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The growing NHS waiting list is arguably the Tories’ biggest challenge – politicalbetting.com
The growing NHS waiting list is arguably the Tories’ biggest challenge – politicalbetting.com
One of the inevitable consequences of dealing with COVID has been the impact on those who have wanted the NHS for other reasons who are currently on waiting lists of one sort or another. It is estimated that there are 5m currently on them and this could be increasing all the time. Inevitably the primary focus has been on controlling the infection but as that pressure eases the focus will be on those who want attention for a wide range of other things
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THIS is what Boris should be saying
‘Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has sent out a firm warning to unvaccinated Filipinos that they will be confined to their homes by the authorities, adding that "for all I care, you can die anytime".’
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/07/30/for-all-i-care-you-can-die-anytime-philippine-presidents-message-to-the-unvaccinated/
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1421047780617773067
Westminster Voting Intention:
CON: 39% (+1)
LAB: 34% (=)
GRN: 9% (+1)
LDM: 8% (-1)
Via
@YouGov
, 27-28 Jul.
Changes w/ 20-21 Jul.
https://nltimes.nl/2021/07/27/klm-staff-tested-covid-flight-olympics
Personally I think WW1 was a massive blunder, a continent wide failure of statecraft, a dick swinging contest between the various powers, envious of each other and splitting themselves into various blocs. That all came crashing down. This belief is the essence of my Remainerism - having read many, many personal accounts of soldiers from WW1 and 2, by far the lesser evil is subjecting ourselves to the EU, and binding ourselves so closely we would never fight European countries again, rather than risk inflicting the horrors of warfare on our populations once more. I'm sure many will not find that argument convincing.
In military terms, many WW1 historians decry the 'Blackadder Effect', that has cemented the idea (that first emerged in the 60s with the 'Lions Led by Donkeys' idea) that the WW1 generals were callous, ruthless and incompetent, with no idea how to fight modern war. Debate continues, and will for evermore, between historians, but there is a revisionist bloc who argue that tactics did gradually develop (creeping barrages, improvements in the accuracy of artillery, etc, etc) that showed the generals could adapt tactically and did care about losses.
I remain to be convinced personally. I struggle to get past the sheer scale of seemingly pointless loss. Every day on the western front the British and it's colonial allies suffered something like1500 casualties on average, called 'Trench Wastage'. Around a third of those will have been killed instantly, more will have succumbed later to their wounds. The scale of losses that were deemed acceptable seem incomprehensible now.
KLM complied with all the guidelines, a spokesperson for the airline said to the broadcaster. "The Dutch government has Japan on the list of safe countries, so personnel do not have to be tested. Japan does require a temperature check before arrival and on departure. Crew members can stay in the country for a maximum of 72 hours." He added that "there has been no contamination in our crew".
KLM is ticking the boxes
The mouth part is fine. Up the nose I have had to resort to kneeling over the child's chest (my weight on my knees either side rather than them) to stop their hands reaching up to stop me. Then using one hand to try and keep their head still whilst the other hand does the nasal swabbing. All the time they are screaming like you wouldn't believe and their 12yo sister, who has had to do it on their own twice/week for the last 6 months, telling them to man up.
Having to do this daily at the moment due to a friend of the kids coming down with Covid on Wednesday. The worst medical intervention I had as a child was having to take the banana medicine when I hated bananas. Tests have all been negative so far.
They are a BPC member, surely?
CON: 56.5% (+14.8)
LAB: 30.6% (-16.0)
BCRP: 5.8% (-3.2)
LDEM: 4.1% (+1.4)
REFUK: 1.6% (+1.6)
FBM: 1.4% (+1.4)
Conservative GAIN from Labour.
BCRP: Community Residents Party
Knaresborough Scriven Park (Harrogate), council by-election result:
LDEM: 56.6% (+19.6)
CON: 34.3% (-4.2)
LAB: 8.1% (-16.4)
UKIP: 1.0% (+1.0)
Liberal Democrat GAIN from Conservative.
Fellgate and Hedworth (South Tyneside), council by-election result:
LAB: 49.1% (+9.6)
IND: 32.0% (-15.8)
CON: 9.1% (+4.7)
LDEM: 7.2% (-1.0)
GRN: 2.5% (+2.5)
Labour GAIN from Independent.
Gaywood South (Norfolk) result:
LDEM: 39.3% (+28.0)
LAB: 34.0% (-1.6)
CON: 22.9% (-25.3)
IND: 2.1% (+2.1)
UKIP: 1.7% (-3.2)
Liberal Democrat GAIN from Conservative.
Britain Elects
@BritainElects
·
2h
East Retford South (Bassetlaw), council by-election result:
CON: 40.1% (+25.2)
IND: 39.7% (+39.7)
LAB: 20.1% (-47.7)
Conservative GAIN from Labour.
Imagine a British Empire 3.0 that incorporated most of Europe AS WELL. No Nazism or Communism. Just wise, benign and perpetual rule of the entire globe from London. The world had no such luck, unfortunately
Only the fear that the whole thing would have collapsed like Italy's early response meant they steered away from it.
Covid has shown us how easily people become accustomed to horrific casualty numbers - even in peacetime. Consider also that those numbers are "all casualties" not just deaths, and they took place "out of sight" across the channel.
There’s also the theory that one empire can never eclipse another without conflict, so that’s China and America due to clash imminently.
Bring on world government!
The tanks in WWI were arguably not as revolutionary as better assault tactics. The typical tank attack ran out of working tanks within a few miles.
Read some actual accounts of the tank VCs - last tank working, on its own, getting surrounded by Germans, fights as a static pillbox until they die or escape on foot.
That’s my point. Read my comment. We invented them first - if only we’d invented them earlier we could have made them war winners by the time WW1 came along
The only trouble I've had in speaking English in Europe is in France, some "offbeat" interior parts of Spain and those over 50 in the old eastern bloc.
Everyone else speaks English.
"5m and this could currently be increasing all the time."
Could Or it could be decreasing.
I'd agree that 5m will be a key number. I'd say that getting below the 4.5m level before the pandemic started is perhaps a more important threshold.
Looking into this the other day, it was surprising how quickly some numbers change. I'm not sure the story these tell, but it is an interesting one. Is there scope for a quick recovery?
Might put these on Twatter and see what happens
Source: https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/pressure-points-in-the-nhs
If he goes for the election earlier, in 2023, the Tories might still be able to argue that they have a plan for dealing with the issue, rather than being judged on the success or failure of that plan.
However, it might make an early autumn election attractive. The government would hope to be able to point to progress made over the summer months, while a spring election would come after normal winter pressures which would hinder efforts to erode the backlog.
Pencil in October 2023 for the next general election.
It gets you past the machine guns and barbed wire and makes a mess with its gun but, unless followed up by infantry, can't hold ground.
It probably would have stopped Scottish Nationalism too because all Scotland's bright young things would have enthusiastically volunteered to be British European Empire governors and apparatchiks,.
The only place I could see it getting hot is the South China Sea, particularly Taiwan.
I agree long NHS waiting list could very well be a reason for GE happening in 2024.
Also October 2023 is a bit tight for displaced Tory MPs seeking winnable seats subsequent to final Boundary Review decision.
I am inclined to think Boris will wish to see himself and Tory party re-elected before Scottish Independence Referendum. If GE were to be held in May 2024, and Scottish Referendum (to be legislated for in 2023) were held in late 2024, then I believe Boris would not have to resign as PM if Yes won, as he himself would recently have received a mandate from the people.
I don't envy you. I imagine doing that to my eldest when he was 8 and the thought does frighten me.
You tune in and there’s no crowd, anywhere. No fervour, no costumed fools, no happy faces in paint. No noise. Just athletes thudding about in a void, as an invisible terror menaces the city around them.
The bleakest games since Berlin ‘36. So sad for Japan
Read some accounts of the street fighting that stopped the tanks at Cambrai. German soldiers literally hanging onto the machine gun barrels sticking out of the tanks.....
So the Tories in England and UK are 20 points behind Labour; the SNP in Scotland have collapsed and Labour in Wales is disappearing without trace. Not.
Oppositions generally have not done as well as might be expected so far in GB, Scotland, Wales and England. Why?
I've often wondered what would have happened if there had never been the brief period when (horse) cavalry become an ineffective tool due to the invention of the machine gun, before motorized infantry, tanks, then helicopters, became the new cavalry. WWI and even the US Civil War might have been very different affairs.
A bit like the pandemic...
I remain to be convinced personally. I struggle to get past the sheer scale of seemingly pointless loss. Every day on the western front the British and it's colonial allies suffered something like1500 casualties on average, called 'Trench Wastage'. Around a third of those will have been killed instantly, more will have succumbed later to their wounds. The scale of losses that were deemed acceptable seem incomprehensible now.
I certainly think WWI was a massive failure of statesmanship. All the great powers were led by essentially frivolous people who underestimated the willingness of the others to fight.
That doesn't mean we were wrong to participate. Once Belgium was attacked, I'd say we had very little option, given our treaty obligations.
IMHO, "The Donkeys" while hugely popular was a polemic, not work of serious scholarship (Barbarossa is way better). The idea of generals ordering men over the top while they dined in chateaux is a huge canard; in fact 78 British generals were killed in action.
Trenches were constructed precisely in order to minimise casualties. The first three months of the war, when armies were attacking each other in open country (and often using the tactics of the Napoleonic wars) were by far the most bloody.
The real problem was that military technology was at a stage where the defenders could inflict dreadful casualties, whereas the attackers did not have the technology to achieve lasting breakthroughs that they had in WWII.
All out nuclear war means mutually assured destruction. The globe in smoking ruins. No one wins.
So presumably you mean one step down from that - a conventional all-theatre war, across the world? I imagine the Americans would ‘win’ that, but it would not be a walkover. China has many allies, now, as the world’s biggest trader, and China also has the bigger navy.
But that is also unlikely because both sides would be scared
My likely scenario is as @casino posits - a serious clash in the South China Sea over Taiwan. That seems borderline probable to me, within the decade. China could easily triumph
So we'd have had to have accelerate engine development more than anything else to get better tanks tanks. Because without better engines you can't have better armour or reliability. And without better armour you can't stop heavy machine gun fire fucking up the inside of the tank via spalling and penetrations.
EDIT: The real disaster would have been 5 years of no practical combat experience would have lead us down the multi-turret "land battleship" dead end.
Hong Kong activist Tong Ying-kit has been jailed for nine years, after he became the first person to be convicted under the national security law Beijing imposed on the city.
On Friday, in a landmark sentencing for the city four days after he was found guilty of inciting secession and terrorist activities, 24-year-old Tong was handed the custodial jail term by the the High Court. His sentencing marks the end of Hong Kong’s first-ever trial under the sweeping security legislation which was enacted on June 30 last year.
https://hongkongfp.com/2021/07/30/breaking-activist-tong-ying-kit-jailed-for-9-years-in-hong-kongs-first-national-security-case/
Also suspension, gearboxes that worked....
No 1915 tank would have been much more reliable - a whole host of technologies and advancements was required.
Probably the most important was compact, reliable, voice radio.
That was a warning to Europe what a truly modernized, mechanized war between advanced nations would look like. The great failure, perhaps, was not preparing for that and developing new tactics to avoid appalling bloodshed (eg tanks). We had 60 years to think.
Presumably the European powers didn’t think because they were all focused on easy wars against spear throwing natives in Africa, etc. So the horror of World War One becomes, ironically, the price of rampant imperialism
History has a strange way of slowly but surely serving justice
https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-Napoleon-use-military-balloons
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57988023
David King on r4 yesterday saying it is a certainty that calcutta will be uninhabitable by 2050. Viruses and stuff are insanely trivial in comparison to that great clunking fact.
The British learned this the hard way from the Boer War. That's why we escaped with far fewer casualties than the French or Germans.
The European powers learned the wrong lessons from the Boer war and the Russo Japanese war. They realised that rifle fire was deadly, but took the view that attacks that were pressed home with sufficient vigour, and sufficient willingness to take casualties, would eventually prevail.
The hierarchy of users from the most vulnerable to the least is a positive, especially for the long term.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58021450
Presumed liability in insurance claims next.
DoD War Games Predict ‘Extremely Destabilizing’ Chinese Military Parity
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/dod-war-games-predict-extremely-destabilizing-chinese-military-parity/
"If we do come to blows with China, it's gonna be very confused for the first 30 or 45 days, and then we must fight in a distributed fashion," said Maj. Gen. Tracy King, Marine Corps’ director of Expeditionary Warfare
And potentially catastrophic for the world economy.
They are many scenarios but if I had to choose one it would be China seizing Taiwan like Germany seizing the Sudetenland. Not a shot fired. The West will sigh and shrug and pray that it ends there
That doesn't mean we were wrong to participate. Once Belgium was attacked, I'd say we had very little option, given our treaty obligations.
IMHO, "The Donkeys" while hugely popular was a polemic, not work of serious scholarship (Barbarossa is way better). The idea of generals ordering men over the top while they dined in chateaux is a huge canard; in fact 78 British generals were killed in action.
Trenches were constructed precisely in order to minimise casualties. The first three months of the war, when armies were attacking each other in open country (and often using the tactics of the Napoleonic wars) were by far the most bloody.
The real problem was that military technology was at a stage where the defenders could inflict dreadful casualties, whereas the attackers did not have the technology to achieve lasting breakthroughs that they had in WWII.
Oh I agree, once it kicked off we had to go in. It shouldn't have kicked off in the first place though, I think.
Re trenches, I agree though there is also the notion that German trench systems were much more solidly built because they intended to hold the ground they had captured, whereas British trenches were much less solid because the generals didn't want the idea to permeate that they were to be permanent - they were temporary, to be left behind as soon as an advance allowed.
Yes, the advantage was undoubtedly with the defenders in WW1!
I must confess I've never read 'Donkeys' itself - I've generally stuck to more recent stuff by 'proper' historians, or autobiographcal accounts, but the idea has undoubtedly become a perception that is enduring in the popular perception of WW1. But I might add it to the reading list.
The company did the world a solid by agreeing to offer its treatment at cost price. The world snarled back in response. Will anyone do the same in future? Doubtful
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/business/astrazeneca-second-quarte-results-vaccine-production-b1893166.html
https://www.harlowmarine.com/a-brief-look-at-tugboat-history/
That's 1802. Sounds adequate to tow barges full of infantry across the channel in a calm.
Also, for all their authoritarian faults I just don't think (hope I am right here) that they are a militarily aggressive power. To amend the words of Sting, I hope the Chinese love their children too!
Regarding the header, the Tories face some interesting headwinds.
1. NHS waiting lists
2. Knife crime and underfunded justice system
3. Austerity 3.0 (and the battle between Rishi and Johnson)
4. Social care, and how to fund it
5. Ongoing economic damage from Brexit
6. Faragiste attacks on their right flank
7. Decarbonisation, and how to pay for it
8. Northern Ireland
9. Scottish independence
10. The kid’s education backlog post pandemic
11. Labour shortages
12. Boris’s tendency to fuck up generally
On the other hand, they have Keir’s general uselessness on their side and the war on woke of course.
An early pre-WW1 tank programme would have been well setup to develop some total utter duds.
The interwar years are full of "Tank design by theory". The T-34 managed to come into being so early in the war due to actual Soviet experience of their "in theory" tanks get roughed up by the Japanese.
https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1421068272292741122?s=20
For those panicking about the England numbers....
It took mass production of smokeless cartridges to a high standard before machine guns became usefully reliable.
The reason that Gatlings and similar had dominated previously (and they were too heavy to be really useful) was that they were externally powered and could ignore misfires.
I think your view of easy American superiority is about 10-15 years out of date
Incidentally, is that the best war movie ever made? Zulu? Certainly in my top 5
In reality one would hope that if Napoleon started building bulk steam tugs the admiralty would have seen the problem and started building its own.