We are the only country in the world ACTIVELY pursuing a mass infection strategy in schools. Johnson’s govt have scrapped bubbles, the requirement for close contacts to self-isolate (even if +ve case at home) and now there’s a “threshold” before covid-safe measures can be taken https://twitter.com/Zubhaque/status/1428625201260994560
Now this crisis has been going on for 18 months or so, it should become easy to see how these self-proclaimed talking head experts who preach to us have performed.
So: how have Dr Zubaida Haque's predications performed so far in this crisis?
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
There is an advert currently running on TV where what is obviously a junior employee is acting as a cricket umpire and has to give the boss out LBW. He does, the boss is furious, the umpire is worried but the bowler (a lowly female employee???) is delighted. I can remember the advert but not who or what it is for!
This has been going over and over in my mind for days. Just think of all the attention in the 80s over Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. Wikipedia tells me there were 104 Western hostages in Lebanon in total.
And here we are with perhaps 3k Brits, 15k Americans and an unknown number of others from other Western countries, their lives in the hands of a regime far more barbaric and unpredictable than Hezbollah.
Yokel tells that some security firms are advising clients to stay put for now. Stay put for what exactly? Personally I’d take my chances now than after 31 Aug when all bets are off to Taliban behaviour.
One gets the feeling that the media are under direction not to report just how dire this situation really is. The US system is different of course but I reckon the chances of the British government falling over this are not inconsiderable, especially if it’s true that Macron and Merkel largely got their people out ahead of time.
Increasingly, I see a Trump 2nd presidency looming.
Very depressing.
Hope I am wrong.
Too early to say and a lot of things could happen but I do think a GOP majority in both Houses is looking more nailed on for 2022 (Adam Laxalt announcing his Senate run in Nevada is a plus for the GOP and I think Sununu will run in NH). What that could mean is impeachment hearings against Biden for the way he handled the Afghanistan exit.
I can see Biden turning out to be right about Afghanistan but blamed by voters for leaving in such a mess and not recovering.
Biden might be able to avoid another terrorist attack on US soil.
However he will still have allowed the Taliban to return to Afghanistan on his watch
They never went away, hon.
Pre 2001 they controlled Kabul and most of the country.
After the invasion they were removed from Kabul and most of the country.
Under Biden the Taliban now control Kabul again and indeed even more of the country than they did before the invasion
So this not-a-coalition coalition between SNP and the Scottish Greens, the write up on the BBC seems to suggest its basically a coalition but the Greens dont have to support some specific policies and can still criticise the government.
Is the little bit of extra stability worth the SNP giving them that latitude, above more regular minority gov or confidence and supply arrangements? It seems pretty generous.
This has been going over and over in my mind for days. Just think of all the attention in the 80s over Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. Wikipedia tells me there were 104 Western hostages in Lebanon in total.
And here we are with perhaps 3k Brits, 15k Americans and an unknown number of others from other Western countries, their lives in the hands of a regime far more barbaric and unpredictable than Hezbollah.
Yokel tells that some security firms are advising clients to stay put for now. Stay put for what exactly? Personally I’d take my chances now than after 31 Aug when all bets are off to Taliban behaviour.
One gets the feeling that the media are under direction not to report just how dire this situation really is. The US system is different of course but I reckon the chances of the British government falling over this are not inconsiderable, especially if it’s true that Macron and Merkel largely got their people out ahead of time.
Increasingly, I see a Trump 2nd presidency looming.
Very depressing.
Hope I am wrong.
Too early to say and a lot of things could happen but I do think a GOP majority in both Houses is looking more nailed on for 2022 (Adam Laxalt announcing his Senate run in Nevada is a plus for the GOP and I think Sununu will run in NH). What that could mean is impeachment hearings against Biden for the way he handled the Afghanistan exit.
I can see Biden turning out to be right about Afghanistan but blamed by voters for leaving in such a mess and not recovering.
Biden might be able to avoid another terrorist attack on US soil.
However he will still have allowed the Taliban to return to Afghanistan on his watch
They never left it.
HY's ignorance is breathtaking.
The US and UK troops were mostly holed up in fortified compounds, with limited interaction with locals particularly in more remote and dangerous regions. And frequently fended off Taliban attacks - from fighters who weren't on day trips from abroad, or from IEDs planted by Afghans.
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
... For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover...
Reflecting on what information we have about the current situation in Kabul, it seems likely to me that what many, such as TND, are missing is that there is a lot of potential for the current situation in Afghanistan to dramatically worsen before it stabilises. The next international disaster is likely Afghanistan again, and the risk of substantial loss of life among those we are attempting to evacuate from the country.
Optimistically, you would hope that there is a lot of activity that is necessarily behind the scenes being carried out to ensure that the worst is averted, and we will naturally not hear about it until after the event.
A question - Things to do in Edinburgh, if it is raining? Which it seems likely to do this weekend....
Get drunk.
I *really* want to spend a week in Edinburgh on my own, going around some of the places I remember from previous visits, and discovering new ones.
There used to be a really good greasy spoon down near Leith Docks (I think on Commercial Street) that used to serve the best breakfasts. This was twenty years ago, so it's probably not there any more. But I'd love to just wander around and discover new stuff.
This has been going over and over in my mind for days. Just think of all the attention in the 80s over Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. Wikipedia tells me there were 104 Western hostages in Lebanon in total.
And here we are with perhaps 3k Brits, 15k Americans and an unknown number of others from other Western countries, their lives in the hands of a regime far more barbaric and unpredictable than Hezbollah.
Yokel tells that some security firms are advising clients to stay put for now. Stay put for what exactly? Personally I’d take my chances now than after 31 Aug when all bets are off to Taliban behaviour.
One gets the feeling that the media are under direction not to report just how dire this situation really is. The US system is different of course but I reckon the chances of the British government falling over this are not inconsiderable, especially if it’s true that Macron and Merkel largely got their people out ahead of time.
Increasingly, I see a Trump 2nd presidency looming.
Very depressing.
Hope I am wrong.
Too early to say and a lot of things could happen but I do think a GOP majority in both Houses is looking more nailed on for 2022 (Adam Laxalt announcing his Senate run in Nevada is a plus for the GOP and I think Sununu will run in NH). What that could mean is impeachment hearings against Biden for the way he handled the Afghanistan exit.
I can see Biden turning out to be right about Afghanistan but blamed by voters for leaving in such a mess and not recovering.
Biden's problem is that he looks like he belongs in a care home not the White House.
And likely to grow worse during the next year.
And at risk of sounding like a stuck record, that’s still better than his predecessor who behaved like he belonged in a lunatic asylum.
Sure.
But its still not good.
How the USA ended up with this gerontocracy is worthy of study - their current 'leaders' weren't that impressive even when they were in their prime.
It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Look at the likes of Putin, Xi, Duterte, Modi, Obrador, Bolsonaro, Maduro, Macron, whatever idiot they come up with in Germany, Erdogan, Johnson, recently Varadkar, Orban...
The truth is that we as a planet are appallingly badly served right now by politicians in general. Biden is if anything rather above average, and as you note he’s a poor president who was until 2009 a long serving but rather undistinguished senator.
In what way is Xi Jinping a bad leader? He’s a ruthless autocratic bastard, but that’s his aim. He’d see that as a compliment. And under his watch the Chinese are replacing the USA as the ultimate superpower, he’s retaken Hong Kong without firing a shot, and there’s a good chance he will shortly devour Taiwan, as well.
He will be seen as a ‘great’ Chinese leader. Not to our taste. Not popular in Xinjiang or many other places. But not a farcical clown like Trump, or Bolsanaro, not responsible for disasters, like Biden
Same goes for Putin, Erdogan, Modi and even Orban - successful autocrats in different forms.
The really poor leadership is, sadly, concentrated in the West
Theres bad leaders who are morally bad and bad leaders who are incompetently bad.
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
In a book to be published next Tuesday, Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order, British health experts at the time are described as being “oddly pessimistic about their capacity to defeat the virus”, rejecting measures such as a ban on mass gatherings.
“We thought they were out of their minds. We told them it would be an absolutely devastating approach to deal with the pandemic,” one US official told the authors, Thomas Wright, a foreign affairs expert at the Brookings Institution, and Colin Kahl, who is now under secretary of defence for policy. “We thought they were nuts and they thought we were nuts. It turns out, in the end, we were a little more right than they were.”
It isn't about Cheltenham per se - the allegation is that for a period at the beginning of the crisis, the UK plan was to allow everyone to get it (which those of us who watched the very first PM's broadcast will remember was pretty much what they said). Hence no events ban and Cheltenham was allowed to go ahead.
It would also have to have be Labour/LibDem's plan, as well.
There were in power in Wales & they allowed events like the Stereophonics to play a huge gig at Cardiff's Motorpoint Arena (14th March) after Cheltenham (10-13th March) .
Or ... maybe, we could just acccept that at the outbreak of a completely new disease, no-one knew the best strategy -- even the LibDems.
The big issue with the initial herd immunity plan was the gaslighting that there was never a herd immunity plan.
'Gaslighting' --- well, if there is/was any gaslighting, it extends to politicians in Wales as well.
I have no idea as I am not Welsh, and don't follow their politics. If the Welsh govt publicly said the policy was herd immunity, and then a week later and forever after denied that they ever said this despite the record being clear, then yes they were gaslighting too.
Well, their policy at the outset was extreme reluctance to cancel large events. Even after Cheltenham.
E.g., the Wales versus Scotland 6N match in Cardiff was the very last to be cancelled. All the other 6N matches that weekend had been cancelled before Wales finally and reluctantly followed suit.
Must admit, I am inclined to cut all our politicians a lot of slack at the beginning of the pandemic. It was genuinely unclear what the best policy is/was.
I agree entirely that at a time of great uncertainty politicians should get lots of leeway. Starting with a policy of extreme reluctance to cancel large events, and changing their mind is not gaslighting at all though.
I am not criticising the Westminster govt for the initial herd immunity plan, even though the numbers as we know now make it very likely a bad policy, because they deserve leeway to make errors in such uncertainty. I am solely criticising them for later lying that it was never part of their plan.
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
I'm sure its wider, around preparation and much more of the spiralling mess and the UKs response to it, but the focus on the call gives the impression that is the case.
We are the only country in the world ACTIVELY pursuing a mass infection strategy in schools. Johnson’s govt have scrapped bubbles, the requirement for close contacts to self-isolate (even if +ve case at home) and now there’s a “threshold” before covid-safe measures can be taken https://twitter.com/Zubhaque/status/1428625201260994560
Member of Cadwalladrs blairite sage group and director of a race equality trust.
There are two key considerations here. One is how much revenue Scotland generates. GERS finds that, even taking into consideration a geographical share of oil and gas production, Scotland raised £382 less per person in revenue than the UK average. This is despite the Scottish Government being given the power to create a Scottish Rate of Income Tax and ministers using it to introduce a higher-rate band than the rest of the UK, so that top-rate payers are liable for 46 per cent in taxation. Handed a licence to print money, the Scottish Government has ended up bringing in less of it.
Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday dear Hard Left Social Democrat. Happy birthday to me.
I'm the exact dead arithmetical opposite of sweet 16.
Happy Birthday.
16 has the distinction of being equal to 2^4 and 4^2, and thus is the only number which can be expressed in the form x^y = y^x where x != y and x and y are positive integers.
So, given 16's singular status, I am struggling to think of its exact dead arithmetical opposite.
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
The awkward thing is plenty of people will say they want the truth, and think they mean it, but the culture you experience tells a different tale.
Doing a Lionel Hutz people want *happy voice* the truth, not *scary voice* the truth.
Here's the Owen Jones polemic on the US/UK and Afghanistan. It's imo a good counterpoint to all the Tugendhat tosh and a view that at least belongs in the PB mix:
There are two key considerations here. One is how much revenue Scotland generates. GERS finds that, even taking into consideration a geographical share of oil and gas production, Scotland raised £382 less per person in revenue than the UK average. This is despite the Scottish Government being given the power to create a Scottish Rate of Income Tax and ministers using it to introduce a higher-rate band than the rest of the UK, so that top-rate payers are liable for 46 per cent in taxation. Handed a licence to print money, the Scottish Government has ended up bringing in less of it.
Richard Murphy has poked large holes in the non-maths in the GERS report
Richard Murphy?
Seriously?
The man's a joke.
if Murphy actually read the report he’d realise there’s no mystery as to why Scotland’s share of UK debt interest is higher than pop’n share: it’s because - not surprisingly given our larger public sector - we have greater public sector pension interest costs
“My sources confirm several public executions in #Afghanistan, most notably in Kandahar. Anyone who thinks these guys have changed, that there are “moderate #Taliban” and that you have to “give them a chance” - forget it!” @HasnainKazim
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
'Bring me solutions not problems' is a fine idea in theory but tends to me people are wary of raising problems, as you say its 'pessimistic'.
What's funny is then when shit hits the fan its clear everyone knew it was coming at some point anyway.
This has been going over and over in my mind for days. Just think of all the attention in the 80s over Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. Wikipedia tells me there were 104 Western hostages in Lebanon in total.
And here we are with perhaps 3k Brits, 15k Americans and an unknown number of others from other Western countries, their lives in the hands of a regime far more barbaric and unpredictable than Hezbollah.
Yokel tells that some security firms are advising clients to stay put for now. Stay put for what exactly? Personally I’d take my chances now than after 31 Aug when all bets are off to Taliban behaviour.
One gets the feeling that the media are under direction not to report just how dire this situation really is. The US system is different of course but I reckon the chances of the British government falling over this are not inconsiderable, especially if it’s true that Macron and Merkel largely got their people out ahead of time.
Increasingly, I see a Trump 2nd presidency looming.
Very depressing.
Hope I am wrong.
Too early to say and a lot of things could happen but I do think a GOP majority in both Houses is looking more nailed on for 2022 (Adam Laxalt announcing his Senate run in Nevada is a plus for the GOP and I think Sununu will run in NH). What that could mean is impeachment hearings against Biden for the way he handled the Afghanistan exit.
I can see Biden turning out to be right about Afghanistan but blamed by voters for leaving in such a mess and not recovering.
Biden's problem is that he looks like he belongs in a care home not the White House.
And likely to grow worse during the next year.
And at risk of sounding like a stuck record, that’s still better than his predecessor who behaved like he belonged in a lunatic asylum.
Sure.
But its still not good.
How the USA ended up with this gerontocracy is worthy of study - their current 'leaders' weren't that impressive even when they were in their prime.
It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Look at the likes of Putin, Xi, Duterte, Modi, Obrador, Bolsonaro, Maduro, Macron, whatever idiot they come up with in Germany, Erdogan, Johnson, recently Varadkar, Orban...
The truth is that we as a planet are appallingly badly served right now by politicians in general. Biden is if anything rather above average, and as you note he’s a poor president who was until 2009 a long serving but rather undistinguished senator.
My theory is that the technology of advertising and persuasion has just got too good for our collective good.
Smart politicians, ones who want to win, outsource all the campaigning stuff to others- starting with the Saatchis and ending with weirdos manipulating social media algorithms.
Trouble is that those interactions between actual politicians and real people in real space and time are an important part of the job of politics itself and essential in grounding political thinking in some sort of reality.
You can't replace experience of real people with a data dashboard.
Dont tell that to those super keen that Covid has put an end to the need for general human interaction.
This has been going over and over in my mind for days. Just think of all the attention in the 80s over Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. Wikipedia tells me there were 104 Western hostages in Lebanon in total.
And here we are with perhaps 3k Brits, 15k Americans and an unknown number of others from other Western countries, their lives in the hands of a regime far more barbaric and unpredictable than Hezbollah.
Yokel tells that some security firms are advising clients to stay put for now. Stay put for what exactly? Personally I’d take my chances now than after 31 Aug when all bets are off to Taliban behaviour.
One gets the feeling that the media are under direction not to report just how dire this situation really is. The US system is different of course but I reckon the chances of the British government falling over this are not inconsiderable, especially if it’s true that Macron and Merkel largely got their people out ahead of time.
Increasingly, I see a Trump 2nd presidency looming.
Very depressing.
Hope I am wrong.
Too early to say and a lot of things could happen but I do think a GOP majority in both Houses is looking more nailed on for 2022 (Adam Laxalt announcing his Senate run in Nevada is a plus for the GOP and I think Sununu will run in NH). What that could mean is impeachment hearings against Biden for the way he handled the Afghanistan exit.
I can see Biden turning out to be right about Afghanistan but blamed by voters for leaving in such a mess and not recovering.
Biden might be able to avoid another terrorist attack on US soil.
However he will still have allowed the Taliban to return to Afghanistan on his watch
They never left it.
HY's ignorance is breathtaking.
The US and UK troops were mostly holed up in fortified compounds, with limited interaction with locals particularly in more remote and dangerous regions. And frequently fended off Taliban attacks - from fighters who weren't on day trips from abroad, or from IEDs planted by Afghans.
The ignorance is yours.
In 2017 only tiny patches of Afghanistan were in Taliban control, just 13 districts out of 421 and no major cities.
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
The awkward thing is plenty of people will say they want the truth, and think they mean it, but the culture you experience tells a different tale.
Doing a Lionel Hutz people want *happy voice* the truth, not *scary voice* the truth.
Deleted as a bit too smoke up my own arse. I agree with your comment...
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
It might have made not one iota of difference, but then he is the Foreign Sec after all so maybe he should have done it don't you think? The rest of world thinks this is a humanitarian disaster so the person whose job description is to act in such circumstances didn't. But I guess that is ok in your eyes.
In a book to be published next Tuesday, Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order, British health experts at the time are described as being “oddly pessimistic about their capacity to defeat the virus”, rejecting measures such as a ban on mass gatherings.
“We thought they were out of their minds. We told them it would be an absolutely devastating approach to deal with the pandemic,” one US official told the authors, Thomas Wright, a foreign affairs expert at the Brookings Institution, and Colin Kahl, who is now under secretary of defence for policy. “We thought they were nuts and they thought we were nuts. It turns out, in the end, we were a little more right than they were.”
It isn't about Cheltenham per se - the allegation is that for a period at the beginning of the crisis, the UK plan was to allow everyone to get it (which those of us who watched the very first PM's broadcast will remember was pretty much what they said). Hence no events ban and Cheltenham was allowed to go ahead.
It would also have to have be Labour/LibDem's plan, as well.
There were in power in Wales & they allowed events like the Stereophonics to play a huge gig at Cardiff's Motorpoint Arena (14th March) after Cheltenham (10-13th March) .
Or ... maybe, we could just acccept that at the outbreak of a completely new disease, no-one knew the best strategy -- even the LibDems.
The big issue with the initial herd immunity plan was the gaslighting that there was never a herd immunity plan.
'Gaslighting' --- well, if there is/was any gaslighting, it extends to politicians in Wales as well.
Yes - I don't really understand the issue with the herd immunity plan at the start. The idea of trying to shield the most at risk while the rest take their chance was sound, with the information at hand at the time and with no certainty of effective vaccination arriving in December 2020. It would have been a grim time for sure, but NZ and Aus are now finding that trying to do the other - the complete suppression/elimination is not going to work. Vaccines have changed things, but we are still aiming at herd immunity, just now over 90% of adults in the UK have some degree of protection. To those who assert that the vaccines are not preventing transmission (or still allowing a lot of transmission) I would ask how it is we have essentially no restrictions in England and yet cases are barely increasing. Of course some double jabbed are catching the highly infectious delta and some are then spreading it. But spread is much reduced overall. It must be, or the cases would be expontentially increasing in the way they did in March 2020.
Why is it risible to post the change in odds of a political event on a political betting site. He is doing what it says on the can. Just bizarre.
Doesnt mention what its changed from. How does anyone know if it has changed?
Why would you assume he is lying, in particular for no good reason. People who are interested know if this is useful or not. You really do have a bee in your bonnet about several types of posts on this site. Just go elsewhere if you are not happy.
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
It is the sign of a very great leader that you can tell them truth and be rewarded for it.
Rarer than rocking horse poo, though.
Lots of them say "Tell me The! Truth!" - but they really want the varnished version.... Just so long as they can get their couple of years in that job done, and move on, before the shit hits the fan.
So this not-a-coalition coalition between SNP and the Scottish Greens, the write up on the BBC seems to suggest its basically a coalition but the Greens dont have to support some specific policies and can still criticise the government.
Is the little bit of extra stability worth the SNP giving them that latitude, above more regular minority gov or confidence and supply arrangements? It seems pretty generous.
It doesn't make much sense at first glance. The prior arrangement seemed to work quite well for both parties. A couple of thoughts:
1. By forming a formal majority coalition in favour of a second referendum they might feel they have a stronger case for pushing for that referendum.
2. If Sturgeon anticipates acquiescing to a second referendum not happening, a formal coalition makes her more secure in the face of any SNP MSPs who might be tempted to rebel/defect in favour of a more unilateral policy on a second referendum.
I realise that these seem to be contrary explanations, exposing the reality that I am guessing wildly.
“My sources confirm several public executions in #Afghanistan, most notably in Kandahar. Anyone who thinks these guys have changed, that there are “moderate #Taliban” and that you have to “give them a chance” - forget it!” @HasnainKazim
But it’s ok, they’re just ‘country boys’ focused on ‘inclusivity’
To be fair to Carter he wanted to keep western troops there as far as I could see, it remains Biden and Harris who are responsible for this capitulation and abandonment of the country to the Taliban.
They must share the main responsibility along with the previous administration
And on would you support an increase in energy bills to fund more renewable energy and lower carbon emissions
Support 30%
Oppose 52%
D/K 18%
Given the news is regularly full of stuff about the evils of climate change ad it regularly crops up on magazine shows and breakfast TV as an issue I am amazed this is not the other way.
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
It might have made not one iota of difference, but then he is the Foreign Sec after all so maybe he should have done it don't you think? The rest of world thinks this is a humanitarian disaster so the person whose job description is to act in such circumstances didn't. But I guess that is ok in your eyes.
It's also an example of one of Parkinson's Laws; the one about how a meeting will spend minutes on a multi million pound project but hours on a shed.
Few of us can comprehend to awful magnitude of what's happening in Afghanistan. But we can all come to a judgement about someone refusing to make a phone call while they're on holiday.
Unfair and irrational? Probably. But if you're in politics, you don't get to complain about things being unfair or irrational. Live by the sword of the will of the people and all that.
Here's the Owen Jones polemic on the US/UK and Afghanistan. It's imo a good counterpoint to all the Tugendhat tosh and a view that at least belongs in the PB mix:
Why is it risible to post the change in odds of a political event on a political betting site. He is doing what it says on the can. Just bizarre.
Doesnt mention what its changed from. How does anyone know if it has changed?
Why would you assume he is lying, in particular for no good reason. People who are interested know if this is useful or not. You really do have a bee in your bonnet about several types of posts on this site. Just go elsewhere if you are not happy.
Con Maj no longer being favourite was a thread header just 2 days ago. So it had changed then and looks changed further now.
But on Thursday, when the full transcript was published by ABC, it emerged that chunks of it were edited out.
Biden falsely claimed that his son Beau, who died of a brain tumor in May 2015, aged 46, had served in Afghanistan. He then corrected himself and said it was Iraq, but he also claimed Beau was in the Navy, when in fact he was in the Army.
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
I recall a suggestion that, given one of the most effective pieces of first response disaster relief was often an American Carrier Group turning up to create an instant airfield/helicopter lift/water and food supply/Engineer teams etc, that the foreign aid budget should be "billable" by the UK military for similar stuff.
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
Which is why, amongst other things, we have Parliamentary scrutiny.
“My sources confirm several public executions in #Afghanistan, most notably in Kandahar. Anyone who thinks these guys have changed, that there are “moderate #Taliban” and that you have to “give them a chance” - forget it!” @HasnainKazim
But it’s ok, they’re just ‘country boys’ focused on ‘inclusivity’
To be fair to Carter he wanted to keep western troops there as far as I could see, it remains Biden and Harris who are responsible for this capitulation and abandonment of the country to the Taliban.
They must share the main responsibility along with the previous administration
I fear there will be mass executions, quite soon
‘People in Kabul says that the Taliban have access to national security documents. The Taliban's intelligence service has begun a massive arrest of national security personnel since yesterday.’
‘Outside #Kabul, away from the eyes of the world, the Taliban has executed, imprisoned, and beaten former govt officials, soldiers, and Afghans who worked for foreign forces.
Taliban has also reimposed many of its repressive laws outside Kabul.’
This has been going over and over in my mind for days. Just think of all the attention in the 80s over Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. Wikipedia tells me there were 104 Western hostages in Lebanon in total.
And here we are with perhaps 3k Brits, 15k Americans and an unknown number of others from other Western countries, their lives in the hands of a regime far more barbaric and unpredictable than Hezbollah.
Yokel tells that some security firms are advising clients to stay put for now. Stay put for what exactly? Personally I’d take my chances now than after 31 Aug when all bets are off to Taliban behaviour.
One gets the feeling that the media are under direction not to report just how dire this situation really is. The US system is different of course but I reckon the chances of the British government falling over this are not inconsiderable, especially if it’s true that Macron and Merkel largely got their people out ahead of time.
Increasingly, I see a Trump 2nd presidency looming.
Very depressing.
Hope I am wrong.
Too early to say and a lot of things could happen but I do think a GOP majority in both Houses is looking more nailed on for 2022 (Adam Laxalt announcing his Senate run in Nevada is a plus for the GOP and I think Sununu will run in NH). What that could mean is impeachment hearings against Biden for the way he handled the Afghanistan exit.
I can see Biden turning out to be right about Afghanistan but blamed by voters for leaving in such a mess and not recovering.
Biden might be able to avoid another terrorist attack on US soil.
However he will still have allowed the Taliban to return to Afghanistan on his watch
They never left it.
HY's ignorance is breathtaking.
The US and UK troops were mostly holed up in fortified compounds, with limited interaction with locals particularly in more remote and dangerous regions. And frequently fended off Taliban attacks - from fighters who weren't on day trips from abroad, or from IEDs planted by Afghans.
The ignorance is yours.
In 2017 only tiny patches of Afghanistan were in Taliban control, just 13 districts out of 421 and no major cities.
Absolutely. The Trump Doha deal has nothing whatsoever to do with it. If America had reelected Trump then the even faster withdrawal that he and the GOP have been demanding of Biden would have gone off without a hitch and the Taliban being handed back control would have no control.
And on would you support an increase in energy bills to fund more renewable energy and lower carbon emissions
Support 30%
Oppose 52%
D/K 18%
Given the news is regularly full of stuff about the evils of climate change ad it regularly crops up on magazine shows and breakfast TV as an issue I am amazed this is not the other way.
Shows there is little mileage in pushing a green agenda if it means higher energy bills, carbon taxes, higher fuel bills and congestion charge zones outside of wealthy metropolitan areas.
We do still new to continue the push to renewables however and we are doing relatively well on that
It's strange, the SNP used to be such big fans of GERS too.....
Richard Murphy, eh? But hadn’t Alex Salmond actually worked professionally as an economist - he put GERS right at the heart of the independence case in 2014.
This has been going over and over in my mind for days. Just think of all the attention in the 80s over Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. Wikipedia tells me there were 104 Western hostages in Lebanon in total.
And here we are with perhaps 3k Brits, 15k Americans and an unknown number of others from other Western countries, their lives in the hands of a regime far more barbaric and unpredictable than Hezbollah.
Yokel tells that some security firms are advising clients to stay put for now. Stay put for what exactly? Personally I’d take my chances now than after 31 Aug when all bets are off to Taliban behaviour.
One gets the feeling that the media are under direction not to report just how dire this situation really is. The US system is different of course but I reckon the chances of the British government falling over this are not inconsiderable, especially if it’s true that Macron and Merkel largely got their people out ahead of time.
Increasingly, I see a Trump 2nd presidency looming.
Very depressing.
Hope I am wrong.
Too early to say and a lot of things could happen but I do think a GOP majority in both Houses is looking more nailed on for 2022 (Adam Laxalt announcing his Senate run in Nevada is a plus for the GOP and I think Sununu will run in NH). What that could mean is impeachment hearings against Biden for the way he handled the Afghanistan exit.
I can see Biden turning out to be right about Afghanistan but blamed by voters for leaving in such a mess and not recovering.
Biden's problem is that he looks like he belongs in a care home not the White House.
And likely to grow worse during the next year.
And at risk of sounding like a stuck record, that’s still better than his predecessor who behaved like he belonged in a lunatic asylum.
Sure.
But its still not good.
How the USA ended up with this gerontocracy is worthy of study - their current 'leaders' weren't that impressive even when they were in their prime.
It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Look at the likes of Putin, Xi, Duterte, Modi, Obrador, Bolsonaro, Maduro, Macron, whatever idiot they come up with in Germany, Erdogan, Johnson, recently Varadkar, Orban...
The truth is that we as a planet are appallingly badly served right now by politicians in general. Biden is if anything rather above average, and as you note he’s a poor president who was until 2009 a long serving but rather undistinguished senator.
In what way is Xi Jinping a bad leader? ...
He's entrenching his position as leader for life, which involves sidelining anyone who might be an alternative, and a degree of political repression suboptimal for the development of China. In the short term he's an undoubted success (in his own terms), but for his country, not so much.
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
It might have made not one iota of difference, but then he is the Foreign Sec after all so maybe he should have done it don't you think? The rest of world thinks this is a humanitarian disaster so the person whose job description is to act in such circumstances didn't. But I guess that is ok in your eyes.
It's also an example of one of Parkinson's Laws; the one about how a meeting will spend minutes on a multi million pound project but hours on a shed.
Few of us can comprehend to awful magnitude of what's happening in Afghanistan. But we can all come to a judgement about someone refusing to make a phone call while they're on holiday.
Unfair and irrational? Probably. But if you're in politics, you don't get to complain about things being unfair or irrational. Live by the sword of the will of the people and all that.
I agree completely. It is potentially completely unfair. He may have been working himself silly and having to prioritise and it is all just appearances and sadly in politics that matters. There is also another impact, when people like @NerysHughes, who regularly posts rubbish it pushes me to be less sympathetic or rational regarding other possibilities.
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
It might have made not one iota of difference, but then he is the Foreign Sec after all so maybe he should have done it don't you think? The rest of world thinks this is a humanitarian disaster so the person whose job description is to act in such circumstances didn't. But I guess that is ok in your eyes.
What difference do you think a phonecall to a a Government that had collapsed and fleeing would have made?
I want politicians to do something that has a point like organising for British troops to go to the airport and defend it to enable British planes to land to evacuate people, which is exactly what the politicians did.
And on would you support an increase in energy bills to fund more renewable energy and lower carbon emissions
Support 30%
Oppose 52%
D/K 18%
Given the news is regularly full of stuff about the evils of climate change ad it regularly crops up on magazine shows and breakfast TV as an issue I am amazed this is not the other way.
If fuel prices keep going up, there will be hell to pay. And remember Tory voters are the car drivers, Labour urban slant public transport.
And on would you support an increase in energy bills to fund more renewable energy and lower carbon emissions
Support 30%
Oppose 52%
D/K 18%
Given the news is regularly full of stuff about the evils of climate change ad it regularly crops up on magazine shows and breakfast TV as an issue I am amazed this is not the other way.
Shows there is little mileage in pushing a green agenda if it means higher energy bills, carbon taxes, higher fuel bills and congestion charge zones outside of wealthy metropolitan areas.
We do still new to continue the push to renewables however and we are doing relatively well on that
Some of us are.
'Scotland has narrowly missed a target to generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewables in 2020. New figures reveal it reached 97.4% from renewable sources.'
'Renewables provided a record 43% of the UK’s electricity last year, up from 37% in 2019, according to UK Government statistics.'
In our kakistocracy, hospitals are the new Ukrainian tractors.
Stupid is the new smart. Punters in Carlisle know it isn't a new hospital. So they know that the Saj is lying to them because he thinks they are too stupid to know what a new hospital is.
Why do it? Because people apparently like being lied to. This clown goes to Carlisle, declares their existing hospital to be a new hospital and watch the Tory majority increase next time.
Moonshine is right about Kabul. If this evacuation ‘ends’ with thousands of westerners still stranded in a violent, Islamist Afghanistan, the scrutiny of Raab’s hotel room rate is going to seem decadently trivial...
The same goes for the US administration. This could all fizzle out - as far as the wider world is concerned - or it could become a rolling clusterfuck. 50/50 ?
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
I recall a suggestion that, given one of the most effective pieces of first response disaster relief was often an American Carrier Group turning up to create an instant airfield/helicopter lift/water and food supply/Engineer teams etc, that the foreign aid budget should be "billable" by the UK military for similar stuff.
I know 5 people who all have PTSD from the UK's last first response relief project like that - all of them are now divorced and are towards the none functioning side of things.
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
But on Thursday, when the full transcript was published by ABC, it emerged that chunks of it were edited out.
Biden falsely claimed that his son Beau, who died of a brain tumor in May 2015, aged 46, had served in Afghanistan. He then corrected himself and said it was Iraq, but he also claimed Beau was in the Navy, when in fact he was in the Army.
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
It might have made not one iota of difference, but then he is the Foreign Sec after all so maybe he should have done it don't you think? The rest of world thinks this is a humanitarian disaster so the person whose job description is to act in such circumstances didn't. But I guess that is ok in your eyes.
What difference do you think a phonecall to a a Government that had collapsed and fleeing would have made?
I want politicians to do something that has a point like organising for British troops to go to the airport and defend it to enable British planes to land to evacuate people, which is exactly what the politicians did.
I'm glad that you are here to correct the record. The people on the ground - the diplomats, the people actually there who know the people in question - say it would have made a difference. You, knowing none of them and nothing, say that it wouldn't.
Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday dear Hard Left Social Democrat. Happy birthday to me.
I'm the exact dead arithmetical opposite of sweet 16.
Happy Birthday.
16 has the distinction of being equal to 2^4 and 4^2, and thus is the only number which can be expressed in the form x^y = y^x where x != y and x and y are positive integers.
So, given 16's singular status, I am struggling to think of its exact dead arithmetical opposite.
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
It might have made not one iota of difference, but then he is the Foreign Sec after all so maybe he should have done it don't you think? The rest of world thinks this is a humanitarian disaster so the person whose job description is to act in such circumstances didn't. But I guess that is ok in your eyes.
What difference do you think a phonecall to a a Government that had collapsed and fleeing would have made?
I want politicians to do something that has a point like organising for British troops to go to the airport and defend it to enable British planes to land to evacuate people, which is exactly what the politicians did.
a) I said it may make no difference. The key word here is 'may'
b) How the hell do you know what difference it would have made. It might have been critical. You have no idea what was happening.
c) Politicians make decisions and need to talk to people to make those decisions. They do not organise the logistics. I don't know why you think they do that.
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
That's fine for a business, as far as it goes. But what "here's how I'd fix it" options were available to those who were inclined to tell their superiors the truth about Afghanistan ?
A second globemaster has left kabul so that was probably the one that landed at 850. 2 departures in an hour. No idea how full they are but the RAF seem to be trying.
And on would you support an increase in energy bills to fund more renewable energy and lower carbon emissions
Support 30%
Oppose 52%
D/K 18%
Given the news is regularly full of stuff about the evils of climate change ad it regularly crops up on magazine shows and breakfast TV as an issue I am amazed this is not the other way.
If fuel prices keep going up, there will be hell to pay. And remember Tory voters are the car drivers, Labour urban slant public transport.
Can anyone shed light on why fuel prices are so sky high at the moment? It isn't driven by Crude - we're still half the price of the peak a decade ago. It isn't driven by tax as thats been frozen for yonks.
So what is it? A huge increase in transport and refining costs?
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
I recall a suggestion that, given one of the most effective pieces of first response disaster relief was often an American Carrier Group turning up to create an instant airfield/helicopter lift/water and food supply/Engineer teams etc, that the foreign aid budget should be "billable" by the UK military for similar stuff.
I know 5 people who all have PTSD from the UK's last first response relief project like that - all of them are now divorced and are towards the none functioning side of things.
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
Given that the military are often doing disaster relief at the moment - sounds like exteremely poor selection/support/training for people in question.
What I was recalling was the suggestion that the UK military involvement in disaster relief be formalised and recognised in budgeting.
In other news, in case anyone thought the government/civil service had sorted themselves out with Covid stuff, this from gov.uk website.
"When to take your test
You must take the test in the 3 days before the service on which you will arrive in England departs.
For example, if you travel directly to England on Friday, you can take the test on or after Tuesday. You will need to have the negative result available before boarding on Friday."
Hydrogen lost the Energy Wars so far. There might be some use for it, but so far, no wins.
Could natural gas be burnt in self contained outside boilers with a low powered flame to produce carbon monoxide and then have the heat transferred via radiator piping to warm a house ?
Carbon monoxide is of course highly toxic to humans but isn't a big warmer.
I know 5 people who all have PTSD from the UK's last first response relief project like that - all of them are now divorced and are towards the none functioning side of things.
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
There is no disaster situation so bad that a squad of marauding jacks couldn't make it worse.
It's simply not what they are trained to do and most naval vessels are quite ill suited to it. Something like the RFA Argus (shortly to be scrapped by the tories without replacement) would make more sense for disaster relief if properly resourced with appropriately trained personnel.
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
I recall a suggestion that, given one of the most effective pieces of first response disaster relief was often an American Carrier Group turning up to create an instant airfield/helicopter lift/water and food supply/Engineer teams etc, that the foreign aid budget should be "billable" by the UK military for similar stuff.
I know 5 people who all have PTSD from the UK's last first response relief project like that - all of them are now divorced and are towards the none functioning side of things.
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
Given that the military are often doing disaster relief at the moment - sounds like exteremely poor selection/support/training for people in question.
What I was recalling was the suggestion that the UK military involvement in disaster relief be formalised and recognised in budgeting.
The UK is rubbish at post-deployment support. It is an area that long since has needed (dramatic) improvement.
My family in Cornwall is freaking out about the crazy rise in cases down there. Previously optimistic fam members are now predicting a bad 4th wave and maybe another lockdown
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
It might have made not one iota of difference, but then he is the Foreign Sec after all so maybe he should have done it don't you think? The rest of world thinks this is a humanitarian disaster so the person whose job description is to act in such circumstances didn't. But I guess that is ok in your eyes.
What difference do you think a phonecall to a a Government that had collapsed and fleeing would have made?
I want politicians to do something that has a point like organising for British troops to go to the airport and defend it to enable British planes to land to evacuate people, which is exactly what the politicians did.
a) I said it may make no difference. The key word here is 'may'
b) How the hell do you know what difference it would have made. It might have been critical. You have no idea what was happening.
c) Politicians make decisions and need to talk to people to make those decisions. They do not organise the logistics. I don't know why you think they do that.
The Taliban were in the Government Building by Monday night. Do you think that the person who you think Raab should have spoken to would have thought hey although I have no power and can't do anything and the Taliban are coming to kill me I am going to stay at my desk and make arrangements for 100s of interpreters to access the airport and be at the front of the queue of the hoards holding on to plane wheels trying to escape.
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
That's fine for a business, as far as it goes. But what "here's how I'd fix it" options were available to those who were inclined to tell their superiors the truth about Afghanistan ?
Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit?
Trump signed a deal to totally withdraw from Afghanistan and hand control to the Taliban in exchange for not being shot at on departure. Biden delays from 1st May and then prannocks like HYUFD try to blame Biden for the Taliban having control.
What could have been done? The deal is to hand Afghanistan to the Taliban. So as NATO troops withdraw back towards Kabul manage the perimeter, bring people out with them, do it gradually as Biden was.
What has gone wrong is that the permiter was being largely managed by their expensive Afghan army colleagues who have seen the writing on the wall and switched sides. So the "here's how I'd fix it" would be to maintain sufficient NATO forces as to now let that happen. Or at the very least as the collapse to the Taliban starts to accelerate recognise that you need a big fuck off airlift and that means flying in your own forces to manage it.
And on would you support an increase in energy bills to fund more renewable energy and lower carbon emissions
Support 30%
Oppose 52%
D/K 18%
Given the news is regularly full of stuff about the evils of climate change ad it regularly crops up on magazine shows and breakfast TV as an issue I am amazed this is not the other way.
Shows there is little mileage in pushing a green agenda if it means higher energy bills, carbon taxes, higher fuel bills and congestion charge zones outside of wealthy metropolitan areas.
We do still new to continue the push to renewables however and we are doing relatively well on that
Some of us are.
'Scotland has narrowly missed a target to generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewables in 2020. New figures reveal it reached 97.4% from renewable sources.'
'Renewables provided a record 43% of the UK’s electricity last year, up from 37% in 2019, according to UK Government statistics.'
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
I recall a suggestion that, given one of the most effective pieces of first response disaster relief was often an American Carrier Group turning up to create an instant airfield/helicopter lift/water and food supply/Engineer teams etc, that the foreign aid budget should be "billable" by the UK military for similar stuff.
I know 5 people who all have PTSD from the UK's last first response relief project like that - all of them are now divorced and are towards the none functioning side of things.
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
Given that the military are often doing disaster relief at the moment - sounds like exteremely poor selection/support/training for people in question.
What I was recalling was the suggestion that the UK military involvement in disaster relief be formalised and recognised in budgeting.
It's a ship - ships have a habit of taking a long time to get to places (at 15 knots a day, it takes a while to travel 2,000 miles) and you only have the people already on board available unless you yank people from holiday.
So it looks like a great idea and then you start looking at logistics and it all falls apart rapidly.
I commented yesterday on the tragedy of the 5 year old Afghan refugee child that had fallen from a hotel in Sheffield having just arrived from Afghanistan
Further details emerged today that the child died on the 18th August 4 days from arriving in the UK via the Foreign Office evacuation scheme for qualifying Afghans and that his father had worked at the British Embassy
It follows that this flight must have left around the Friday before the weekend collapse of the regime and therefore it appears the Foreign Office were already repatriating Afghans to the UK
This does not fit with the narrative that a phone call on the Saturday would have achieved anything as repatriation was already taking place
Ms Cyclefree. I apologise for my somewhat clumsy knee jerk response to your comment last night. I should not have made it personal in any way however I am finding myself more and more annoyed in life how people will criticise others who are in incredibly difficult roles doing what they are doing with a lot more insight into the situation than the public (and this is true in private life too) and cast aspersions on their character or ability.
It was a tired reaction which hadn’t been thought through fully and I was trying to defend someone who is not a moron but who said something with some merit that could have been phrased differently.
Whilst I am fed up with everyone being an “expert” on everything these days and get angry with politicians and others saying “you shouldn’t have done/said that” when they would likely have had to do the same I should not have made the point I made and how I made it and especially in light of your own history which inevitably will give you reason to be more agitated to certain events. So again I apologise for the personal and also for my own inarticulate comment - I must be a budding Nick Carter myself....
Fair play - well said and I am sure we all feel for @Cyclefree following her comments on the personal tribulations she and her family have experienced
I would also concur that there are far too many keyboard warriors who opine on issues as if they were knowledgeable when in fact it is just political posturing and in the same circumstances they would make the same if not worse errors
I cannot read your second paragraph without thinking of SeanT. It describes his modus operandi perfectly.
This has been going over and over in my mind for days. Just think of all the attention in the 80s over Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. Wikipedia tells me there were 104 Western hostages in Lebanon in total.
And here we are with perhaps 3k Brits, 15k Americans and an unknown number of others from other Western countries, their lives in the hands of a regime far more barbaric and unpredictable than Hezbollah.
Yokel tells that some security firms are advising clients to stay put for now. Stay put for what exactly? Personally I’d take my chances now than after 31 Aug when all bets are off to Taliban behaviour.
One gets the feeling that the media are under direction not to report just how dire this situation really is. The US system is different of course but I reckon the chances of the British government falling over this are not inconsiderable, especially if it’s true that Macron and Merkel largely got their people out ahead of time.
Increasingly, I see a Trump 2nd presidency looming.
Very depressing.
Hope I am wrong.
Too early to say and a lot of things could happen but I do think a GOP majority in both Houses is looking more nailed on for 2022 (Adam Laxalt announcing his Senate run in Nevada is a plus for the GOP and I think Sununu will run in NH). What that could mean is impeachment hearings against Biden for the way he handled the Afghanistan exit.
I can see Biden turning out to be right about Afghanistan but blamed by voters for leaving in such a mess and not recovering.
Biden might be able to avoid another terrorist attack on US soil.
However he will still have allowed the Taliban to return to Afghanistan on his watch
They never left it.
HY's ignorance is breathtaking.
The US and UK troops were mostly holed up in fortified compounds, with limited interaction with locals particularly in more remote and dangerous regions. And frequently fended off Taliban attacks - from fighters who weren't on day trips from abroad, or from IEDs planted by Afghans.
The ignorance is yours.
In 2017 only tiny patches of Afghanistan were in Taliban control, just 13 districts out of 421 and no major cities.
Absolutely. The Trump Doha deal has nothing whatsoever to do with it. If America had reelected Trump then the even faster withdrawal that he and the GOP have been demanding of Biden would have gone off without a hitch and the Taliban being handed back control would have no control.
I have said Romney, who opposed the withdrawal, would be a better President than both Trump and Biden, as indeed would Hillary Clinton who was also wary about withdrawal.
As it is though 58% of Republicans now oppose the Afghanistan withdrawal so the GOP is becoming more interventionist again at last. 69% of Democrats still back the withdrawal however
Re telling truth to power the UK generals were every bit as culpable as their foreign counterparts in writing cheques they knew could not be delivered. All for empire-building, a use it or lose it mentality and, as Owen Jones correctly points out god help us wrt Helmand, to try to atone for failures in Iraq.
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
That's fine for a business, as far as it goes. But what "here's how I'd fix it" options were available to those who were inclined to tell their superiors the truth about Afghanistan ?
Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit?
Trump signed a deal to totally withdraw from Afghanistan and hand control to the Taliban in exchange for not being shot at on departure. Biden delays from 1st May and then prannocks like HYUFD try to blame Biden for the Taliban having control.
What could have been done? The deal is to hand Afghanistan to the Taliban. So as NATO troops withdraw back towards Kabul manage the perimeter, bring people out with them, do it gradually as Biden was.
What has gone wrong is that the permiter was being largely managed by their expensive Afghan army colleagues who have seen the writing on the wall and switched sides. So the "here's how I'd fix it" would be to maintain sufficient NATO forces as to now let that happen. Or at the very least as the collapse to the Taliban starts to accelerate recognise that you need a big fuck off airlift and that means flying in your own forces to manage it.
Trump’s deal was dreadful. But Biden’s admin got a billion things wrong, which has made it much worse
Just one was this shameful scuttling out of Bagram air base, which would, by the by, be extremely useful now in the evacuation
‘Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commander’
My family in Cornwall is freaking out about the crazy rise in cases down there. Previously optimistic fam members are now predicting a bad 4th wave and maybe another lockdown
May St Piran preserve us
Isn't much of it Boardmasters festival related and mostly 15-19 year olds?
My family in Cornwall is freaking out about the crazy rise in cases down there. Previously optimistic fam members are now predicting a bad 4th wave and maybe another lockdown
May St Piran preserve us
Isn't much of it Boardmasters festival related and mostly 15-19 year olds?
Yes, but they fear it is a superspreading event. And schools go back in 10 days
My family in Cornwall is freaking out about the crazy rise in cases down there. Previously optimistic fam members are now predicting a bad 4th wave and maybe another lockdown
May St Piran preserve us
It is, unfortunately, not surprising given half the country and their dogs have gone to Cornwall on their holidays this year. We do have to try and get away from using cases to determine policy but it is difficult given how ingrained we have been in the last 18 months.
I still think that we need to crack on giving the oldies booster jabs. I think it would also be useful, but less of a priority, to jab the 12-15yos to help reduce transmission.
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
It might have made not one iota of difference, but then he is the Foreign Sec after all so maybe he should have done it don't you think? The rest of world thinks this is a humanitarian disaster so the person whose job description is to act in such circumstances didn't. But I guess that is ok in your eyes.
What difference do you think a phonecall to a a Government that had collapsed and fleeing would have made?
I want politicians to do something that has a point like organising for British troops to go to the airport and defend it to enable British planes to land to evacuate people, which is exactly what the politicians did.
I'm glad that you are here to correct the record. The people on the ground - the diplomats, the people actually there who know the people in question - say it would have made a difference. You, knowing none of them and nothing, say that it wouldn't.
Who to believe...?
I am not disbelieving you but can you quote these people you refer to as I have not heard anyone say that and I do watch the coverage quite extensively
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
That's fine for a business, as far as it goes. But what "here's how I'd fix it" options were available to those who were inclined to tell their superiors the truth about Afghanistan ?
Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit?
Trump signed a deal to totally withdraw from Afghanistan and hand control to the Taliban in exchange for not being shot at on departure. Biden delays from 1st May and then prannocks like HYUFD try to blame Biden for the Taliban having control.
What could have been done? The deal is to hand Afghanistan to the Taliban. So as NATO troops withdraw back towards Kabul manage the perimeter, bring people out with them, do it gradually as Biden was.
What has gone wrong is that the permiter was being largely managed by their expensive Afghan army colleagues who have seen the writing on the wall and switched sides. So the "here's how I'd fix it" would be to maintain sufficient NATO forces as to now let that happen. Or at the very least as the collapse to the Taliban starts to accelerate recognise that you need a big fuck off airlift and that means flying in your own forces to manage it.
Trump’s deal was dreadful. But Biden’s admin got a billion things wrong, which has made it much worse
Just one was this shameful scuttling out of Bagram air base, which would, by the by, be extremely useful now in the evacuation
‘Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commander’
On the subject of “not telling bosses the truth if it is uncomfortable”, there is a related problem in teaching: making sure that pupils are prepared to risk giving you the wrong answer when you ask them a question. I had a HoD who went as far as giving out minor rewards for “wrong” answers, as long as they were logically wrong. I try never to give a simple “no, that’s wrong”, and the worst thing a teacher can do is ridicule a wrong answer (I make an exception for answers in sixth-form tests where the speed of a car is calculated as being above escape velocity).
Obviously when dealing with management some care is required, but I have the advantage of being a Physics teacher AND being one of only two people in the school who know how the timetabling software works, so I would have to be very rude before they fired me.
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
I recall a suggestion that, given one of the most effective pieces of first response disaster relief was often an American Carrier Group turning up to create an instant airfield/helicopter lift/water and food supply/Engineer teams etc, that the foreign aid budget should be "billable" by the UK military for similar stuff.
I know 5 people who all have PTSD from the UK's last first response relief project like that - all of them are now divorced and are towards the none functioning side of things.
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
Given that the military are often doing disaster relief at the moment - sounds like exteremely poor selection/support/training for people in question.
What I was recalling was the suggestion that the UK military involvement in disaster relief be formalised and recognised in budgeting.
It's a ship - ships have a habit of taking a long time to get to places (at 15 knots a day, it takes a while to travel 2,000 miles) and you only have the people already on board available unless you yank people from holiday.
So it looks like a great idea and then you start looking at logistics and it all falls apart rapidly.
What do the Americans do to make it work - or are they creating a similar problem?
And on would you support an increase in energy bills to fund more renewable energy and lower carbon emissions
Support 30%
Oppose 52%
D/K 18%
Given the news is regularly full of stuff about the evils of climate change ad it regularly crops up on magazine shows and breakfast TV as an issue I am amazed this is not the other way.
Shows there is little mileage in pushing a green agenda if it means higher energy bills, carbon taxes, higher fuel bills and congestion charge zones outside of wealthy metropolitan areas.
We do still new to continue the push to renewables however and we are doing relatively well on that
Some of us are.
'Scotland has narrowly missed a target to generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewables in 2020. New figures reveal it reached 97.4% from renewable sources.'
'Renewables provided a record 43% of the UK’s electricity last year, up from 37% in 2019, according to UK Government statistics.'
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
I recall a suggestion that, given one of the most effective pieces of first response disaster relief was often an American Carrier Group turning up to create an instant airfield/helicopter lift/water and food supply/Engineer teams etc, that the foreign aid budget should be "billable" by the UK military for similar stuff.
I know 5 people who all have PTSD from the UK's last first response relief project like that - all of them are now divorced and are towards the none functioning side of things.
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
Given that the military are often doing disaster relief at the moment - sounds like exteremely poor selection/support/training for people in question.
What I was recalling was the suggestion that the UK military involvement in disaster relief be formalised and recognised in budgeting.
It's a ship - ships have a habit of taking a long time to get to places (at 15 knots a day, it takes a while to travel 2,000 miles) and you only have the people already on board available unless you yank people from holiday.
So it looks like a great idea and then you start looking at logistics and it all falls apart rapidly.
What do the Americans do to make it work - or are they creating a similar problem?
You can pick an area of the world and work from there but I suspect you would need 3-4 task forces to be in a position to rapidly respond in the correct places.
Yo Hanif, it’s Dom. Gotto to be quick, Dom, it’s busy busy busy here today. What’s up Hanif? Just packing my suitcase, Dom. You going on holiday? You could say that. Me too. You’ve earned it, Dom. This is a bad line, there’s crackling. Just kids in the street playing with fireworks, Dom. We do that in November. Here it can happen any time. Getting worried about some of our boys, Hanif. No problem, Dom, the Taliban are 80 miles away. You sure? Just saw it on the BBC. That’s a relief. We can’t get it here. Something to do with Brexit. Got to be going, Dom, see you soon. Why, are you coming to Crete too?
As far as I can see the demand is for Raab to be sacked is for not making a phone call to a Country where people were prepared to get on a plane wheel to escape from. If only Raab had made the call then the scene at the airport would not have happened and the interpretors could have made their way to the Departure Lounge, bought a bit of Duty Free and boarded their flight.
It might have made not one iota of difference, but then he is the Foreign Sec after all so maybe he should have done it don't you think? The rest of world thinks this is a humanitarian disaster so the person whose job description is to act in such circumstances didn't. But I guess that is ok in your eyes.
What difference do you think a phonecall to a a Government that had collapsed and fleeing would have made?
I want politicians to do something that has a point like organising for British troops to go to the airport and defend it to enable British planes to land to evacuate people, which is exactly what the politicians did.
a) I said it may make no difference. The key word here is 'may'
b) How the hell do you know what difference it would have made. It might have been critical. You have no idea what was happening.
c) Politicians make decisions and need to talk to people to make those decisions. They do not organise the logistics. I don't know why you think they do that.
The Taliban were in the Government Building by Monday night. Do you think that the person who you think Raab should have spoken to would have thought hey although I have no power and can't do anything and the Taliban are coming to kill me I am going to stay at my desk and make arrangements for 100s of interpreters to access the airport and be at the front of the queue of the hoards holding on to plane wheels trying to escape.
You have not the foggiest idea what was happening, just like none of us do. And from your earlier post today, and previous posts made, you come to some spectacular ill founded conclusions on no evidence at all. For instance you seem to think politicians organise the logistics of an evacuation. What? Just recalling today you think Foxy is one of the richest people who post to this site. He maybe but based upon what? I can see no evidence whatsoever for that statement of 'fact'. That is just today. Previously you have rattled off stats on mask wearing that people with knowledge of maths have told you is just nonsense and yet you keep doing it.
Your posts are some of the most ill informed on this site.
Utterly offtopic but from my visit to the Lakes yesterday ( a damp Thursday in August)
1) I've never seen it so full 2) a fair number of pubs were closed due to pings 3) a lot of places are still short staffed but have stopped recruiting because the people don't exist (and once September arrives it's going to be easier to just close a few rooms off).
My family in Cornwall is freaking out about the crazy rise in cases down there. Previously optimistic fam members are now predicting a bad 4th wave and maybe another lockdown
May St Piran preserve us
Isn't much of it Boardmasters festival related and mostly 15-19 year olds?
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
That's fine for a business, as far as it goes. But what "here's how I'd fix it" options were available to those who were inclined to tell their superiors the truth about Afghanistan ?
Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit?
Trump signed a deal to totally withdraw from Afghanistan and hand control to the Taliban in exchange for not being shot at on departure. Biden delays from 1st May and then prannocks like HYUFD try to blame Biden for the Taliban having control.
What could have been done? The deal is to hand Afghanistan to the Taliban. So as NATO troops withdraw back towards Kabul manage the perimeter, bring people out with them, do it gradually as Biden was.
What has gone wrong is that the permiter was being largely managed by their expensive Afghan army colleagues who have seen the writing on the wall and switched sides. So the "here's how I'd fix it" would be to maintain sufficient NATO forces as to now let that happen. Or at the very least as the collapse to the Taliban starts to accelerate recognise that you need a big fuck off airlift and that means flying in your own forces to manage it.
Trump’s deal was dreadful. But Biden’s admin got a billion things wrong, which has made it much worse
Just one was this shameful scuttling out of Bagram air base, which would, by the by, be extremely useful now in the evacuation
‘Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commander’
Hydrogen lost the Energy Wars so far. There might be some use for it, but so far, no wins.
It’s a marathon not a sprint. Hydrogen is being heavily invested in by boiler manufacturers. There is a hydrogen house in Gateshead heated by a Baxi hydrogen boiler be interesting to see its performance over the winter.
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
I recall a suggestion that, given one of the most effective pieces of first response disaster relief was often an American Carrier Group turning up to create an instant airfield/helicopter lift/water and food supply/Engineer teams etc, that the foreign aid budget should be "billable" by the UK military for similar stuff.
I know 5 people who all have PTSD from the UK's last first response relief project like that - all of them are now divorced and are towards the none functioning side of things.
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
Given that the military are often doing disaster relief at the moment - sounds like exteremely poor selection/support/training for people in question.
What I was recalling was the suggestion that the UK military involvement in disaster relief be formalised and recognised in budgeting.
It's a ship - ships have a habit of taking a long time to get to places (at 15 knots a day, it takes a while to travel 2,000 miles) and you only have the people already on board available unless you yank people from holiday.
So it looks like a great idea and then you start looking at logistics and it all falls apart rapidly.
What do the Americans do to make it work - or are they creating a similar problem?
You can pick an area of the world and work from there but I suspect you would need 3-4 task forces to be in a position to rapidly respond in the correct places.
I don't think that creating a world covering disaster relief system was what people had in mind - just that the usage of military people/equipment for such things should be budgeted against the international relief budget. Rather than be squeezed out of the military budget.
My family in Cornwall is freaking out about the crazy rise in cases down there. Previously optimistic fam members are now predicting a bad 4th wave and maybe another lockdown
May St Piran preserve us
Isn't much of it Boardmasters festival related and mostly 15-19 year olds?
The idea that this phone call to an Aghan government totally focused on finding the first plane out, ideally with some loot, would have made any difference whatsoever is risible.
That's the part that makes it easier for the shitmunchers to understand. Whichever you look at it he was the Foreign Secretary and there was a major foreign policy crisis. His holiday gets sacked off. Hard fucking luck, goes with the job. If he doesn't want that level of responsibility he should go and manage a branch of Carphone Warehouse. A position to which his abilities are probably better suited.
Plenty of people in the services have had holidays and other events ruined at minimal notice for far less pressing matters...
Do folk in the services actually respect the politicians who control them? Maybe in the old days, but I find it very hard to believe that in the age of social media there are any officers or sailors/soldiers/aircrew who respect Raab and Johnson. HMQ maybe, but not the Cabinet. That must be a problem surely? How do they keep motivated and risk their lives and health when they know those in charge to be idiots, buffoons, cads, bounders, liars and sneeks who give government contracts to their pals? And pay women cash to keep their gobs shut?
The key phrase there is that this rapid capitulation was just a possible scenario, not the most plausible scenario.
So the CIA was painting a prettier picture than the likely reality.
More that as the scenarios filtered up the system, the undesirable ones are shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
The use of best-medium-worst case methodology to cover people in a hierarchy from blame is an interesting phenomenon. You can say that "I did say", while at the same time not offend the senior people by giving them a report they don't want to read.
Giving the people at the top information they don't want to have seen, is often considered the most offensive thing you can do. Short of their-wife-on-board-room-table scenarios.
The recruitment and promotion processes in our society are biased against pessimists, so people inclined to ponder the worst-case scenario don't make it high up the hierarchy, and avoidable disasters become experienced disasters.
Boris Johnson is the living embodiment of this problem - but I am still confident that his jovial optimism will see him safely home at the next general election.
Very early in my career I was asked a question by someone very very senior. So I told him the truth.
My boss sat me down to explain what I had done - by telling the Big Boss the truth, in front of people, was a tremendous slap in the face for him. Because the Big Boss couldn't go against the consensus of his peers. But now, since he Knew, he could be blamed when things went wrong. Unless he started insulting everyone by telling them what he had been told.
The real problem is that people presenting data that contradicts The Policy are considered to be the problem. See Herman Kahn etc..
I make a joke of "management-speak bullshit" when I come out with it. But I only quote the ones that work. And owning a problem is absolutely there. Had a senior exec when I was a junior spod at Nestle explain how to deal with a problem. His advice was to own it. "Here is the issue, here are our options, here is how I'd fix it" - doubly so if you created the issue.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
That's fine for a business, as far as it goes. But what "here's how I'd fix it" options were available to those who were inclined to tell their superiors the truth about Afghanistan ?
Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit?
Trump signed a deal to totally withdraw from Afghanistan and hand control to the Taliban in exchange for not being shot at on departure. Biden delays from 1st May and then prannocks like HYUFD try to blame Biden for the Taliban having control.
What could have been done? The deal is to hand Afghanistan to the Taliban. So as NATO troops withdraw back towards Kabul manage the perimeter, bring people out with them, do it gradually as Biden was.
What has gone wrong is that the permiter was being largely managed by their expensive Afghan army colleagues who have seen the writing on the wall and switched sides. So the "here's how I'd fix it" would be to maintain sufficient NATO forces as to now let that happen. Or at the very least as the collapse to the Taliban starts to accelerate recognise that you need a big fuck off airlift and that means flying in your own forces to manage it.
Trump’s deal was dreadful. But Biden’s admin got a billion things wrong, which has made it much worse
Just one was this shameful scuttling out of Bagram air base, which would, by the by, be extremely useful now in the evacuation
‘Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commander’
BDUK postcode data posted for a few counties/"lots", today which can tell you if you're likely to get commercial FTTP between now and 2025 or whether you are likely to be covered by BDUK subsidy
Johnson’s misfortune is that the music stopped on his watch, and he had prepared no other song to play in its place. That’s why yesterday was a key test for the PM, to enunciate Britain’s new place in the world now that the US has walked off the pitch. To step up and offer a lead to our other allies who are also now adrift amid the West’s crisis of self-doubt.
Someone must, and that moral responsibility now falls on Britain, as Nato’s second biggest contributor, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with Johnson the current chair of the G7.
But it was a test Britain’s PM failed, and to his own MPs’ palpable fury. “He was nothing. No substance, no understanding,” pronounced one disappointed senior Tory in the chamber yesterday.
For Afghanistan it is too late. That ship has sailed, as anyone who cares about that country and has spent time there like me must now painfully accept.
But for Johnson it is not yet too late. In an ever more precarious world, the next international disaster is not far away. It will come in Somalia, Mozambique or Nigeria, which are all under the growing threat of Islamist takeover. Or in Taiwan, which Xi Jinping’s China is eyeing up. Or in one of the Baltic states, which fear a Russian incursion like Ukraine’s. Or with Iran and it’s hardliners’ takeover.
Johnson needs to learn how to lead on the international stage, and fast. Before the next Afghanistan erupts and reveals Britain has no foreign policy left at all.
More save the world fantasising.
How much blood and money does the Standard think the UK's middle classes are willing to pay ?
I agree it's mostly fantasy - "let me think of all the stuff that could go wrong" with a nebulous demand to "lead". Obviously crises will occur from time to time, but none of Taiwan, Baltic States, Mozambique or Nigeria are under imminent existential threat, and Somalia's plight has been ongoing for a long time but it's not suddenly got much more critical. We absolutely shouldn't be sending troops to any of them. Or what else does "lead" mean? Make a concerned speech?
If he reversed the foreign aid cuts that would at least be useful. And much cheaper than another military commitment.
I'm a general supporter of foreign aid, and think the 0.7% target is sensible. However it becomes a classic conservative question of whether the money is being spent well. The fact the ex-Afghan president fled with $169 million indicates that, all too often, money is diverted before it gets to the people who would benefit most from it.
It's also massively complex. Whilst not directly foreign aid, as a child, Mrs J was a massive user of the British Council library in Ankara. She had spent a few years in the UK before this, but toned her language skills in the library (reading books she admits were (ahem) adult for her age). She is therefore very much for funding the British Council.
However, she was very middle class, and therefore had easy access to the library. Does funding things like that actually help the people in foreign countries who need it the most? And does throwing millions at top-heavy 'charities' working abroad the most efficient way of helping people, and of promoting our country?
Re foreign aid I was listening to a report this morning from Haiti (which seems to have been a little forgotten with the afghan situation) and the reporter was saying how at the airport in the region worst struck by the earthquake and storm that there was one cargo plane and one helicopter and effectively no relief supplies coming in.
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
I recall a suggestion that, given one of the most effective pieces of first response disaster relief was often an American Carrier Group turning up to create an instant airfield/helicopter lift/water and food supply/Engineer teams etc, that the foreign aid budget should be "billable" by the UK military for similar stuff.
I know 5 people who all have PTSD from the UK's last first response relief project like that - all of them are now divorced and are towards the none functioning side of things.
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
Given that the military are often doing disaster relief at the moment - sounds like exteremely poor selection/support/training for people in question.
What I was recalling was the suggestion that the UK military involvement in disaster relief be formalised and recognised in budgeting.
It's a ship - ships have a habit of taking a long time to get to places (at 15 knots a day, it takes a while to travel 2,000 miles) and you only have the people already on board available unless you yank people from holiday.
So it looks like a great idea and then you start looking at logistics and it all falls apart rapidly.
What do the Americans do to make it work - or are they creating a similar problem?
You can pick an area of the world and work from there but I suspect you would need 3-4 task forces to be in a position to rapidly respond in the correct places.
I don't think that creating a world covering disaster relief system was what people had in mind - just that the usage of military people/equipment for such things should be budgeted against the international relief budget. Rather than be squeezed out of the military budget.
In which case we reduce our military budget below what NATO expects so would need to spend more on the military to ensure we met those rules.
And as both DuraAce and myself have pointed out you don't want your typical sailor doing the work as they won't really help the locals and may end up traumatised by it
Comments
So: how have Dr Zubaida Haque's predications performed so far in this crisis?
After the invasion they were removed from Kabul and most of the country.
Under Biden the Taliban now control Kabul again and indeed even more of the country than they did before the invasion
Is the little bit of extra stability worth the SNP giving them that latitude, above more regular minority gov or confidence and supply arrangements? It seems pretty generous.
The US and UK troops were mostly holed up in fortified compounds, with limited interaction with locals particularly in more remote and dangerous regions. And frequently fended off Taliban attacks - from fighters who weren't on day trips from abroad, or from IEDs planted by Afghans.
Optimistically, you would hope that there is a lot of activity that is necessarily behind the scenes being carried out to ensure that the worst is averted, and we will naturally not hear about it until after the event.
I *really* want to spend a week in Edinburgh on my own, going around some of the places I remember from previous visits, and discovering new ones.
There used to be a really good greasy spoon down near Leith Docks (I think on Commercial Street) that used to serve the best breakfasts. This was twenty years ago, so it's probably not there any more. But I'd love to just wander around and discover new stuff.
I love Edinburgh.
And if you are unlucky, those who are both.
Yes, if you have a prannock at the top who doesn't want the truth then it may be Bad. I've departed a couple of businesses with a sack of cash when the truth was too uncomfortable for the prannock. Both times I have proven to be right and them wrong. So whatever, their loss.
The joy of taking a "the number is the number" approach is that when the shit hits the fan you can point out that you called it truthfully all the way through. Making stuff up to cover someone else's mess just creates a web of lies that grows legs and takes over. And the problem you called sits there getting worse.
Con: 40% (n/c since 11-12 Aug)
Lab: 32% (n/c)
Lib Dem: 9% (n/c)
Green: 8% (+1)
SNP: 5% (n/c)
Reform UK: 3% (+1)
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/08/19/voting-intention-con-40-lab-32-17-18-aug?utm_source=twitter+&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=voting_intention https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1428638389641809921/photo/1
I am not criticising the Westminster govt for the initial herd immunity plan, even though the numbers as we know now make it very likely a bad policy, because they deserve leeway to make errors in such uncertainty. I am solely criticising them for later lying that it was never part of their plan.
Hardly an impartial observer or an authority.
I may as well ask the postman.
😂😂😂
16 has the distinction of being equal to 2^4 and 4^2, and thus is the only number which can be expressed in the form x^y = y^x where x != y and x and y are positive integers.
So, given 16's singular status, I am struggling to think of its exact dead arithmetical opposite.
Doing a Lionel Hutz people want *happy voice* the truth, not *scary voice* the truth.
Seriously?
The man's a joke.
if Murphy actually read the report he’d realise there’s no mystery as to why Scotland’s share of UK debt interest is higher than pop’n share: it’s because - not surprisingly given our larger public sector - we have greater public sector pension interest costs
https://twitter.com/kevverage/status/1428373800962383872?s=20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni5dTPBgLKE
And on would you support an increase in energy bills to fund more renewable energy and lower carbon emissions
Support 30%
Oppose 52%
D/K 18%
“My sources confirm several public executions in #Afghanistan, most notably in Kandahar. Anyone who thinks these guys have changed, that there are “moderate #Taliban” and that you have to “give them a chance” - forget it!” @HasnainKazim
https://twitter.com/femeninna/status/1428613597199015936?s=21
And maybe IN Kabul
‘Taliban are hunting down journalists in #Kabul.
Taliban fighters looking for a @dwnews reporter shot dead one member of his family and seriously injured another.
Just two days ago, Taliban told the world it will protect the free press.’
https://twitter.com/frudbezhan/status/1428444606006538248?s=21
But it’s ok, they’re just ‘country boys’ focused on ‘inclusivity’
What's funny is then when shit hits the fan its clear everyone knew it was coming at some point anyway.
In 2017 only tiny patches of Afghanistan were in Taliban control, just 13 districts out of 421 and no major cities.
Now thanks to Biden's weak withdrawal every district bar 7 and every city including the capital Kabul is back in Taliban control
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-57933979
He explained this was down to two main factors, firstly that the Haiti govt is in flux after the assassination and secondly that nobody in Haiti wants Oxfam and others in their sight after various terrible scandals.
It made me wonder (and might be my second stupid unthought out comment in last 24 hours) whether there was any sense in hiving off a chunk of the annual aid budget and setting up a British “peace corps” / emergency team that’s permanently available and resources to deal with global disasters. My idea was that it would be set up on military lines with lines of command and control and its own assets such as transport planes, ships etc. Direct access to govt departments as well.
I would hope it would attract a large number of people who maybe thought of joining the services but didn’t fancy the shooting bit but could be paid full time, sent of on “tours” and emergency reactions and interventions of a civil kind.
It would hopefully replace the likes of oxfam and provide focussed and speedy aid where needed.
It would surely be better for the world to have such an organisation than filling the pockets/helicopters of corrupt leaders and charities that pay more than they dish out.
Vaccines have changed things, but we are still aiming at herd immunity, just now over 90% of adults in the UK have some degree of protection.
To those who assert that the vaccines are not preventing transmission (or still allowing a lot of transmission) I would ask how it is we have essentially no restrictions in England and yet cases are barely increasing. Of course some double jabbed are catching the highly infectious delta and some are then spreading it. But spread is much reduced overall. It must be, or the cases would be expontentially increasing in the way they did in March 2020.
Rarer than rocking horse poo, though.
Lots of them say "Tell me The! Truth!" - but they really want the varnished version.... Just so long as they can get their couple of years in that job done, and move on, before the shit hits the fan.
1. By forming a formal majority coalition in favour of a second referendum they might feel they have a stronger case for pushing for that referendum.
2. If Sturgeon anticipates acquiescing to a second referendum not happening, a formal coalition makes her more secure in the face of any SNP MSPs who might be tempted to rebel/defect in favour of a more unilateral policy on a second referendum.
I realise that these seem to be contrary explanations, exposing the reality that I am guessing wildly.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/20/oil-firms-made-false-claims-on-blue-hydrogen-costs-says-ex-lobby-boss
They must share the main responsibility along with the previous administration
Few of us can comprehend to awful magnitude of what's happening in Afghanistan. But we can all come to a judgement about someone refusing to make a phone call while they're on holiday.
Unfair and irrational? Probably. But if you're in politics, you don't get to complain about things being unfair or irrational. Live by the sword of the will of the people and all that.
Biden falsely claimed that his son Beau, who died of a brain tumor in May 2015, aged 46, had served in Afghanistan. He then corrected himself and said it was Iraq, but he also claimed Beau was in the Navy, when in fact he was in the Army.
The president again had to correct himself.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9910923/ABC-accused-Biden-interview-cover-President-said-son-Beau-served-Afghanistan-Navy.html
‘People in Kabul says that the Taliban have access to national security documents. The Taliban's intelligence service has begun a massive arrest of national security personnel since yesterday.’
https://twitter.com/natiqmalikzada/status/1428599425002217477?s=21
‘Outside #Kabul, away from the eyes of the world, the Taliban has executed, imprisoned, and beaten former govt officials, soldiers, and Afghans who worked for foreign forces.
Taliban has also reimposed many of its repressive laws outside Kabul.’
https://twitter.com/frudbezhan/status/1428624269630742531?s=21
We do still new to continue the push to renewables however and we are doing relatively well on that
Richard Murphy, eh? But hadn’t Alex Salmond actually worked professionally as an economist - he put GERS right at the heart of the independence case in 2014.
https://twitter.com/ScotsLabour/status/1428391365063462917?s=20
In the short term he's an undoubted success (in his own terms), but for his country, not so much.
I want politicians to do something that has a point like organising for British troops to go to the airport and defend it to enable British planes to land to evacuate people, which is exactly what the politicians did.
'Scotland has narrowly missed a target to generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewables in 2020. New figures reveal it reached 97.4% from renewable sources.'
'Renewables provided a record 43% of the UK’s electricity last year, up from 37% in 2019, according to UK Government statistics.'
Why do it? Because people apparently like being lied to. This clown goes to Carlisle, declares their existing hospital to be a new hospital and watch the Tory majority increase next time.
This could all fizzle out - as far as the wider world is concerned - or it could become a rolling clusterfuck.
50/50 ?
So great idea but your typical sailor would need way better training.
Who to believe...?
b) How the hell do you know what difference it would have made. It might have been critical. You have no idea what was happening.
c) Politicians make decisions and need to talk to people to make those decisions. They do not organise the logistics. I don't know why you think they do that.
Hydrogen lost the Energy Wars so far. There might be some use for it, but so far, no wins.
It isn't driven by Crude - we're still half the price of the peak a decade ago. It isn't driven by tax as thats been frozen for yonks.
So what is it? A huge increase in transport and refining costs?
What I was recalling was the suggestion that the UK military involvement in disaster relief be formalised and recognised in budgeting.
"When to take your test
You must take the test in the 3 days before the service on which you will arrive in England departs.
For example, if you travel directly to England on Friday, you can take the test on or after Tuesday. You will need to have the negative result available before boarding on Friday."
Carbon monoxide is of course highly toxic to humans but isn't a big warmer.
It's simply not what they are trained to do and most naval vessels are quite ill suited to it. Something like the RFA Argus (shortly to be scrapped by the tories without replacement) would make more sense for disaster relief if properly resourced with appropriately trained personnel.
May St Piran preserve us
Trump signed a deal to totally withdraw from Afghanistan and hand control to the Taliban in exchange for not being shot at on departure. Biden delays from 1st May and then prannocks like HYUFD try to blame Biden for the Taliban having control.
What could have been done? The deal is to hand Afghanistan to the Taliban. So as NATO troops withdraw back towards Kabul manage the perimeter, bring people out with them, do it gradually as Biden was.
What has gone wrong is that the permiter was being largely managed by their expensive Afghan army colleagues who have seen the writing on the wall and switched sides. So the "here's how I'd fix it" would be to maintain sufficient NATO forces as to now let that happen. Or at the very least as the collapse to the Taliban starts to accelerate recognise that you need a big fuck off airlift and that means flying in your own forces to manage it.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2021/renewables
Scotland is part of the UK and contributes to that above average UK figure
So it looks like a great idea and then you start looking at logistics and it all falls apart rapidly.
Further details emerged today that the child died on the 18th August 4 days from arriving in the UK via the Foreign Office evacuation scheme for qualifying Afghans and that his father had worked at the British Embassy
It follows that this flight must have left around the Friday before the weekend collapse of the regime and therefore it appears the Foreign Office were already repatriating Afghans to the UK
This does not fit with the narrative that a phone call on the Saturday would have achieved anything as repatriation was already taking place
As it is though 58% of Republicans now oppose the Afghanistan withdrawal so the GOP is becoming more interventionist again at last. 69% of Democrats still back the withdrawal however
https://morningconsult.com/2021/08/16/afghanistan-withdrawal-taliban-polling/
Just one was this shameful scuttling out of Bagram air base, which would, by the by, be extremely useful now in the evacuation
‘Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure
Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commander’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/06/afghan-anger-over-uss-sudden-silent-bagram-departure?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
This is not the behaviour of a global policeman. The USA is cutting and running. It is in headlong retreat
I still think that we need to crack on giving the oldies booster jabs. I think it would also be useful, but less of a priority, to jab the 12-15yos to help reduce transmission.
Obviously when dealing with management some care is required, but I have the advantage of being a Physics teacher AND being one of only two people in the school who know how the timetabling software works, so I would have to be very rude before they fired me.
Yo Hanif, it’s Dom.
Gotto to be quick, Dom, it’s busy busy busy here today.
What’s up Hanif?
Just packing my suitcase, Dom.
You going on holiday?
You could say that.
Me too.
You’ve earned it, Dom.
This is a bad line, there’s crackling.
Just kids in the street playing with fireworks, Dom.
We do that in November.
Here it can happen any time.
Getting worried about some of our boys, Hanif.
No problem, Dom, the Taliban are 80 miles away.
You sure?
Just saw it on the BBC.
That’s a relief. We can’t get it here. Something to do with Brexit.
Got to be going, Dom, see you soon.
Why, are you coming to Crete too?
Your posts are some of the most ill informed on this site.
1) I've never seen it so full
2) a fair number of pubs were closed due to pings
3) a lot of places are still short staffed but have stopped recruiting because the people don't exist (and once September arrives it's going to be easier to just close a few rooms off).
If it was not for US intervention in WW2 most of western Europe would still be under Nazi rule and much of the Far East still under Japanese control.
And as both DuraAce and myself have pointed out you don't want your typical sailor doing the work as they won't really help the locals and may end up traumatised by it