lost members and legal fees.
Labour were the richest party in Britain under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
So with a reduction in subs from fly by night Trots who have scabbed off, and a reduction in union subs from Red Len, Starmer needs to go after private sector benefactors. No problem.
It woukd be cruel to.laugh.. ever more reliant on the unions. ...
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I could have written a header about all the things the Tories are getting wrong. In fact, I've already written a few of those.
But I wanted to challenge myself to understand why the Tories are in the lead. And in fact it wasn't that hard to do.
I am not a Boris supporter. But I simply cannot drum up any enthusiasm for Labour and Starmer has done some things which actively repel me from voting Labour.
A lot of the things you mention above are perfectly valid. But most people will not pay them much attention or will take the view that any government would probably have made similar mistakes. Is there any evidence at all that Starmer has or had any better plan for dealing with Covid, for instance?
For now, the government is getting the benefit of the doubt. How long that will last I have no idea. There are a lot of things which could go wrong and which could lead to the electorate turning against it. But Labour are simply unable to describe coherently the following:-
- This is who we are - This is what we're for - This is how we behave - This is where we're going and the sort of country we want to lead - This is how we're going to get there
Stringing together a lot of adjectives: "progressive" "fair" is not an answer.
In fact, I am deeply sceptical of any group which includes a lot of adjectives in its description or mission statement. It seems to me to act as a bar to any sort of critical intelligent thought. The word "progressive", in particular, is used as a battering ram to shut down objections as if it is a magic incantation which should stop anyone querying whether the reality of what is being proposed is really as wonderful as claimed.
Say what you are going to do, how you are going to to do these things and explain the consequences of what you are going to do.
The audience can - and will - supply their own adjectives.
The omission from your analysis was that similar problems are facing the left across the developed world. So many of the UK- and Starmer/Johnson-specific issues are secondary details,
Yes - that is a fair point. I was writing specifically about the U.K. not attempting a tour d'horizon of politics in the Western world.
I'm not sure what the reason is. The left seems to have lost its raison d'etre despite conditions (an economic model which has reinforced inequality and led to financial collapse, for instance, insecurity for workers in a way which echoes earlier times etc) being propitious for it. Why is that?
There's a header for someone!
Good question. Off the top of my head: - The loss of the communitarian ethos. We're not all in it together any more. We don't work in the same factory as everyone else in town, and spend our evenings with the same faces. We don't even talk about what we saw on the telly last night. Our commonality of experience and culture has splintered. - Specifically, the big employers which can be taken on collectively are no longer part of the scene. The single industry towns are no more. - The big problems have been solved. Poverty 100 years ago was a much tougher gig than poverty today. - Workers no longer perceive employers as automatically inimical to their interests. Going and working elsewhere is much more easy than it was two or three generations ago. It no longer necessarily makes sense to understand society as a clash of class interests.
- Because of the above, the parties of the left have moved on to other issues - but these are not issues which connect with their voters in the same way. - Almost as a consequence, parties of the left are no longer necessarily parties of the workers. They are a much broader, but much less deep, coalition of interests.
- Funding: parties of the left were funded by trade unions. By trade union membership has evaporated everywhere, not just the UK.
Lots of good long term social trends highlighted there, but actually Labour are (relatively to their overall performance) doing pretty well with workers. It is the retired they have lost.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
Shows how long it is since I went to a night club: when did they start checking ID on the door?
The did it when I was an eighteen year old student in 2000.
I believe they're even more rigorous on it nowadays, but my clubbing days are behind me.
The licenced industry AgeCard was a thing back in 1995, when I turned 18, which was when the pubs started taking things more seriously.
(I may, as a schoolboy, have dabbled in the fake ID industry, thanks to my parents having a computer, a printer, and a card laminator!)
If the choice is between losing money and getting rid of the people that only lead Labour to being racist and losing, then lose the money. Well done Keir, if nothing else he will reform the party so it can once again win again.
Reform the voting next please, a Corbyn-type must never be able to win again and I say that as a former Corbynite. Prevent my stupidity in voting
The irony was that the reform was already there: Corbyn almost did not get on the ballot as he did not have enough nominations from MPs. Then one decided to nominate him even though they didn’t think he was up to running the party and the rest is history.
Possibly one of the most significant decisions in history: a more committed Labour leader may well have swung enough votes that the Brexit referendum would have gone the other way (and would certainly have not been so far behind in the polls in ‘17 that May would have thought a snap election was a good idea).
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
He has a sense of history: is there a PM whose term he would want to beat (e.g. Cameron) that might give a clue as to when he might retire? Cameron might be a bit too far at just over six years, but it would be embarrassing for him to serve less time that May or Brown.
To match Thatcher and Blair he needs to do 10 years, which would suggest if he is re elected he stands down in spring 2029
Really can't see Boris staying that long.
And there is zero point doing so - with Brexit and Covid the world is a very different place to the one back in 2018. Whether that's for good or bad it's irrelevant.
I think ten years is unrealistic too. In fact I’d be amazed if he ends up beating Cameron. If he goes at his own time (meaning not due to some scandal, which is a non-trivial probability even if his shame threshold is unusually high) then I suggest that if you are betting on a departure date looking at PMs he might want to beat in terms of time in offices might be a good clue. In mid-August next year he will have beaten Brown (just under three years) and May (just over), while sometime early ‘23 gets him past Heath.
Edit: that should have been early summer ‘23.
October 22 would allow him to go while given the next leader a while (6 months, 12 months) to bed in. Summer 23 and Boris will need to remain into the next election unless the Tories plan to stay until May 24 and the risk there is just too great.
So I suspect second half of next year is a very good bet - especially as Boris needs cash.
Yes, the other obvious Prime Minister for Boris to match is Winston Churchill (first term only, like in the book!) who did 10/5/40 to 26/7/45 but five years would take Boris deep into 2024 so we can probably rule that out.
I think the effective HI threshold is a fair bit lower if proof of vaccination is required for crowded venues - it will also increase uptake. Then again these aren't being introduced till September...
Bywire News™ @bywirenews · 1h NEW: Keir Starmer has almost bankrupted the Labour Party.
The party’s financial reserves are down to just one months’ payroll - with senior staff blaming a huge swathe of lost members and legal fees.
Labour were the richest party in Britain under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
So with a reduction in subs from fly by night Trots who have scabbed off, and a reduction in union subs from Red Len, Starmer needs to go after private sector benefactors. No problem.
The less reliant the Labour Party is on funding funnelled through ******* like Len the better the hope they have of ever being re-elected.
Personally I would like to see a significant cap on personal private political donations. Johnson, more than any predecessor (including Blair) has brought that system into terminal disrepute. Nice wallpaper Sir!
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
Because they really want the 18-25 group to go and get themselves vaccinated, as opposed to acquiring herd immunity the old-fashioned way.
In which case the Government really need to offer vaccines to 14-17 year olds so that the 18-25 don't have any reason to feel picked on, nor any argument that they wouldn't need it last year (when a year younger) so why now.
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I could have written a header about all the things the Tories are getting wrong. In fact, I've already written a few of those.
But I wanted to challenge myself to understand why the Tories are in the lead. And in fact it wasn't that hard to do.
I am not a Boris supporter. But I simply cannot drum up any enthusiasm for Labour and Starmer has done some things which actively repel me from voting Labour.
A lot of the things you mention above are perfectly valid. But most people will not pay them much attention or will take the view that any government would probably have made similar mistakes. Is there any evidence at all that Starmer has or had any better plan for dealing with Covid, for instance?
For now, the government is getting the benefit of the doubt. How long that will last I have no idea. There are a lot of things which could go wrong and which could lead to the electorate turning against it. But Labour are simply unable to describe coherently the following:-
- This is who we are - This is what we're for - This is how we behave - This is where we're going and the sort of country we want to lead - This is how we're going to get there
Stringing together a lot of adjectives: "progressive" "fair" is not an answer.
In fact, I am deeply sceptical of any group which includes a lot of adjectives in its description or mission statement. It seems to me to act as a bar to any sort of critical intelligent thought. The word "progressive", in particular, is used as a battering ram to shut down objections as if it is a magic incantation which should stop anyone querying whether the reality of what is being proposed is really as wonderful as claimed.
Say what you are going to do, how you are going to to do these things and explain the consequences of what you are going to do.
The audience can - and will - supply their own adjectives.
The omission from your analysis was that similar problems are facing the left across the developed world. So many of the UK- and Starmer/Johnson-specific issues are secondary details,
Yes - that is a fair point. I was writing specifically about the U.K. not attempting a tour d'horizon of politics in the Western world.
I'm not sure what the reason is. The left seems to have lost its raison d'etre despite conditions (an economic model which has reinforced inequality and led to financial collapse, for instance, insecurity for workers in a way which echoes earlier times etc) being propitious for it. Why is that?
There's a header for someone!
Because the Left does not have an economic model that works. The only one they have loads an unsustainable level of tax and borrowing on the private sector to fund the public sector. It breaks down, every time.
Every Labour Govt leaves office with higher unemployment/fewer employed than they inherited. That is the Left's epitaph in this country.
They've had enough time to develop one, though.
But that model would require Labour to reduce their ambitions for the public sector to unpalatable levels. It is a bridge they will not cross. Meanwhile, the good they could be doing for workers in both the public and the private sectors has no chance of being implemented - because they can't get power.
They can't get power because they aren't trusted with money. Their Party's own dire finances lead to knowing looks of "Well, what a surprise...."
Sorry but its just not true that having a premature lockdown works and the SAGE experts are right on this, because the second that you lift a premature lockdown cases start rising again.
But the cases rise from a lower base, meaning you have fewer cases overall. This is the key thing to understand -> an earlier lockdown means fewer cases.
No it doesn't, because they just restart rising with exponential growth.
Exponential growth means that whatever amount of cases you start with is pretty irrelevant, before long you end up back at high numbers again.
Unless you can find a way to break the back of exponential growth, then premature lockdowns are useless.
See this is where you're wrong.
Mathematical exercise for you:
Put 100 in a column in excel. Double it for five rows, then halve it. Put 100 in a column in excel. Halve it. Then double it for five rows.
In both columns you will have the same number in the last row.
But the total will not be the same.
Yes, in theory, if you have the same number of lockdown weeks, but you have them earlier, then you have many fewer cases.
However, this assumes that the public will respond to the lockdown in the same way. There's a lot of evidence that they don't, that people make their own judgements based on perceived risk.
So the mathematical argument might not hold in reality.
As a potential middle ground, pubs could ask for vaxport ID upon purchase of alcohol... I had to provide ID right through till when I was about 30, was that a massive infringement on my liberties for looking youngish ? Licensing laws have always been discriminatory
I’ve never been asked to prove I was over 18 (nor did I have any difficulty getting served back when it would have been difficult due to the technical difficulty that I wasn’t). Obviously I don’t look that young and never have.
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
He has a sense of history: is there a PM whose term he would want to beat (e.g. Cameron) that might give a clue as to when he might retire? Cameron might be a bit too far at just over six years, but it would be embarrassing for him to serve less time that May or Brown.
To match Thatcher and Blair he needs to do 10 years, which would suggest if he is re elected he stands down in spring 2029
Really can't see Boris staying that long.
And there is zero point doing so - with Brexit and Covid the world is a very different place to the one back in 2018. Whether that's for good or bad it's irrelevant.
I think ten years is unrealistic too. In fact I’d be amazed if he ends up beating Cameron. If he goes at his own time (meaning not due to some scandal, which is a non-trivial probability even if his shame threshold is unusually high) then I suggest that if you are betting on a departure date looking at PMs he might want to beat in terms of time in offices might be a good clue. In mid-August next year he will have beaten Brown (just under three years) and May (just over), while sometime early ‘23 gets him past Heath.
Edit: that should have been early summer ‘23.
October 22 would allow him to go while given the next leader a while (6 months, 12 months) to bed in. Summer 23 and Boris will need to remain into the next election unless the Tories plan to stay until May 24 and the risk there is just too great.
So I suspect second half of next year is a very good bet - especially as Boris needs cash.
Yes, the other obvious Prime Minister for Boris to match is Winston Churchill (first term only, like in the book!) who did 10/5/40 to 26/7/45 but five years would take Boris deep into 2024 so we can probably rule that out.
5 years takes him past the 24 election - why do that unless you are planning to stay to 2026 or so.
And Boris can't do that as he needs real cash coming in
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
Because they really want the 18-25 group to go and get themselves vaccinated, as opposed to acquiring herd immunity the old-fashioned way.
In which case the Government really need to offer vaccines to 14-17 year olds so that the 18-25 don't have any reason to feel picked on, nor any argument that they wouldn't need it last year (when a year younger) so why now.
IMO they should be offering vaccines to the 12-18 range over the summer. USA, UAE and Israel are all doing this now with Pfizer and Moderna, with no reported issues.
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I could have written a header about all the things the Tories are getting wrong. In fact, I've already written a few of those.
But I wanted to challenge myself to understand why the Tories are in the lead. And in fact it wasn't that hard to do.
I am not a Boris supporter. But I simply cannot drum up any enthusiasm for Labour and Starmer has done some things which actively repel me from voting Labour.
A lot of the things you mention above are perfectly valid. But most people will not pay them much attention or will take the view that any government would probably have made similar mistakes. Is there any evidence at all that Starmer has or had any better plan for dealing with Covid, for instance?
For now, the government is getting the benefit of the doubt. How long that will last I have no idea. There are a lot of things which could go wrong and which could lead to the electorate turning against it. But Labour are simply unable to describe coherently the following:-
- This is who we are - This is what we're for - This is how we behave - This is where we're going and the sort of country we want to lead - This is how we're going to get there
Stringing together a lot of adjectives: "progressive" "fair" is not an answer.
In fact, I am deeply sceptical of any group which includes a lot of adjectives in its description or mission statement. It seems to me to act as a bar to any sort of critical intelligent thought. The word "progressive", in particular, is used as a battering ram to shut down objections as if it is a magic incantation which should stop anyone querying whether the reality of what is being proposed is really as wonderful as claimed.
Say what you are going to do, how you are going to to do these things and explain the consequences of what you are going to do.
The audience can - and will - supply their own adjectives.
The omission from your analysis was that similar problems are facing the left across the developed world. So many of the UK- and Starmer/Johnson-specific issues are secondary details,
Yes - that is a fair point. I was writing specifically about the U.K. not attempting a tour d'horizon of politics in the Western world.
I'm not sure what the reason is. The left seems to have lost its raison d'etre despite conditions (an economic model which has reinforced inequality and led to financial collapse, for instance, insecurity for workers in a way which echoes earlier times etc) being propitious for it. Why is that?
There's a header for someone!
Good question. Off the top of my head: - The loss of the communitarian ethos. We're not all in it together any more. We don't work in the same factory as everyone else in town, and spend our evenings with the same faces. We don't even talk about what we saw on the telly last night. Our commonality of experience and culture has splintered. - Specifically, the big employers which can be taken on collectively are no longer part of the scene. The single industry towns are no more. - The big problems have been solved. Poverty 100 years ago was a much tougher gig than poverty today. - Workers no longer perceive employers as automatically inimical to their interests. Going and working elsewhere is much more easy than it was two or three generations ago. It no longer necessarily makes sense to understand society as a clash of class interests.
- Because of the above, the parties of the left have moved on to other issues - but these are not issues which connect with their voters in the same way. - Almost as a consequence, parties of the left are no longer necessarily parties of the workers. They are a much broader, but much less deep, coalition of interests.
- Funding: parties of the left were funded by trade unions. By trade union membership has evaporated everywhere, not just the UK.
Lots of good long term social trends highlighted there, but actually Labour are (relatively to their overall performance) doing pretty well with workers. It is the retired they have lost.
Good point. I wonder whether this is true of all European centre left parties?
If the choice is between losing money and getting rid of the people that only lead Labour to being racist and losing, then lose the money. Well done Keir, if nothing else he will reform the party so it can once again win again.
Reform the voting next please, a Corbyn-type must never be able to win again and I say that as a former Corbynite. Prevent my stupidity in voting
The irony was that the reform was already there: Corbyn almost did not get on the ballot as he did not have enough nominations from MPs. Then one decided to nominate him even though they didn’t think he was up to running the party and the rest is history.
Possibly one of the most significant decisions in history: a more committed Labour leader may well have swung enough votes that the Brexit referendum would have gone the other way (and would certainly have not been so far behind in the polls in ‘17 that May would have thought a snap election was a good idea).
My take on the Brexit referendum:-
Jeremy Corbyn: Leaver pretending to be a Remainer Theresa May: Leaver pretending to be a Remainer Boris: Remainer pretending to be a Leaver
But probably, like most people who have never had dinner with Bill Cash, they'd not given the matter too much thought before needing to decide.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
Because they really want the 18-25 group to go and get themselves vaccinated, as opposed to acquiring herd immunity the old-fashioned way.
In which case the Government really need to offer vaccines to 14-17 year olds so that the 18-25 don't have any reason to feel picked on, nor any argument that they wouldn't need it last year (when a year younger) so why now.
IMO they should be offering vaccines to the 12-18 range over the summer. USA, UAE and Israel are all doing this now with Pfizer and Moderna, with no reported issues.
The Gov't is assuming idealised uptake amongst 18 - 40 that simply won't happen, and has given the JCVI an incredibly narrow & overcautious remit of deciding who to vaccinate. Vaccines should be offered all 14+. Now.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
Shows how long it is since I went to a night club: when did they start checking ID on the door?
The did it when I was an eighteen year old student in 2000.
I believe they're even more rigorous on it nowadays, but my clubbing days are behind me.
That was about the time I stopped going as I was getting too old.
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
They have ruled it out for pubs. They've said repeatedly its not under consideration for pubs and the reason I gave is a big reason why. Though as always nothing can ever be ruled out 100% from future changes in mind.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
Shows how long it is since I went to a night club: when did they start checking ID on the door?
With challenge 25 in place, and given most customers around this age. It's been since forever.
I think Challenge 25 came in some years after I passed that age.
Dominic Cummings is selling "subscriber rights", which will include the right to ask him questions online at Substack during the BBC broadcast this evening.
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!
Sorry, missed your edits.
Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.
Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...
I think we're going to end up having another lockdown or another increase in restrictions. You heard it here first - I hope as before, I am wrong
Already announced - the vaccine passports for nightclubs from end Sept (too late, as usual). You are probably right that there will be more; reintroducing compulsory masks in various circumstances must be a front-runner.
Will the nightclub passports actually happen, or are they using the idea of it to nudge the 18-25 group into getting jabbed over the summer?
My money would be on the latter.
Ha ha ha 😃.
Oh please, every time the government are asked to rule it out for pubs this winter, they won’t.
Yesterday’s discussion proved once its working the public have huge appetite to see it extended beyond clubs to take in just about everything, pubs, football, and holidays, rather than binning app and TAT, we are only just starting to join up with other apps around the world.
achtung Kuddelmuddel!
Authoritarian approach wins. Libertarians losers.
You thought vaccines and it’s all over did you? Oh how embarrassing. The next stage is match the right behaviours to the good work of vaccines for maximum effect. Yesterday’s briefing was all about behaviours.
But deleted the app now! Just have to reload it then won’t you, if you want to go anywhere get in anywhere.
Jabbed, it’s all over? Whole new beginning.
There is a simple reason it will never happen in pubs even if it happens in clubs.
Pubs don't all have door staff.
Why don’t the government just calmly and clearly rule it out then?
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
Because they really want the 18-25 group to go and get themselves vaccinated, as opposed to acquiring herd immunity the old-fashioned way.
In which case the Government really need to offer vaccines to 14-17 year olds so that the 18-25 don't have any reason to feel picked on, nor any argument that they wouldn't need it last year (when a year younger) so why now.
IMO they should be offering vaccines to the 12-18 range over the summer. USA, UAE and Israel are all doing this now with Pfizer and Moderna, with no reported issues.
The best time to vaccinate 12-18s is when they are all at school: you go in, line them all up and do an entire year group in half a day (we have vaccinations every year, including this one just finished).
Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.
"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.
I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far. 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!
But the things the ILEA were criticised for, like anti racism and gay rights, are mainstream now, precisely because some brave politicians were willing to make the case in the face of much hostility from the press, the Tories and indeed the public. Attitudes do change, personally I think that's a good thing. Nobody has a monopoly on common sense or wisdom, but I think over the sweep of postwar history, the progressive side have got more of the big calls on social and cultural issues right than the conservative one.
ILEA were on the whole much better at assisting working class students than some of the Tory-run outer London boroughs were that I can think of.
Sorry but its just not true that having a premature lockdown works and the SAGE experts are right on this, because the second that you lift a premature lockdown cases start rising again.
But the cases rise from a lower base, meaning you have fewer cases overall. This is the key thing to understand -> an earlier lockdown means fewer cases.
No it doesn't, because they just restart rising with exponential growth.
Exponential growth means that whatever amount of cases you start with is pretty irrelevant, before long you end up back at high numbers again.
Unless you can find a way to break the back of exponential growth, then premature lockdowns are useless.
See this is where you're wrong.
Mathematical exercise for you:
Put 100 in a column in excel. Double it for five rows, then halve it. Put 100 in a column in excel. Halve it. Then double it for five rows.
In both columns you will have the same number in the last row.
But the total will not be the same.
Yes, in theory, if you have the same number of lockdown weeks, but you have them earlier, then you have many fewer cases.
However, this assumes that the public will respond to the lockdown in the same way. There's a lot of evidence that they don't, that people make their own judgements based on perceived risk.
So the mathematical argument might not hold in reality.
You s but the point were making is that "exponential means you can't do anything" is not a good argument and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how numbers work
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!
Sorry, missed your edits.
Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.
Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...
I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.
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!
Sorry, missed your edits.
Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.
Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...
I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.
I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.
My son was asked to put a mask ON before entering a supermarket yesterday
Dominic Cummings is selling "subscriber rights", which will include the right to ask him questions online during the BBC broadcast this evening.
Just the right to ask, mind.
He is making himself totally unemployable isn't he.
Dominic Cummings' attraction is that he won the Brexit referendum. Some might say GE2019 as well but I expect there will be many claimants for that one. So if you want to hire him to win a specific campaign, why not?
You can subscribe to Cummings at Substack for £10 a month. It only needs a thousand or so subscribers before he matches whatever Boris paid him as Chief SpAd.
And how much money does the man need given his main leisure pursuit is reading?
Sorry but its just not true that having a premature lockdown works and the SAGE experts are right on this, because the second that you lift a premature lockdown cases start rising again.
But the cases rise from a lower base, meaning you have fewer cases overall. This is the key thing to understand -> an earlier lockdown means fewer cases.
No it doesn't, because they just restart rising with exponential growth.
Exponential growth means that whatever amount of cases you start with is pretty irrelevant, before long you end up back at high numbers again.
Unless you can find a way to break the back of exponential growth, then premature lockdowns are useless.
See this is where you're wrong.
Mathematical exercise for you:
Put 100 in a column in excel. Double it for five rows, then halve it. Put 100 in a column in excel. Halve it. Then double it for five rows.
In both columns you will have the same number in the last row.
But the total will not be the same.
Yes, in theory, if you have the same number of lockdown weeks, but you have them earlier, then you have many fewer cases.
However, this assumes that the public will respond to the lockdown in the same way. There's a lot of evidence that they don't, that people make their own judgements based on perceived risk.
So the mathematical argument might not hold in reality.
You s but the point were making is that "exponential means you can't do anything" is not a good argument and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how numbers work
Unfortunately “a fundamental misunderstanding of how numbers work” in a pandemic is the state that almost (and possibly all) of us are in: any attempt to use a simple model on something that includes human behaviour is going to have a bad time. Complex models might be better (tries to think of good joke to do with imaginary numbers and fails...)
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!
Sorry, missed your edits.
Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.
Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...
I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.
Mr. Contrarian, while I disagree with your stance on the vaccine, it's simply another way in which these so-called 'passports' are totally unacceptable. You shouldn't have your social or occupational life destroyed because the Government has developed a fetish for ID cards and social control.
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.
They'll end before they start. It's just rhetoric to get young people to get vaccinated.
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!
Sorry, missed your edits.
Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.
Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...
I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.
I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.
Waitrose is very middle class, and I expect most to carry on wearing masks. Other stores not so much. Weirdly, I'm not so bothered about wearing one when it is voluntary, than I was when it was mandatory. I'm weird.
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!
Sorry, missed your edits.
Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.
Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...
I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.
Conservative MP's must be quietly in despair over Johnson, not sure about the members. Think he may go before the party conference.
They would much prefer a leader who was 13% behind in the polls!!!!!
I would say not before the Party Conference. That would look like caving in to political pressure.
Boris may well retire early (and there are signs backbenchers are getting restive) but from Boris's own point of view, there is no point in his going before America is fully reopened so he can hit the lecture circuit. I do not expect Boris to fight another election.
I think he might go for a ‘23 election, but stand down by ‘25.
He does appear to be struggling to live on his public salary, with school fees to pay, and both an ex-wife and new wife to keep happy.
To me he looks increasingly like someone who actually has found out he doesn't like the job.
He has a sense of history: is there a PM whose term he would want to beat (e.g. Cameron) that might give a clue as to when he might retire? Cameron might be a bit too far at just over six years, but it would be embarrassing for him to serve less time that May or Brown.
To match Thatcher and Blair he needs to do 10 years, which would suggest if he is re elected he stands down in spring 2029
Really can't see Boris staying that long.
And there is zero point doing so - with Brexit and Covid the world is a very different place to the one back in 2018. Whether that's for good or bad it's irrelevant.
I think ten years is unrealistic too. In fact I’d be amazed if he ends up beating Cameron. If he goes at his own time (meaning not due to some scandal, which is a non-trivial probability even if his shame threshold is unusually high) then I suggest that if you are betting on a departure date looking at PMs he might want to beat in terms of time in offices might be a good clue. In mid-August next year he will have beaten Brown (just under three years) and May (just over), while sometime early ‘23 gets him past Heath.
Edit: that should have been early summer ‘23.
October 22 would allow him to go while given the next leader a while (6 months, 12 months) to bed in. Summer 23 and Boris will need to remain into the next election unless the Tories plan to stay until May 24 and the risk there is just too great.
So I suspect second half of next year is a very good bet - especially as Boris needs cash.
Yes, the other obvious Prime Minister for Boris to match is Winston Churchill (first term only, like in the book!) who did 10/5/40 to 26/7/45 but five years would take Boris deep into 2024 so we can probably rule that out.
5 years takes him past the 24 election - why do that unless you are planning to stay to 2026 or so.
And Boris can't do that as he needs real cash coming in
Boris became Prime Minister in July 2019 and won the election in December, so it is just about doable, unless FTPA is linked to an earlier month. But I can't see it.
Bywire News™ @bywirenews · 1h NEW: Keir Starmer has almost bankrupted the Labour Party.
The party’s financial reserves are down to just one months’ payroll - with senior staff blaming a huge swathe of lost members and legal fees.
Labour were the richest party in Britain under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
So with a reduction in subs from fly by night Trots who have scabbed off, and a reduction in union subs from Red Len, Starmer needs to go after private sector benefactors. No problem.
He has being trying to make good the shortfall from wealthy individuals ever since he became leader.
Unsurprisingly he has failed as he inspires nobody but a few anti Corbyn cranks
I am sure the staff losing their jobs will be extremely impressed by the success of your plan.
He needs the donations to keep the staff. Should have done it earlier of course.
Your argument is well made though. Without Corbyn the party is bankrupt. Which is why there should be an amicable divorce - let Labour Against the Witchhunt and Corbyn and the anti-semites and Chris Williamson stay, and have Starmer and the members and the voters leave.
The negative is that you'll lose the handful of trot MPs like Sultana who stay with you. The positive is that you'll have a large pot of money to defend the party against the endless legal cases. Well, until its all spent of course.
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!
Sorry, missed your edits.
Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.
Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...
That's been my approach throughout. Take the mask off slightly earlier than I'm technically allowed to. Small scale rebellions, and all that. Alternative compromise is wear it but obviously ineffectively.
I'm going to Old Trafford for the cricket later. I'll be interested to see how keenly mask wearing is observed. My guess is not very. They've asked that masks be worn to move around the stadium, but almost all of 'around the stadium' is outside.
On your other point, I agree SKS is no culture warrior. I doubt he is very far from where I am on culture war issues. I don't get the impression he thinks the UK is an unusually terrible country. But whenever he tries to convey this view , he gets shot down by his own side. Many of his fellow MPs, and even more of his fellow travelers, are complete nutters on the culture wars issue, which kind of detracts from the 'we are normal people like you' image he is trying to convey. Not a lot he can do about the fellow travellers, but the public proclamations of his MPs is within his gift to temper appropriately.
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!
Sorry, missed your edits.
Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.
Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...
I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.
I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.
I reckon Asda will be the lowest.
That was the supermarket that asked my son to mask up - my wife went into a different Asda yesterday wearing her mask (unprompted) - she said most people still were.
Dominic Cummings is selling "subscriber rights", which will include the right to ask him questions online during the BBC broadcast this evening.
Just the right to ask, mind.
He is making himself totally unemployable isn't he.
Dominic Cummings' attraction is that he won the Brexit referendum. Some might say GE2019 as well but I expect there will be many claimants for that one. So if you want to hire him to win a specific campaign, why not?
You can subscribe to Cummings at Substack for £10 a month. It only needs a thousand or so subscribers before he matches whatever Boris paid him as Chief SpAd.
And how much money does the man need given his main leisure pursuit is reading?
I doubt 1000 people will be subscribed for very long....how many people want to pay month in month out to read 1000s of lines of poorly written prose, claiming they were always right inhindsight.
It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"
Early stats from the Welsh looking surprisingly good: 555 positive tests, no deaths ,as against 737 positives and 1 death last week. First time for a while Wales has undershot its previous week. Early impact of schools breaking up?
Comments
Exponential doesn't mean big, it means proportional to what we have.
If you have a population with 1 case and another with 10 then the first population is over 3 doubling behind the second.
1 vs 100 means over 6 doubling behind.
If the doubling period is 2 weeks then that's 3 months difference before the first population gets to the initial value of the second.
That is absolutely enourmas.
To be fair, he has probably faced more 51-49 decisions than anyone in peacetime.
And there is zero point doing so - with Brexit and Covid the world is a very different place to the one back in 2018. Whether that's for good or bad it's irrelevant.
I'm not sure what the reason is. The left seems to have lost its raison d'etre despite conditions (an economic model which has reinforced inequality and led to financial collapse, for instance, insecurity for workers in a way which echoes earlier times etc) being propitious for it. Why is that?
There's a header for someone!
For the activists, they win one battle then move to the next one.
Had we had a fortnightly firebreak in September then the same scenario that played out in Wales would have happened. There would have been big scenes of "last night of freedom" parties before the firebreak began spreading cases. There would have been a pretty meaningless fortnight lockdown during which time cases wouldn't have much of a chance to fall. Then people would have partied like we'd just defeated Covid, causing a spike in new cases again - and exponential growth would have resumed.
Firebreaks don't work. Keeping R down consistently, or lockdowns at the peak, is the only non-vaccine related way to get through.
Just don't go?
Every Labour Govt leaves office with higher unemployment/fewer employed than they inherited. That is the Left's epitaph in this country.
The government have clearly flagged up what they will do, and post after post on here just refuses to accept it, claiming vaccines brings this to an end, behaviours have nothing to do with the coming years.
Mathematical exercise for you:
Put 100 in a column in excel. Double it for five rows, then halve it.
Put 100 in a column in excel. Halve it. Then double it for five rows.
In both columns you will have the same number in the last row.
But the total will not be the same.
Edit: that should have been early summer ‘23.
You can't blame the Cons for this. They do it because it accrues electoral advantage. The message is seductive. "We are the party to protect all of you solid and decent salt-of-the-earths from the outre nonsense of post modern crazies in black polo necks who think a man can wake up one day and decide to be a woman and everyone has to pretend he really is. I mean, c'mon."
So, the million dollar question, the one you put your finger on here - how to stop large parts of the electorate confusing Keir Starmer's deeply centrist Labour Party with Pol Pot? I don't know the answer but let's hope Keir does. It's obviously priority number 1 for him at the moment. You can tell that from pretty much everything he does and says.
Clubs already have to check ID on their way in. Other large venues already have to check for tickets on the way in. Checking for vaxport status at the same time is logistically not too complex.
For pubs without door staff, its an impossibility.
So I suspect second half of next year is a very good bet - especially as Boris needs cash.
There’s a really interesting counterfactual where there was no pandemic, and the news has been filled with Brexit Bad stories for the last six months. Boris might well find that the pandemic has made him lucky as PM.
- The loss of the communitarian ethos. We're not all in it together any more. We don't work in the same factory as everyone else in town, and spend our evenings with the same faces. We don't even talk about what we saw on the telly last night. Our commonality of experience and culture has splintered.
- Specifically, the big employers which can be taken on collectively are no longer part of the scene. The single industry towns are no more.
- The big problems have been solved. Poverty 100 years ago was a much tougher gig than poverty today.
- Workers no longer perceive employers as automatically inimical to their interests. Going and working elsewhere is much more easy than it was two or three generations ago. It no longer necessarily makes sense to understand society as a clash of class interests.
- Because of the above, the parties of the left have moved on to other issues - but these are not issues which connect with their voters in the same way.
- Almost as a consequence, parties of the left are no longer necessarily parties of the workers. They are a much broader, but much less deep, coalition of interests.
- Funding: parties of the left were funded by trade unions. By trade union membership has evaporated everywhere, not just the UK.
Since they have already asked pubs and cafes etc to take a record of the names / contact details of customers, I can easily see them extending this to checking of vaccination status. Any promises or statements to the contrary are simply not to be relied on.
New rules for gigs: you will either need to show you have been double vaccinated or prove you are of the age 14 -18.
Plus the only point is about keeping within NHS capacity, that is the only non-vaccination purpose of a lockdown. That was achieved via the UK's lockdowns.
Either way with enough exponential growth you're back at the point of the same peak number - which is what you are trying to avoid. Some people at low volumes getting it but not causing the NHS to collapse is frankly unavoidable unless you wish to go for permanent lockdown or can permanently keep R<1.
Reform the voting next please, a Corbyn-type must never be able to win again and I say that as a former Corbynite. Prevent my stupidity in voting
I had to provide ID right through till when I was about 30, was that a massive infringement on my liberties for looking youngish ?
Licensing laws have always been discriminatory
I believe they're even more rigorous on it nowadays, but my clubbing days are behind me.
(Well that's my hope anyway.)
Blair found it easier to attract private sector benefactors as he looked like a winner and not a miserable bore.
They are clearly now intending to coerce behaviours to support vaccines?
Mr. Pete, I'd be inclined to agree but I think his wife might want to inflict some more green nonsense on the country.
Unsurprisingly he has failed as he inspires nobody but a few anti Corbyn cranks
I am sure the staff losing their jobs will be extremely impressed by the success of your plan.
...
(I may, as a schoolboy, have dabbled in the fake ID industry, thanks to my parents having a computer, a printer, and a card laminator!)
Possibly one of the most significant decisions in history: a more committed Labour leader may well have swung enough votes that the Brexit referendum would have gone the other way (and would certainly have not been so far behind in the polls in ‘17 that May would have thought a snap election was a good idea).
Personally I would like to see a significant cap on personal private political donations. Johnson, more than any predecessor (including Blair) has brought that system into terminal disrepute. Nice wallpaper Sir!
They can't get power because they aren't trusted with money. Their Party's own dire finances lead to knowing looks of "Well, what a surprise...."
However, this assumes that the public will respond to the lockdown in the same way. There's a lot of evidence that they don't, that people make their own judgements based on perceived risk.
So the mathematical argument might not hold in reality.
And Boris can't do that as he needs real cash coming in
Are they going to let super spreading under 18 teenagers in?
Jeremy Corbyn: Leaver pretending to be a Remainer
Theresa May: Leaver pretending to be a Remainer
Boris: Remainer pretending to be a Leaver
But probably, like most people who have never had dinner with Bill Cash, they'd not given the matter too much thought before needing to decide.
I think Challenge 25 came in some years after I passed that age.
The last I heard was 2 million a week in early July.
Just the right to ask, mind.
If the BBC can charge a licence fee, so can he!
Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.
Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...
I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.
You can subscribe to Cummings at Substack for £10 a month. It only needs a thousand or so subscribers before he matches whatever Boris paid him as Chief SpAd.
And how much money does the man need given his main leisure pursuit is reading?
Weirdly, I'm not so bothered about wearing one when it is voluntary, than I was when it was mandatory. I'm weird.
Your argument is well made though. Without Corbyn the party is bankrupt. Which is why there should be an amicable divorce - let Labour Against the Witchhunt and Corbyn and the anti-semites and Chris Williamson stay, and have Starmer and the members and the voters leave.
The negative is that you'll lose the handful of trot MPs like Sultana who stay with you. The positive is that you'll have a large pot of money to defend the party against the endless legal cases. Well, until its all spent of course.
Alternative compromise is wear it but obviously ineffectively.
I'm going to Old Trafford for the cricket later. I'll be interested to see how keenly mask wearing is observed. My guess is not very. They've asked that masks be worn to move around the stadium, but almost all of 'around the stadium' is outside.
On your other point, I agree SKS is no culture warrior. I doubt he is very far from where I am on culture war issues. I don't get the impression he thinks the UK is an unusually terrible country. But whenever he tries to convey this view , he gets shot down by his own side. Many of his fellow MPs, and even more of his fellow travelers, are complete nutters on the culture wars issue, which kind of detracts from the 'we are normal people like you' image he is trying to convey. Not a lot he can do about the fellow travellers, but the public proclamations of his MPs is within his gift to temper appropriately.
I hope you're right.
(And I think your are probably right).