I look forwards to the C4 documentary tomorrow. Reviews say it demolishes the scientists who have been playing down the lab leak theory and presents compelling evidence of how the virus may have been developed at the WIV and then accidentally leaked into the wider population.
If it's true then every single scientist involved in the cover up needs to be put up on charges. All of the ones who signed that letter to the Lancet should lose their funding. Get the politics out of science.
The interesting - to me - thing about this programme is that it is saying what was unsayable as little as a year ago. Considerable effort was expended by science, the media, big tech, and so on, to try to silence any suggestion of a lab leak. Why? In darker moments last year it felt like a big conspiracy to keep the world permanently locked down, but really I think the truth is slightly more mundane - aside from those with something specific to hide, they were driven by the force of believing themselves to be the good guys. And in doing so felt no compunction at all about wildly overstepping the mark.
I plan to watch that prog. As to why there was reluctance to allow "lab leak" to gain traction, I think one factor was the fear it would be conflated with the more lurid "bioweapon" theory. Donald Trump was whipping up an atmosphere of paranoia and sinophobia around the pandemic to distract from his negligence. If he'd managed to convince his public that China had engineered Covid and launched it on America, got himself reelected on this basis and in such an atmosphere - well you do the math as they say.
Again, a bit of a misunderstanding
Some of the people desperately trying to silence the "lab leak" hypothesis early on, DELIBERATELY conflated it with the bioweapon theory - "are you really trying to tell us the Chinese engineered a lethal virus then launched it on the world, OMG you're racist and mad, of course it came from natural zoonosis, probably in the market"
They did this because that way they could smear the entire lab leak hypothesis by linking it with more extreme fringe theories. This is what happened. Go and read the science literature and social media of the time. Whereas in fact most people were merely suggesting a basic lab leak - a scientists bitten by a bat, a spilled test tube in Wuhan, someone leaving a door open, a simple accident - which is and remains far more likely
However there is now the complicating issue of Gain of Function, which grows in salience the more we learn of what they were doing in Wuhan. Again this does not mean "deliberate leak of engineered killer virus". It does mean that the accidental leak might, very sadly for all of us, have involved a virus which had already been altered so as to be especially virulent for humans. That is the science they were doing at the WIV
That is also a possibility
I get that. Linking something you disagree with and/or dislike with something extreme and lurid is a classic way to discredit. I can imagine it happened in places. But you're not telling me Trump and Trumpery wouldn't have profited from the widespread belief that China attacked America with Covid. It would have. That's why he pushed it in his trademark 'nudge/wink' fashion. So, the fear of that, of the possible repercussions if it took off, was imo a factor in what looks now like an underestimate of how likely it is that the pandemic was caused by a lab accident rather than via natural zoonosis. That's all I'm saying. And also let's remember that natural origins remains four square in the frame. It'd be easy to think otherwise if one read only your posts on this topic.
Natural non lab zoonosis is still clearly possible. I’d never deny that. But it’s not ‘four square in the frame’, to my mind it’s about 5-10% likely, now
I'm not an expert on this but my university friend is, he rated a non-lab explanation at less than 0.1% probability due to the number of lineages required to get from the closes natural SARS like virus to Wuhan COVID-19. It isn't tenable for that much viral evolution to occur to go from what it was to what it became that allowed human to human transmission. He seemed certain about it last weekend when we went for a drink.
In his view (a very soft lefty remainer) anyone pushing the animal origin idea is doing it for political reasons to allow China to save face. He implied that it's an open secret within the scientific community that it was a lab leak without saying the specific words.
Persuasive. I have heard the same scientific gossip "of course it came from the lab we're just not allowed to talk about it"
The only thing that makes me still consider non-lab natural zoonosis, even as unlikely-but-possible, is that it has happened so often. But that's it.
Not allowed by who? The science police? It clearly seems most likely to be a lab leak, and these do happen, as the U.K. has shown in the past, but it’s very, very hard to prove.
By peer group pressure, in the main. If science admits that science has harvested or created, and then leaked, a terrible virus that has decimated the world, that is going to be Very Bad for Science.
Careers will end, labs will close, journals will shut, funding will cease. If it gets really bad, there could be trials and jails.
it would be particularly apocalyptic for Virology, and that is where you find the most hysterical, desperate attempts to shut down the Lab Leak Hypothesis
Claimed sources of rumours of IS planning an attack at the airport.
1. Reportedly French Intelligence 2. Reportedly the Taliban telling people outside the airport
The only solid thing we know is that US has told people trying to go to the airport not to move for the moment due to a potential security threat. That could mean anything in terms of the nature of that threat.
Twitter is also claiming an Israeli intel source for the ISIS rumour. No idea if true, of course
It seems to me highly likely that ISIS jihadis and/or Al Qaeda fighters will attempt some atrocities on westerners in Afghanistan, while they have the chance. It may be that the Taliban leadership don't want this, but how much control do they have over their radical "allies"?
And judging by the photos all of these Islamists are now armed to the teeth with the best Yankee weapons
The Taliban also have a dark sense of humour. They have set up a photoshoot mocking the iconic photo of US soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima
On New Zealand and Australia, I'm not sure we're in a position to be quite so critical. According to Worldometers:
New Zealand: 26 deaths, 5 per million population. Australia: 975 deaths, 38 per million population. UK: 131,487 deaths, 1,925 per million population.
Looks to me like their strategy has worked somewhat better than ours (and most others) thus far. Yes, their figures are likely to get (much) worse, but I doubt that they'll get anywhere near our death rate (per million). By playing for time they should be able to benefit more from vaccines and treatment.
They've kept the numbers so low by shutting down their societies for long periods of time.
If only New Zealand had fused its Covid suppression scheme with something akin to the UK Government's vaccine procurement strategy, then it would've been a complete triumph. As it is, they didn't so they're in a right pickle.
I haven't heard an explanation as the why vaccine uptake in NZ and AUS is so remarkably low...??
I've been astonished at the authoritarianism in Australia.
No idea where that comes from.
I do.
Australia has long taken a very harsh biosecurity concept at the border. They recognise that their biodiversity is very unique to the rest of the globe and they don't want to see compromised by importing alien diseases and animals.
Their entire mindset on that is completely different to here in the UK.
It is. Spaniels sniffing our luggage on arrival for forbidden food such as fruit. Being made to unpack and show my walking boots when the chap realised I came from sheep country in Scotland - just as well I knew and had scrubbed them free of every last trace of the usual mud and sharn.
I remember arriving from New Zealand and having to go to a special room to fully clean boots. They have always taken it very seriously.
Gro-Tsen @gro_tsen · Aug 18 This is probably the cause for much of the confusion around this unhelpful term: people imagine that “herd immunity” will make the disease disappear — it won't, it will just stabilize it, and it can stay forever in an endemic state. 13/14
Herd Immunity is when so many people in a population are immune to a disease that any breakouts will be short-lived and won't lead to spread in the community. Therefore the disease does for all practical purposes disappear. We will never reach this with Covid because the combination of vaccine takeup and vaccine efficacy isn't high enough. This is my understanding of current thinking.
That’s too pessimistic. Infection is likely to lead to decent immunity. Still not many genuine reinfections. Plus repeated infections will increase immunity. Generally for us you get a lot of bugs as a child and this gradually reduces over time. Many healthy adults rarely get ill until their immune system starts to wane with advanced years. Covid will likely be like this. Plus we will be able to tweak the vaccines. So yes, Covid is here to stay, but will not be the huge issue it has been up to now. Take a look around. U.K. is mostly back to normal, and we are coping. I’m sure it’s tough for some, the hospitals have pressure, but to be honest, when don’t they?
That's pretty much what I meant. Covid won't disappear but we'll have enough population immunity (via vaccination and infection) to render it manageable. Similar to flu if you like.
But on the lingo, is that a state of Herd Immunity? My layman's understanding is no it isn't. It's something short of it. If we have Herd Immunity to a disease it means it can't get going (either in mild or serious form) anywhere for very long. It might break out here and there, in a few individuals, but will be rapidly quashed since it won't have anywhere to go.
And with Covid, as I understand the current thinking, this isn't a realistic goal. We won't be achieving Herd Immunity (and hence the effective disappearance of the virus) in the foreseable future. But we will be achieving the background endemic situation you describe.
Gro-Tsen @gro_tsen · Aug 18 As I've pointed out a number of times, there is a terribly confusing ambiguity as to what the phrase “herd immunity” (or its synonyms, e.g., “collective immunity”) means. In the SIR model it's the point where R becomes ≤1. But in real life?
@Quincel is there a chance Biden isn’t president on the anniversary? If his final ratings were negative you’d be entitled to feel a bit hard done by if it were voided
Really powerful video essay from NYTimes on covid and vaccine refusal. In Mountain Home, Ozarks. Only 36% of people have had the jab. Interviews with patients on oxygen who still have doubts about taking the jab. Some are close to death. Most go on about freedom and free choice.
Incredibly, only 50% of the staff at the local hospital have had the jab!
Really powerful video essay from NYTimes on covid and vaccine refusal. In Mountain Home, Ozarks. Only 36% of people have had the jab. Interviews with patients on oxygen who still have doubts about taking the jab. Some are close to death. Most go on about freedom and free choice.
Incredibly, only 50% of the staff at the local hospital have had the jab!
I think, Bidan has some responsibility for the low Vax rate in the US.
And I only mean some, ultimately it is the individual who is responsible for there actions, and choses, and we should never gloss over that.
But back at the start of the year, the US vaccination role out was going well, in terms of 'vaccines given' TRUMP is bad for lots of reasons but the early vaccine plan in the US was not one of them, not the best, that was Israile, or the second best in the developing would that was the UK, but better than there Canada, or the EU or Aus and NZ or Japan and S Korea, overall apart for Israel the UK and half a dozen very rich small nations, it was great.
However, Bidan decided to 'trash talk' the 'vaccine plan' and tolled everybody who would listed, how he was going to 'fix it' 'make it better', how a he Bidan a Democrat who 'believed in science' would be a world beater with the vaccine.
believe it of not, there are a lot of US folk who passionately dislike Bidan, it may be unfair but its accurate, not all of theses people were Anti Vax, or anti science, but just did not want to give Bidna 'a win' where not interested in doing something that he would take credit for. and if you are young and heathy, and cases are fulling then it must have seemed an easy thing to just not do. ones you then get criticised and vilified for a chose you make, in many cases it hardens people in their position more than it changes it. and I've seen much more criticism of Unvaccinated than attempts at reasoning.
I'm not a fan of a lot of Obamas policies, but that's different form opinions on the man, and he as stated that he declined to be the public face of some issues and campaigns, because he know that would backfire with a big section of society, I think he was right, and even if I disagreed with some of the campaigns, I have more respect for him for his chose.
And for the avoion of doubt, can I reiterate, responsibility for an individuals chose is primarily the individual nobody else not even Biden. Just Bidan has not helped.
I think that's a little harsh: Biden isn't responsible for how polarized the US is.
Gro-Tsen @gro_tsen · Aug 18 This is probably the cause for much of the confusion around this unhelpful term: people imagine that “herd immunity” will make the disease disappear — it won't, it will just stabilize it, and it can stay forever in an endemic state. 13/14
Herd Immunity is when so many people in a population are immune to a disease that any breakouts will be short-lived and won't lead to spread in the community. Therefore the disease does for all practical purposes disappear. We will never reach this with Covid because the combination of vaccine takeup and vaccine efficacy isn't high enough. This is my understanding of current thinking.
I don't think that's true -
(1) Vaccines are going to get better. Don't forget the world is relying on a couple of vaccines that were designed in days at the beginning of the crisis - and there have been a lot of refinements since then. (See GSK+CureVac, Novavax etc.) It's also entirely possible that advances in delivery will make a big difference - because Covid is an infection of the upper respiratory tract, priming the immune system in that particular area could elicit a much quicker reaction, and dramatically lower spread. Initial trials with the AZ vaccine and animals have been extremely encouraging in this area.
(2) For a lot of people Delta will act as a booster shot to their existing vaccine protection. It's very notable that existing Covid infection has proven more than 99% effective at preventing Delta (probably because of the immune system being primed in the right physical location). As a result, vaccinated people getting asymptomatic or mild symptompatic Delta cases effective knock another carrier out of the mix. Even without additional manufactured vaccines, this means that the level of population immunity is growing.
Right. So you think we WILL in due course attain Herd Immunity as I understand the concept - the disease substantially disappearing rather than remaining endemic but manageable.
I really hope so.
But how is this different to the much reviled Zero Covid strategy?
I look forwards to the C4 documentary tomorrow. Reviews say it demolishes the scientists who have been playing down the lab leak theory and presents compelling evidence of how the virus may have been developed at the WIV and then accidentally leaked into the wider population.
If it's true then every single scientist involved in the cover up needs to be put up on charges. All of the ones who signed that letter to the Lancet should lose their funding. Get the politics out of science.
The interesting - to me - thing about this programme is that it is saying what was unsayable as little as a year ago. Considerable effort was expended by science, the media, big tech, and so on, to try to silence any suggestion of a lab leak. Why? In darker moments last year it felt like a big conspiracy to keep the world permanently locked down, but really I think the truth is slightly more mundane - aside from those with something specific to hide, they were driven by the force of believing themselves to be the good guys. And in doing so felt no compunction at all about wildly overstepping the mark.
I plan to watch that prog. As to why there was reluctance to allow "lab leak" to gain traction, I think one factor was the fear it would be conflated with the more lurid "bioweapon" theory. Donald Trump was whipping up an atmosphere of paranoia and sinophobia around the pandemic to distract from his negligence. If he'd managed to convince his public that China had engineered Covid and launched it on America, got himself reelected on this basis and in such an atmosphere - well you do the math as they say.
Again, a bit of a misunderstanding
Some of the people desperately trying to silence the "lab leak" hypothesis early on, DELIBERATELY conflated it with the bioweapon theory - "are you really trying to tell us the Chinese engineered a lethal virus then launched it on the world, OMG you're racist and mad, of course it came from natural zoonosis, probably in the market"
They did this because that way they could smear the entire lab leak hypothesis by linking it with more extreme fringe theories. This is what happened. Go and read the science literature and social media of the time. Whereas in fact most people were merely suggesting a basic lab leak - a scientists bitten by a bat, a spilled test tube in Wuhan, someone leaving a door open, a simple accident - which is and remains far more likely
However there is now the complicating issue of Gain of Function, which grows in salience the more we learn of what they were doing in Wuhan. Again this does not mean "deliberate leak of engineered killer virus". It does mean that the accidental leak might, very sadly for all of us, have involved a virus which had already been altered so as to be especially virulent for humans. That is the science they were doing at the WIV
That is also a possibility
I get that. Linking something you disagree with and/or dislike with something extreme and lurid is a classic way to discredit. I can imagine it happened in places. But you're not telling me Trump and Trumpery wouldn't have profited from the widespread belief that China attacked America with Covid. It would have. That's why he pushed it in his trademark 'nudge/wink' fashion. So, the fear of that, of the possible repercussions if it took off, was imo a factor in what looks now like an underestimate of how likely it is that the pandemic was caused by a lab accident rather than via natural zoonosis. That's all I'm saying. And also let's remember that natural origins remains four square in the frame. It'd be easy to think otherwise if one read only your posts on this topic.
Natural non lab zoonosis is still clearly possible. I’d never deny that. But it’s not ‘four square in the frame’, to my mind it’s about 5-10% likely, now
I'm not an expert on this but my university friend is, he rated a non-lab explanation at less than 0.1% probability due to the number of lineages required to get from the closes natural SARS like virus to Wuhan COVID-19. It isn't tenable for that much viral evolution to occur to go from what it was to what it became that allowed human to human transmission. He seemed certain about it last weekend when we went for a drink.
In his view (a very soft lefty remainer) anyone pushing the animal origin idea is doing it for political reasons to allow China to save face. He implied that it's an open secret within the scientific community that it was a lab leak without saying the specific words.
Persuasive. I have heard the same scientific gossip "of course it came from the lab we're just not allowed to talk about it"
The only thing that makes me still consider non-lab natural zoonosis, even as unlikely-but-possible, is that it has happened so often. But that's it.
Not allowed by who? The science police? It clearly seems most likely to be a lab leak, and these do happen, as the U.K. has shown in the past, but it’s very, very hard to prove.
By peer group pressure, in the main. If science admits that science has harvested or created, and then leaked, a terrible virus that has decimated the world, that is going to be Very Bad for Science.
Careers will end, labs will close, journals will shut, funding will cease. If it gets really bad, there could be trials and jails.
it would be particularly apocalyptic for Virology, and that is where you find the most hysterical, desperate attempts to shut down the Lab Leak Hypothesis
Although presumably quite good for vaccinology.
Only just coming back to this after a busy afternoon (baking with daughters #2 and #3 - and I will say here and now that daughter #2, who is nearly 10, is absolutely knocking it out of the park for daughtering right now: I do not know what I've done to deserve such consistency and extreme loveliness - anyway) - and interesting discussion above, but it strikes me that there was perhaps a bit of "it's OK to lie if Trump might benefit from the truth" or "if Trump says it we need to say the opposite". Which doesn't necessarily always work to the benefit of the USA or the west.
Gro-Tsen @gro_tsen · Aug 18 This is probably the cause for much of the confusion around this unhelpful term: people imagine that “herd immunity” will make the disease disappear — it won't, it will just stabilize it, and it can stay forever in an endemic state. 13/14
Herd Immunity is when so many people in a population are immune to a disease that any breakouts will be short-lived and won't lead to spread in the community. Therefore the disease does for all practical purposes disappear. We will never reach this with Covid because the combination of vaccine takeup and vaccine efficacy isn't high enough. This is my understanding of current thinking.
I don't think that's true -
(1) Vaccines are going to get better. Don't forget the world is relying on a couple of vaccines that were designed in days at the beginning of the crisis - and there have been a lot of refinements since then. (See GSK+CureVac, Novavax etc.) It's also entirely possible that advances in delivery will make a big difference - because Covid is an infection of the upper respiratory tract, priming the immune system in that particular area could elicit a much quicker reaction, and dramatically lower spread. Initial trials with the AZ vaccine and animals have been extremely encouraging in this area.
(2) For a lot of people Delta will act as a booster shot to their existing vaccine protection. It's very notable that existing Covid infection has proven more than 99% effective at preventing Delta (probably because of the immune system being primed in the right physical location). As a result, vaccinated people getting asymptomatic or mild symptompatic Delta cases effective knock another carrier out of the mix. Even without additional manufactured vaccines, this means that the level of population immunity is growing.
Right. So you think we WILL in due course attain Herd Immunity as I understand the concept - the disease substantially disappearing rather than remaining endemic but manageable.
I really hope so.
But how is this different to the much reviled Zero Covid strategy?
Means and ends. Zero Covidians suggest that NPIs should be maintained until the virus is essentially eliminated and then utilising localised lockdowns to control flare ups. They point to Australia and New Zealand as their exemplars.
Solid Covid numbers out of Florida. 1400 extra deaths in a week, just waiting to see what that does to the specimen date graph for calculating how fucked they are.
Not really sure what the 100 has brought to Men's cricket, possibly reminded England what a talent Moeen is, but for the women's game it has been absolutely transformative. Crowds, profile, supporters, just transformative.
The Queen has “let it be known” that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel of the Grenadier Guards, despite little prospect of him returning to public duties.
In a significant intervention signalling her support for Prince Andrew, who is facing allegations of sexual assault which he denies, the monarch is understood to have conveyed her wish that her son keeps the honorary role he took over from the Duke of Edinburgh.
Military insiders say the situation is “unsatisfactory” and “very difficult”.
A senior military source said: “The Queen has let it be known to the regiment that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel and the feeling is that nobody wants to do anything that could cause upset to the colonel-in-chief. It is a very difficult, unsatisfactory situation.
“His position is not tenable or viable. How can you have a colonel who can’t perform the role? For the brief time he was in post, he was a good colonel, but the feeling across the regiment is that it’s not appropriate to retain him. You can’t have a colonel who can’t do public duties.”
The situation had been discussed among senior defence chiefs and “all agree that he should go”, the source said.
Military officials have previously called for Andrew to be “faded out” from his appointments, saying he has become an embarrassment to the armed forces.
Dominic Raab was ordered home from his holiday in Crete by Downing Street as Afghanistan collapsed into chaos but stayed for two more days because Boris Johnson told him he could.
A senior No 10 official advised the foreign secretary on Friday, August 13, to return but Whitehall sources say that Raab then “nobbled” the prime minister, who agreed to him remaining at the five-star resort until Sunday evening. Raab landed in Britain at 1.40am on Monday, after Kabul had fallen.....
....The confirmation that Johnson let his foreign secretary stay away at a time of international crisis will raise questions about his judgment. A senior government official said: “Raab was told to come back on Friday. On Sunday there was a sense of disbelief among everyone at the most senior levels in No 10 that he wasn’t there. He seems to have nobbled Boris after he was told to come back.”
The exchanges cap an extraordinary week with a toxic briefing war over who was to blame for the Afghan catastrophe in which ministers, political aides, No 10 staff and civil servants have all found fault with the performance of Raab and the Foreign Office.
The bad blood continued last night as:
•It was revealed that Sir Laurie Bristow, the British ambassador in Kabul, was “eyeballed” by a senior military officer and told not to leave as his team were planning to pull out last weekend. Bristow was ordered to stay by a Foreign Office mandarin London.
•Ministers in other departments complained that Raab banned them, several months ago, from speaking to ambassadors without his permission, a stance they say hamstrung British preparations for the Afghan withdrawal
•It was claimed the Foreign Office crisis centre is itself in crisis, with thousands of unread emails from people trying to get safe passage out of Afghanistan
•Raab was accused of not updating the “non-combatant evacuation plan” for Afghanistan in the weeks before US troops pulled out
•Raab was branded a “control freak” by cabinet colleagues, who said he had set up a system to micromanage decisions that collapsed in his absence.
The Queen has “let it be known” that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel of the Grenadier Guards, despite little prospect of him returning to public duties.
In a significant intervention signalling her support for Prince Andrew, who is facing allegations of sexual assault which he denies, the monarch is understood to have conveyed her wish that her son keeps the honorary role he took over from the Duke of Edinburgh.
Military insiders say the situation is “unsatisfactory” and “very difficult”.
A senior military source said: “The Queen has let it be known to the regiment that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel and the feeling is that nobody wants to do anything that could cause upset to the colonel-in-chief. It is a very difficult, unsatisfactory situation.
“His position is not tenable or viable. How can you have a colonel who can’t perform the role? For the brief time he was in post, he was a good colonel, but the feeling across the regiment is that it’s not appropriate to retain him. You can’t have a colonel who can’t do public duties.”
The situation had been discussed among senior defence chiefs and “all agree that he should go”, the source said.
Military officials have previously called for Andrew to be “faded out” from his appointments, saying he has become an embarrassment to the armed forces.
according to wikipedia. You can hardly cut him down any further.
ETA HMQ is obviously lucid as fuck, but she is late 90s. Not at all impossible someone is moderating her newsfeed and she doesn't fully realise what Andy's been up to. Allegedly.
Gro-Tsen @gro_tsen · Aug 18 This is probably the cause for much of the confusion around this unhelpful term: people imagine that “herd immunity” will make the disease disappear — it won't, it will just stabilize it, and it can stay forever in an endemic state. 13/14
Herd Immunity is when so many people in a population are immune to a disease that any breakouts will be short-lived and won't lead to spread in the community. Therefore the disease does for all practical purposes disappear. We will never reach this with Covid because the combination of vaccine takeup and vaccine efficacy isn't high enough. This is my understanding of current thinking.
I don't think that's true -
(1) Vaccines are going to get better. Don't forget the world is relying on a couple of vaccines that were designed in days at the beginning of the crisis - and there have been a lot of refinements since then. (See GSK+CureVac, Novavax etc.) It's also entirely possible that advances in delivery will make a big difference - because Covid is an infection of the upper respiratory tract, priming the immune system in that particular area could elicit a much quicker reaction, and dramatically lower spread. Initial trials with the AZ vaccine and animals have been extremely encouraging in this area.
(2) For a lot of people Delta will act as a booster shot to their existing vaccine protection. It's very notable that existing Covid infection has proven more than 99% effective at preventing Delta (probably because of the immune system being primed in the right physical location). As a result, vaccinated people getting asymptomatic or mild symptompatic Delta cases effective knock another carrier out of the mix. Even without additional manufactured vaccines, this means that the level of population immunity is growing.
Right. So you think we WILL in due course attain Herd Immunity as I understand the concept - the disease substantially disappearing rather than remaining endemic but manageable.
I really hope so.
But how is this different to the much reviled Zero Covid strategy?
Means and ends. Zero Covidians suggest that NPIs should be maintained until the virus is essentially eliminated and then utilising localised lockdowns to control flare ups. They point to Australia and New Zealand as their exemplars.
Ah ok, yes. Totally different approach, that is. But what I'm more getting at is whether the notion that we here will have to "learn to live with" Covid is true. Because if our combination of vaccines and infections will be enough to squash the disease (rather than reducing it to a flu like level of manageability) we won't be having to live with it.
Can you draw me a Venn diagram of people who defended Boris Johnson's letterbox/burqa comments and those outraged by the use of 'pass it on' by the Labour party.
The Queen has “let it be known” that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel of the Grenadier Guards, despite little prospect of him returning to public duties.
In a significant intervention signalling her support for Prince Andrew, who is facing allegations of sexual assault which he denies, the monarch is understood to have conveyed her wish that her son keeps the honorary role he took over from the Duke of Edinburgh.
Military insiders say the situation is “unsatisfactory” and “very difficult”.
A senior military source said: “The Queen has let it be known to the regiment that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel and the feeling is that nobody wants to do anything that could cause upset to the colonel-in-chief. It is a very difficult, unsatisfactory situation.
“His position is not tenable or viable. How can you have a colonel who can’t perform the role? For the brief time he was in post, he was a good colonel, but the feeling across the regiment is that it’s not appropriate to retain him. You can’t have a colonel who can’t do public duties.”
The situation had been discussed among senior defence chiefs and “all agree that he should go”, the source said.
Military officials have previously called for Andrew to be “faded out” from his appointments, saying he has become an embarrassment to the armed forces.
You'd get a thumbs down for this post if such an option were available TSE. The Queen, whatever her faults, deserves a little slack now she's lost her husband and is herself quite ancient.
Andrew has clearly let her down, although he's surely innocent (of the accusations) until proven otherwise.
Let him keep one role and be faded out elsewhere. Of course, if he's ever proven guilty of some of these charges then he'll have to step down, and moreover should face the consequences.
Can you draw me a Venn diagram of people who defended Boris Johnson's letterbox/burqa comments and those outraged by the use of 'pass it on' by the Labour party.
I'm still trying to work out if I should be cross at Biden for pulling out the civilian contractors causing the government to collapse or failing to pull out the civilian contractors before the government collapsed.
The Queen has “let it be known” that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel of the Grenadier Guards, despite little prospect of him returning to public duties.
In a significant intervention signalling her support for Prince Andrew, who is facing allegations of sexual assault which he denies, the monarch is understood to have conveyed her wish that her son keeps the honorary role he took over from the Duke of Edinburgh.
Military insiders say the situation is “unsatisfactory” and “very difficult”.
A senior military source said: “The Queen has let it be known to the regiment that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel and the feeling is that nobody wants to do anything that could cause upset to the colonel-in-chief. It is a very difficult, unsatisfactory situation.
“His position is not tenable or viable. How can you have a colonel who can’t perform the role? For the brief time he was in post, he was a good colonel, but the feeling across the regiment is that it’s not appropriate to retain him. You can’t have a colonel who can’t do public duties.”
The situation had been discussed among senior defence chiefs and “all agree that he should go”, the source said.
Military officials have previously called for Andrew to be “faded out” from his appointments, saying he has become an embarrassment to the armed forces.
You'd get a thumbs down for this post if such an option were available TSE. The Queen, whatever her faults, deserves a little slack now she's lost her husband and is herself quite ancient.
Andrew has clearly let her down, although he's surely innocent (of the accusations) until proven otherwise.
Let him keep one role and be faded out elsewhere. Of course, if he's ever proven guilty of some of these charges then he'll have to step down, and moreover should face the consequences.
The exchanges cap an extraordinary week with a toxic briefing war over who was to blame for the Afghan catastrophe in which ministers, political aides, No 10 staff and civil servants have all found fault with the performance of Raab and the Foreign Office.
The bad blood continued last night as:
•It was revealed that Sir Laurie Bristow, the British ambassador in Kabul, was “eyeballed” by a senior military officer and told not to leave as his team were planning to pull out last weekend. Bristow was ordered to stay by a Foreign Office mandarin London.
•Ministers in other departments complained that Raab banned them, several months ago, from speaking to ambassadors without his permission, a stance they say hamstrung British preparations for the Afghan withdrawal
•It was claimed the Foreign Office crisis centre is itself in crisis, with thousands of unread emails from people trying to get safe passage out of Afghanistan
•Raab was accused of not updating the “non-combatant evacuation plan” for Afghanistan in the weeks before US troops pulled out
•Raab was branded a “control freak” by cabinet colleagues, who said he had set up a system to micromanage decisions that collapsed in his absence.
He looks doomed to me. Might be the excuse Johnson finally needs to have a long long overdue reshuffle and ditch the trash.
The Queen has “let it be known” that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel of the Grenadier Guards, despite little prospect of him returning to public duties.
In a significant intervention signalling her support for Prince Andrew, who is facing allegations of sexual assault which he denies, the monarch is understood to have conveyed her wish that her son keeps the honorary role he took over from the Duke of Edinburgh.
Military insiders say the situation is “unsatisfactory” and “very difficult”.
A senior military source said: “The Queen has let it be known to the regiment that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel and the feeling is that nobody wants to do anything that could cause upset to the colonel-in-chief. It is a very difficult, unsatisfactory situation.
“His position is not tenable or viable. How can you have a colonel who can’t perform the role? For the brief time he was in post, he was a good colonel, but the feeling across the regiment is that it’s not appropriate to retain him. You can’t have a colonel who can’t do public duties.”
The situation had been discussed among senior defence chiefs and “all agree that he should go”, the source said.
Military officials have previously called for Andrew to be “faded out” from his appointments, saying he has become an embarrassment to the armed forces.
You'd get a thumbs down for this post if such an option were available TSE. The Queen, whatever her faults, deserves a little slack now she's lost her husband and is herself quite ancient.
Andrew has clearly let her down, although he's surely innocent (of the accusations) until proven otherwise.
Let him keep one role and be faded out elsewhere. Of course, if he's ever proven guilty of some of these charges then he'll have to step down, and moreover should face the consequences.
She's not cutting the Sussexes any slack is she.
I'm more struck by the way it is the brown jobs and the defence chiefs pushing back - against HMTQ for heaven's sake.
The Queen has “let it be known” that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel of the Grenadier Guards, despite little prospect of him returning to public duties.
In a significant intervention signalling her support for Prince Andrew, who is facing allegations of sexual assault which he denies, the monarch is understood to have conveyed her wish that her son keeps the honorary role he took over from the Duke of Edinburgh.
Military insiders say the situation is “unsatisfactory” and “very difficult”.
A senior military source said: “The Queen has let it be known to the regiment that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel and the feeling is that nobody wants to do anything that could cause upset to the colonel-in-chief. It is a very difficult, unsatisfactory situation.
“His position is not tenable or viable. How can you have a colonel who can’t perform the role? For the brief time he was in post, he was a good colonel, but the feeling across the regiment is that it’s not appropriate to retain him. You can’t have a colonel who can’t do public duties.”
The situation had been discussed among senior defence chiefs and “all agree that he should go”, the source said.
Military officials have previously called for Andrew to be “faded out” from his appointments, saying he has become an embarrassment to the armed forces.
You'd get a thumbs down for this post if such an option were available TSE. The Queen, whatever her faults, deserves a little slack now she's lost her husband and is herself quite ancient.
Andrew has clearly let her down, although he's surely innocent (of the accusations) until proven otherwise.
Let him keep one role and be faded out elsewhere. Of course, if he's ever proven guilty of some of these charges then he'll have to step down, and moreover should face the consequences.
She's not cutting the Sussexes any slack is she.
The Sussexes aren't exactly cutting her (or the entire family) any slack.
If you were in her situation, how would you respond to their attacks? (And it is surely at the stage now where H&M are attacking the family - it cannot be excused as 'misunderstandings').
Can you draw me a Venn diagram of people who defended Boris Johnson's letterbox/burqa comments and those outraged by the use of 'pass it on' by the Labour party.
Please sir, please sir, I want to be outraged but I don't understand what "pass it on" is supposed to mean or why it is bad.
On New Zealand and Australia, I'm not sure we're in a position to be quite so critical. According to Worldometers:
New Zealand: 26 deaths, 5 per million population. Australia: 975 deaths, 38 per million population. UK: 131,487 deaths, 1,925 per million population.
Looks to me like their strategy has worked somewhat better than ours (and most others) thus far. Yes, their figures are likely to get (much) worse, but I doubt that they'll get anywhere near our death rate (per million). By playing for time they should be able to benefit more from vaccines and treatment.
They've kept the numbers so low by shutting down their societies for long periods of time.
If only New Zealand had fused its Covid suppression scheme with something akin to the UK Government's vaccine procurement strategy, then it would've been a complete triumph. As it is, they didn't so they're in a right pickle.
I haven't heard an explanation as the why vaccine uptake in NZ and AUS is so remarkably low...??
I've been astonished at the authoritarianism in Australia.
No idea where that comes from.
I do.
Australia has long taken a very harsh biosecurity concept at the border. They recognise that their biodiversity is very unique to the rest of the globe and they don't want to see compromised by importing alien diseases and animals.
Their entire mindset on that is completely different to here in the UK.
It is. Spaniels sniffing our luggage on arrival for forbidden food such as fruit. Being made to unpack and show my walking boots when the chap realised I came from sheep country in Scotland - just as well I knew and had scrubbed them free of every last trace of the usual mud and sharn.
I remember arriving from New Zealand and having to go to a special room to fully clean boots. They have always taken it very seriously.
On each of the four occasions we have visited NZ their bio security has been total
I'm still trying to work out if I should be cross at Biden for pulling out the civilian contractors causing the government to collapse or failing to pull out the civilian contractors before the government collapsed.
I suspect that genuinely the situation is both.
Though it might have been useful to signpost the Bagram pullout a bit more widely. Not just NATO allies, but perhaps the US military and State dept, who seem to have been caught absolutely flat-footed too.
More than a bit belated but the answer to the thread header is yes. Bigly.
This is a humiliation, one of the worst since Publius Varus.
I disagree.
It may be equivalent to the loss of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane in April 1975 which saw Communism advance significantly in Indo-China.
It's nowhere near as bad as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which saw the fall of one of America and the West's most valued allies and his replacement by a virulently anti-America regime (the only saving grace was it wasn't pro-Moscow) or arguably the fall of Cuba to Communism in 1959.
I don't know what will happen if/when the Russians march into Kiev - that will be a disaster for the West.
The real acid test would be any attempt to directly attack a NATO member because then and only then will the key pillar of western defence since 1949 - collective security - be tested.
How this will look in South Korea and Taiwan I'm not sure - again, it's been 70 years since the last time a North Korean leader attempted their version of unification - would the current incumbent see events in Kabul as an opportunity to try his luck? I doubt it.
I'm far from convinced the Taliban hold on Afghanistan is secure - we may see more signs of resistance in the days and weeks to come.
Can you draw me a Venn diagram of people who defended Boris Johnson's letterbox/burqa comments and those outraged by the use of 'pass it on' by the Labour party.
Please sir, please sir, I want to be outraged but I don't understand what "pass it on" is supposed to mean or why it is bad.
It’s what infants say when they’re passing a note around under the desk or ‘so and so smells, pass it on’ - I don’t think I’ve heard it used in nearly 40 years - utterly cringeworthy, complete Wallyness 🙈
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far too fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
The exchanges cap an extraordinary week with a toxic briefing war over who was to blame for the Afghan catastrophe in which ministers, political aides, No 10 staff and civil servants have all found fault with the performance of Raab and the Foreign Office.
The bad blood continued last night as:
•It was revealed that Sir Laurie Bristow, the British ambassador in Kabul, was “eyeballed” by a senior military officer and told not to leave as his team were planning to pull out last weekend. Bristow was ordered to stay by a Foreign Office mandarin London.
•Ministers in other departments complained that Raab banned them, several months ago, from speaking to ambassadors without his permission, a stance they say hamstrung British preparations for the Afghan withdrawal
•It was claimed the Foreign Office crisis centre is itself in crisis, with thousands of unread emails from people trying to get safe passage out of Afghanistan
•Raab was accused of not updating the “non-combatant evacuation plan” for Afghanistan in the weeks before US troops pulled out
•Raab was branded a “control freak” by cabinet colleagues, who said he had set up a system to micromanage decisions that collapsed in his absence.
He looks doomed to me. Might be the excuse Johnson finally needs to have a long long overdue reshuffle and ditch the trash.
Johnson won't. He needs the stooges and yes-men in the cabinet. Far too risky to have competent rivals in the Cabinet to the "World-King".
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far to fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
I look forwards to the C4 documentary tomorrow. Reviews say it demolishes the scientists who have been playing down the lab leak theory and presents compelling evidence of how the virus may have been developed at the WIV and then accidentally leaked into the wider population.
If it's true then every single scientist involved in the cover up needs to be put up on charges. All of the ones who signed that letter to the Lancet should lose their funding. Get the politics out of science.
The interesting - to me - thing about this programme is that it is saying what was unsayable as little as a year ago. Considerable effort was expended by science, the media, big tech, and so on, to try to silence any suggestion of a lab leak. Why? In darker moments last year it felt like a big conspiracy to keep the world permanently locked down, but really I think the truth is slightly more mundane - aside from those with something specific to hide, they were driven by the force of believing themselves to be the good guys. And in doing so felt no compunction at all about wildly overstepping the mark.
I plan to watch that prog. As to why there was reluctance to allow "lab leak" to gain traction, I think one factor was the fear it would be conflated with the more lurid "bioweapon" theory. Donald Trump was whipping up an atmosphere of paranoia and sinophobia around the pandemic to distract from his negligence. If he'd managed to convince his public that China had engineered Covid and launched it on America, got himself reelected on this basis and in such an atmosphere - well you do the math as they say.
Again, a bit of a misunderstanding
Some of the people desperately trying to silence the "lab leak" hypothesis early on, DELIBERATELY conflated it with the bioweapon theory - "are you really trying to tell us the Chinese engineered a lethal virus then launched it on the world, OMG you're racist and mad, of course it came from natural zoonosis, probably in the market"
They did this because that way they could smear the entire lab leak hypothesis by linking it with more extreme fringe theories. This is what happened. Go and read the science literature and social media of the time. Whereas in fact most people were merely suggesting a basic lab leak - a scientists bitten by a bat, a spilled test tube in Wuhan, someone leaving a door open, a simple accident - which is and remains far more likely
However there is now the complicating issue of Gain of Function, which grows in salience the more we learn of what they were doing in Wuhan. Again this does not mean "deliberate leak of engineered killer virus". It does mean that the accidental leak might, very sadly for all of us, have involved a virus which had already been altered so as to be especially virulent for humans. That is the science they were doing at the WIV
That is also a possibility
I get that. Linking something you disagree with and/or dislike with something extreme and lurid is a classic way to discredit. I can imagine it happened in places. But you're not telling me Trump and Trumpery wouldn't have profited from the widespread belief that China attacked America with Covid. It would have. That's why he pushed it in his trademark 'nudge/wink' fashion. So, the fear of that, of the possible repercussions if it took off, was imo a factor in what looks now like an underestimate of how likely it is that the pandemic was caused by a lab accident rather than via natural zoonosis. That's all I'm saying. And also let's remember that natural origins remains four square in the frame. It'd be easy to think otherwise if one read only your posts on this topic.
Natural non lab zoonosis is still clearly possible. I’d never deny that. But it’s not ‘four square in the frame’, to my mind it’s about 5-10% likely, now
I'm not an expert on this but my university friend is, he rated a non-lab explanation at less than 0.1% probability due to the number of lineages required to get from the closes natural SARS like virus to Wuhan COVID-19. It isn't tenable for that much viral evolution to occur to go from what it was to what it became that allowed human to human transmission. He seemed certain about it last weekend when we went for a drink.
In his view (a very soft lefty remainer) anyone pushing the animal origin idea is doing it for political reasons to allow China to save face. He implied that it's an open secret within the scientific community that it was a lab leak without saying the specific words.
Persuasive. I have heard the same scientific gossip "of course it came from the lab we're just not allowed to talk about it"
The only thing that makes me still consider non-lab natural zoonosis, even as unlikely-but-possible, is that it has happened so often. But that's it.
Not allowed by who? The science police? It clearly seems most likely to be a lab leak, and these do happen, as the U.K. has shown in the past, but it’s very, very hard to prove.
By peer group pressure, in the main. If science admits that science has harvested or created, and then leaked, a terrible virus that has decimated the world, that is going to be Very Bad for Science.
Careers will end, labs will close, journals will shut, funding will cease. If it gets really bad, there could be trials and jails.
it would be particularly apocalyptic for Virology, and that is where you find the most hysterical, desperate attempts to shut down the Lab Leak Hypothesis
Although presumably quite good for vaccinology.
Only just coming back to this after a busy afternoon (baking with daughters #2 and #3 - and I will say here and now that daughter #2, who is nearly 10, is absolutely knocking it out of the park for daughtering right now: I do not know what I've done to deserve such consistency and extreme loveliness - anyway) - and interesting discussion above, but it strikes me that there was perhaps a bit of "it's OK to lie if Trump might benefit from the truth" or "if Trump says it we need to say the opposite". Which doesn't necessarily always work to the benefit of the USA or the west.
I don't think it's lying: I think in 99.9% of cases, it's simply cognitive dissonance.
We aren't (or are) predisposed to believe something based on our existing prejudices. Therefore, if you think China is an aggressive power, who is the biggest threat to the West, then you will be predisposed to believe that (at the very least) Covid leaked from a lab. On the other hand, if you are Chinese - and it's your country - and even if you're living overseas and have access to the full Internet, you will be predisposed to believe that your country has behaved well, and it's all a Western conspiracy to do your country down.
An extreme example of this is QAnon supporters. They believe some seriously crazy shit. But it's not lying when they spread around Pizzagate conspiracies - it's their sincere belief, that is primed by their existing prejudices. Ditto people disbelieved Trump when it came from a lab, because Trump had lied about so many things already.
Can you draw me a Venn diagram of people who defended Boris Johnson's letterbox/burqa comments and those outraged by the use of 'pass it on' by the Labour party.
Please sir, please sir, I want to be outraged but I don't understand what "pass it on" is supposed to mean or why it is bad.
It’s what infants say when they’re passing a note around under the desk or ‘so and so smells, pass it on’ - I don’t think I’ve heard it used in nearly 40 years - utterly cringeworthy, complete Wallyness 🙈
But what were they passing on whilst I was doing something more useful like watching the cricket?
I'm still trying to work out if I should be cross at Biden for pulling out the civilian contractors causing the government to collapse or failing to pull out the civilian contractors before the government collapsed.
I suspect that genuinely the situation is both.
Though it might have been useful to signpost the Bagram pullout a bit more widely. Not just NATO allies, but perhaps the US military and State dept, who seem to have been caught absolutely flat-footed too.
They had a base handover walk through with the Afghan military approx 2 days before hand for Bagram. People knew they were leaving, it was a question of the exact time.
"Looking at their medical notes I know that all the Covid patients currently on the [ICU] unit were offered the jab but that 90 per cent of those on ventilators here are unvaccinated. I understand this figure is roughly the same at most other units."
The Queen has “let it be known” that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel of the Grenadier Guards, despite little prospect of him returning to public duties.
In a significant intervention signalling her support for Prince Andrew, who is facing allegations of sexual assault which he denies, the monarch is understood to have conveyed her wish that her son keeps the honorary role he took over from the Duke of Edinburgh.
Military insiders say the situation is “unsatisfactory” and “very difficult”.
A senior military source said: “The Queen has let it be known to the regiment that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel and the feeling is that nobody wants to do anything that could cause upset to the colonel-in-chief. It is a very difficult, unsatisfactory situation.
“His position is not tenable or viable. How can you have a colonel who can’t perform the role? For the brief time he was in post, he was a good colonel, but the feeling across the regiment is that it’s not appropriate to retain him. You can’t have a colonel who can’t do public duties.”
The situation had been discussed among senior defence chiefs and “all agree that he should go”, the source said.
Military officials have previously called for Andrew to be “faded out” from his appointments, saying he has become an embarrassment to the armed forces.
You'd get a thumbs down for this post if such an option were available TSE. The Queen, whatever her faults, deserves a little slack now she's lost her husband and is herself quite ancient.
Andrew has clearly let her down, although he's surely innocent (of the accusations) until proven otherwise.
Let him keep one role and be faded out elsewhere. Of course, if he's ever proven guilty of some of these charges then he'll have to step down, and moreover should face the consequences.
She's not cutting the Sussexes any slack is she.
They're not in the Tower, and Andrew is most certainly her son.
Can you draw me a Venn diagram of people who defended Boris Johnson's letterbox/burqa comments and those outraged by the use of 'pass it on' by the Labour party.
Please sir, please sir, I want to be outraged but I don't understand what "pass it on" is supposed to mean or why it is bad.
It’s what infants say when they’re passing a note around under the desk or ‘so and so smells, pass it on’ - I don’t think I’ve heard it used in nearly 40 years - utterly cringeworthy, complete Wallyness 🙈
But what were they passing on whilst I was doing something more useful like watching the cricket?
I think Labour's official site tweeted something like "Sack Dominic Raab, pass it on" - such nerdy, unfunny wallyness, it's bringing me out in hives
TSE using "venn diagram" and "Siri" has made it even worse
More than a bit belated but the answer to the thread header is yes. Bigly.
This is a humiliation, one of the worst since Publius Varus.
I disagree.
It may be equivalent to the loss of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane in April 1975 which saw Communism advance significantly in Indo-China.
It's nowhere near as bad as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which saw the fall of one of America and the West's most valued allies and his replacement by a virulently anti-America regime (the only saving grace was it wasn't pro-Moscow) or arguably the fall of Cuba to Communism in 1959.
I don't know what will happen if/when the Russians march into Kiev - that will be a disaster for the West.
The real acid test would be any attempt to directly attack a NATO member because then and only then will the key pillar of western defence since 1949 - collective security - be tested.
How this will look in South Korea and Taiwan I'm not sure - again, it's been 70 years since the last time a North Korean leader attempted their version of unification - would the current incumbent see events in Kabul as an opportunity to try his luck? I doubt it.
I'm far from convinced the Taliban hold on Afghanistan is secure - we may see more signs of resistance in the days and weeks to come.
I think we are heading to civil war and the old northern alliance supported by western money and kit. But that will not cancel the humiliation of a super power.
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far too fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
It would be interesting the result of a poll on this
We are 14,000 EU drivers short
Should we let them return
Should we demand the employers pay higher wages and train our own drivers
More than a bit belated but the answer to the thread header is yes. Bigly.
This is a humiliation, one of the worst since Publius Varus.
I disagree.
It may be equivalent to the loss of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane in April 1975 which saw Communism advance significantly in Indo-China.
It's nowhere near as bad as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which saw the fall of one of America and the West's most valued allies and his replacement by a virulently anti-America regime (the only saving grace was it wasn't pro-Moscow) or arguably the fall of Cuba to Communism in 1959.
I don't know what will happen if/when the Russians march into Kiev - that will be a disaster for the West.
The real acid test would be any attempt to directly attack a NATO member because then and only then will the key pillar of western defence since 1949 - collective security - be tested.
How this will look in South Korea and Taiwan I'm not sure - again, it's been 70 years since the last time a North Korean leader attempted their version of unification - would the current incumbent see events in Kabul as an opportunity to try his luck? I doubt it.
I'm far from convinced the Taliban hold on Afghanistan is secure - we may see more signs of resistance in the days and weeks to come.
And it's well worth remembering that the West can make life very difficult for the new Taliban state if they wish. Exports are negligible, and the price of opium has collapsed. They are extremely dependent on just two hydropower dams for electricity in Kabul. And while there are no doubt mineral reserves to be exploited, there is little infrastructure to enable its extraction.
It's worth remembering that the Americans and their NATO allies use of Afghan's telecoms services accounted for 10% of exports last year and an even greater share of the government's tax take. The basic import bill - just for food, fuel and electricity - for Afghanistan is $6bn/year. Legal exports are just a tenth of that.
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far too fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
It would be interesting the result of a poll on this
We are 14,000 EU drivers short
Should we let them return
Should we demand the employers pay higher wages and train our own drivers
The shortage of drivers is about 100,000, the EU part of it is quite minor
I wonder how much Sunak has misjudged extending furlough until September was? There is still nearly a million people on furlough, who realistically are unemployed if they aren't back at work by now.
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far too fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
Why can't we retrain taxi drivers? They obviously know what to do with a steering wheel and most of them spend all day sitting in a queue round the back of the railway station, presumably earning SFA.
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far too fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
It would be interesting the result of a poll on this
We are 14,000 EU drivers short
Should we let them return
Should we demand the employers pay higher wages and train our own drivers
Surely the answer is "a bit of both". In the longer run, you want to make sure that wages are higher, and people are trained up. But in the short term, you want to make sure there's enough capacity to ensure that British businesses (say ones that export to the US or the EU) aren't burdened by dramatically higher transportation costs than their competitors.
The exchanges cap an extraordinary week with a toxic briefing war over who was to blame for the Afghan catastrophe in which ministers, political aides, No 10 staff and civil servants have all found fault with the performance of Raab and the Foreign Office.
The bad blood continued last night as:
•It was revealed that Sir Laurie Bristow, the British ambassador in Kabul, was “eyeballed” by a senior military officer and told not to leave as his team were planning to pull out last weekend. Bristow was ordered to stay by a Foreign Office mandarin London.
•Ministers in other departments complained that Raab banned them, several months ago, from speaking to ambassadors without his permission, a stance they say hamstrung British preparations for the Afghan withdrawal
•It was claimed the Foreign Office crisis centre is itself in crisis, with thousands of unread emails from people trying to get safe passage out of Afghanistan
•Raab was accused of not updating the “non-combatant evacuation plan” for Afghanistan in the weeks before US troops pulled out
•Raab was branded a “control freak” by cabinet colleagues, who said he had set up a system to micromanage decisions that collapsed in his absence.
He looks doomed to me. Might be the excuse Johnson finally needs to have a long long overdue reshuffle and ditch the trash.
I wish I could believe you as Williamson, Patel, Jenrick, Amanda Milling and Raab all need replacing but Boris is hopeless at cabinet reshuffles and I doubt he will do it in the midst of this crisis
But Uncle Joe told us the nice Royal Mounted Taliban we just doing preboarding document and covid checks....
Interesting/disturbing article by BBC's John Simpson in this week's Newstatesman. Apparently, last time Taliban loons ran the country one of their most senior people (health minister) spoke on camera to moan that the Red Cross would not send proper surgeons to cut off people's hands and feet so he "had to do it myself".
Whoever is leaking the stuff on Raab has very good sources.
And now BoZo has been explicitly fingered for Raab's fuckup.
Oops.
He is going nowhere no matter how many posts you make
I was talking to a couple of people today who blame Biden totally and I asked what their opinion of Raab was and they both answered they will always try to find someone to blame
And neither are political and of course we need to see how this plays in the polls, but the vast majority of people are not political geeks
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far too fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
It would be interesting the result of a poll on this
We are 14,000 EU drivers short
Should we let them return
Should we demand the employers pay higher wages and train our own drivers
Surely the answer is "a bit of both". In the longer run, you want to make sure that wages are higher, and people are trained up. But in the short term, you want to make sure there's enough capacity to ensure that British businesses (say ones that export to the US or the EU) aren't burdened by dramatically higher transportation costs than their competitors.
Sure, but much more of the latter than the former. The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the EU dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
More than a bit belated but the answer to the thread header is yes. Bigly.
This is a humiliation, one of the worst since Publius Varus.
I disagree.
It may be equivalent to the loss of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane in April 1975 which saw Communism advance significantly in Indo-China.
It's nowhere near as bad as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which saw the fall of one of America and the West's most valued allies and his replacement by a virulently anti-America regime (the only saving grace was it wasn't pro-Moscow) or arguably the fall of Cuba to Communism in 1959.
I don't know what will happen if/when the Russians march into Kiev - that will be a disaster for the West.
The real acid test would be any attempt to directly attack a NATO member because then and only then will the key pillar of western defence since 1949 - collective security - be tested.
How this will look in South Korea and Taiwan I'm not sure - again, it's been 70 years since the last time a North Korean leader attempted their version of unification - would the current incumbent see events in Kabul as an opportunity to try his luck? I doubt it.
I'm far from convinced the Taliban hold on Afghanistan is secure - we may see more signs of resistance in the days and weeks to come.
And it's well worth remembering that the West can make life very difficult for the new Taliban state if they wish. Exports are negligible, and the price of opium has collapsed. They are extremely dependent on just two hydropower dams for electricity in Kabul. And while there are no doubt mineral reserves to be exploited, there is little infrastructure to enable its extraction.
It's worth remembering that the Americans and their NATO allies use of Afghan's telecoms services accounted for 10% of exports last year and an even greater share of the government's tax take. The basic import bill - just for food, fuel and electricity - for Afghanistan is $6bn/year. Legal exports are just a tenth of that.
I take a crumb of comfort from the fact that after 30-odd years Saigon is a welcoming tourist destination with decent hotels and restaurants, a population busily employed earning their livelihood, and a statue of Ho Chi Minh staring indulgently at a Mercedes dealership.
The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the EU dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
And our supermarkets are thankfully running short of supplies as a result...
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far too fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
It would be interesting the result of a poll on this
We are 14,000 EU drivers short
Should we let them return
Should we demand the employers pay higher wages and train our own drivers
Surely the answer is "a bit of both". In the longer run, you want to make sure that wages are higher, and people are trained up. But in the short term, you want to make sure there's enough capacity to ensure that British businesses (say ones that export to the US or the EU) aren't burdened by dramatically higher transportation costs than their competitors.
Sure, but much more of the latter than the former. The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the Eu dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
I would have thought the simplest answer was to have a descending number of HGV work permits available: 10,000 in 2021; 7,500 in 2022; etc.
But that kind of flexibility is hard for governments.
You also want to monitor what British firms are paying to get goods moved one mile, and to compare it with rates in other places. Because while it might be great to have British HGV drivers earning £125k/year against say £50k on the Continent, then that will passed through to British consumers by higher grocery bills, and will disadvantage British exporters.
Former President Trump will say, 'it's time for real leadership in the White House,' at a rally in Alabama this evening, according to a top ally who said it was a clearest signal yet that he is planning to run for the presidency in 2024.
The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the EU dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
And our supermarkets are thankfully running short of supplies as a result...
Oh, wait.
Brace yourself Scott, gird your loins and have the grater to hand for your parmesan. We shall cope.
The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the EU dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
And our supermarkets are thankfully running short of supplies as a result...
Oh, wait.
As I keep saying our weekly Asda deliveries are complete and have no shortages
The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the EU dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
And our supermarkets are thankfully running short of supplies as a result...
Oh, wait.
As I keep saying our weekly Asda deliveries are complete and have no shortages
Ditto Waitrose, ditto Ocado. They're locked in a death-spiral vying to feed us.
Former President Trump will say, 'it's time for real leadership in the White House,' at a rally in Alabama this evening, according to a top ally who said it was a clearest signal yet that he is planning to run for the presidency in 2024.
The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the EU dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
And our supermarkets are thankfully running short of supplies as a result...
Oh, wait.
As I keep saying our weekly Asda deliveries are complete and have no shortages
Ditto Waitrose, ditto Ocado. They're locked in a death-spiral vying to feed us.
Tescos in South Hornchurch yesterday - no empty shelves. I haven't seen any apart from the sparkling water section of Waitrose round here at all.
I wonder how much Sunak has misjudged extending furlough until September was? There is still nearly a million people on furlough, who realistically are unemployed if they aren't back at work by now.
I totally agree, but where did you get the 1 milion number form?
The last I remember was 1.6 million and that was for the beginning of July.
At uni, I remember some mates doing some crazy how far could they get on, I think a £10, for charity with load of other teams of students...no planes...my mates got to Morocco.
Former President Trump will say, 'it's time for real leadership in the White House,' at a rally in Alabama this evening, according to a top ally who said it was a clearest signal yet that he is planning to run for the presidency in 2024.
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far too fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
It would be interesting the result of a poll on this
We are 14,000 EU drivers short
Should we let them return
Should we demand the employers pay higher wages and train our own drivers
Surely the answer is "a bit of both". In the longer run, you want to make sure that wages are higher, and people are trained up. But in the short term, you want to make sure there's enough capacity to ensure that British businesses (say ones that export to the US or the EU) aren't burdened by dramatically higher transportation costs than their competitors.
Sure, but much more of the latter than the former. The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the Eu dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
I would have thought the simplest answer was to have a descending number of HGV work permits available: 10,000 in 2021; 7,500 in 2022; etc.
But that kind of flexibility is hard for governments.
You also want to monitor what British firms are paying to get goods moved one mile, and to compare it with rates in other places. Because while it might be great to have British HGV drivers earning £125k/year against say £50k on the Continent, then that will passed through to British consumers by higher grocery bills, and will disadvantage British exporters.
I have no interest in unnecessary self inflicted damage and have no problem at all in short term fixes if we have a genuine problem but we do need to change the way that our economy works for the majority of our citizens, no matter how comfortable it made it for remainer professionals on good wages getting cheap services.
The increase in wages for low skilled jobs is a big step in the right direction in terms of producing a more cohesive society. If that means another 10p on a cup of cappuccino for the better off its a price well worth paying. We need to drive employers to pay more, to invest more, to improve productivity and to want to train their staff.
The damage done by 9/11 did not unfold quite as terrorist leader Osama bin Laden intended, according to Nelly Lahoud, an analyst at the thinktank New America who has been sifting through his papers, but it did have a “catastrophic success” in changing the world. It was a case of the autoimmune response proving far more deadly than the infection it was supposed to fight.
In a new book, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, former Guardian journalist Spencer Ackerman argues that the worst damage was self-inflicted, through the impact of the “global war on terror” and all its excesses: torture, mass surveillance, militarism and authoritarianism.
“Of all the endless costs of terrorism, the most important is the least tallied: what fighting it has cost our democracy,” Ackerman writes. “How like America it is not to recognise that the true threat was counterterrorism, nor terrorism.”
The backlash produced a repugnance in US public opinion for foreign intervention.
Although I agree that pushing up salaries of lorry drivers is a good thing for the industry, I notice the biggest supporters of such a thing, other than the lorry drivers themselves, are those already well off and thus can afford the inevitable increase in the cost if goods.
It isn’t black and white, like anything in life. To pretend otherwise is dishonest.
But Uncle Joe told us the nice Royal Mounted Taliban we just doing preboarding document and covid checks....
I haven’t kept abreast of the latest developments here but I do fear the Americans might be led into a trap by the Taliban. I can see the Taliban saying “don’t use your troops to rescue your citizens, keep them in the airport and we will guarantee thei safety. Then when the Taliban have sufficient strength in Kabul, they then start taking Americans hostage.
Although I agree that pushing up salaries of lorry drivers is a good thing for the industry, I notice the biggest supporters of such a thing, other than the lorry drivers themselves, are those already well off and thus can afford the inevitable increase in the cost if goods.
Can you draw me a Venn diagram of people who defended Boris Johnson's letterbox/burqa comments and those outraged by the use of 'pass it on' by the Labour party.
One was apparently satire by Britain's greatest Comic and Prime Minister, the other was just vicious nastiness towards a very nice Senior Minister of the Crown.
I personally thought the letter boxes satire was unpleasant racist dog whistling. But what do I know as a humourless wokist?
From a personal perspective I’m currently earning below minimum wage and although in the long term I will probably be OK, as you all know, it is currently really really difficult. Any increases in the cost of food, goods, utilities, is going to make things even tougher.
I’m always going to support higher salaries for workers but to pretend there are no downsides is just wrong.
that will passed through to British consumers by higher grocery bills, and will disadvantage British exporters.
No shit.
All companies across the world are facing problems in delivery. It has cropped up time and time again on company results calls. Nobody has called out the U.K. (if they are global) as a specific problem.
It's fantastic, isn't it? We are rapidly moving towards a shortage of labour. Many school leavers will start to look at the crappy courses and student debt they are being offered by subpar educational facilities that have grown far too fat and compare that with jobs paying quite decent wages with some proper investment in training and opportunities. Bring it on.
It would be interesting the result of a poll on this
We are 14,000 EU drivers short
Should we let them return
Should we demand the employers pay higher wages and train our own drivers
Surely the answer is "a bit of both". In the longer run, you want to make sure that wages are higher, and people are trained up. But in the short term, you want to make sure there's enough capacity to ensure that British businesses (say ones that export to the US or the EU) aren't burdened by dramatically higher transportation costs than their competitors.
Sure, but much more of the latter than the former. The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the EU dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
The other thing is that having a cheap supply of labour gave firms the excuse not to invest in technology. Hopefully that changes too.
The days when we completely relied on a completely elastic supply of labour from the EU dragging more and more of our economy into minimum wage for growth are thankfully over.
And our supermarkets are thankfully running short of supplies as a result...
Oh, wait.
Except they aren't
You need a new horror story to scare the children Scott
I wonder how much Sunak has misjudged extending furlough until September was? There is still nearly a million people on furlough, who realistically are unemployed if they aren't back at work by now.
I totally agree, but where did you get the 1 milion number form?
The last I remember was 1.6 million and that was for the beginning of July.
I am guessestimating given between 500k and a million have come off each month for past 3 months.
Comments
The only item of note is the US announcement but again the reasoning behind that annoucement could be manifold.
It's like the taliban cracking down on opium. Apparently a disaster for all of us because people switch from heroin to fentanyl, which is worse.
The bit that really stands out to me is that while Fox News runs a lot of anti-vax stuff", they have effectively instituted a requirement on employees to be vaccinated..
I really hope so.
But how is this different to the much reviled Zero Covid strategy?
This is a humiliation, one of the worst since Publius Varus.
https://www.release.org.uk/blog/drug-alerts-august-2021-uk
The Queen has “let it be known” that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel of the Grenadier Guards, despite little prospect of him returning to public duties.
In a significant intervention signalling her support for Prince Andrew, who is facing allegations of sexual assault which he denies, the monarch is understood to have conveyed her wish that her son keeps the honorary role he took over from the Duke of Edinburgh.
Military insiders say the situation is “unsatisfactory” and “very difficult”.
A senior military source said: “The Queen has let it be known to the regiment that she wants the Duke of York to remain as colonel and the feeling is that nobody wants to do anything that could cause upset to the colonel-in-chief. It is a very difficult, unsatisfactory situation.
“His position is not tenable or viable. How can you have a colonel who can’t perform the role? For the brief time he was in post, he was a good colonel, but the feeling across the regiment is that it’s not appropriate to retain him. You can’t have a colonel who can’t do public duties.”
The situation had been discussed among senior defence chiefs and “all agree that he should go”, the source said.
Military officials have previously called for Andrew to be “faded out” from his appointments, saying he has become an embarrassment to the armed forces.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/queen-will-let-prince-andrew-keep-senior-guards-role-kq52jrs95
A senior No 10 official advised the foreign secretary on Friday, August 13, to return but Whitehall sources say that Raab then “nobbled” the prime minister, who agreed to him remaining at the five-star resort until Sunday evening. Raab landed in Britain at 1.40am on Monday, after Kabul had fallen.....
....The confirmation that Johnson let his foreign secretary stay away at a time of international crisis will raise questions about his judgment. A senior government official said: “Raab was told to come back on Friday. On Sunday there was a sense of disbelief among everyone at the most senior levels in No 10 that he wasn’t there. He seems to have nobbled Boris after he was told to come back.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/raab-stayed-on-holiday-for-two-days-after-he-was-called-back-pxhb58rb6
I have chosen.
The bad blood continued last night as:
•It was revealed that Sir Laurie Bristow, the British ambassador in Kabul, was “eyeballed” by a senior military officer and told not to leave as his team were planning to pull out last weekend. Bristow was ordered to stay by a Foreign Office mandarin London.
•Ministers in other departments complained that Raab banned them, several months ago, from speaking to ambassadors without his permission, a stance they say hamstrung British preparations for the Afghan withdrawal
•It was claimed the Foreign Office crisis centre is itself in crisis, with thousands of unread emails from people trying to get safe passage out of Afghanistan
•Raab was accused of not updating the “non-combatant evacuation plan” for Afghanistan in the weeks before US troops pulled out
•Raab was branded a “control freak” by cabinet colleagues, who said he had set up a system to micromanage decisions that collapsed in his absence.
He had 558 men
according to wikipedia. You can hardly cut him down any further.
ETA HMQ is obviously lucid as fuck, but she is late 90s. Not at all impossible someone is moderating her newsfeed and she doesn't fully realise what Andy's been up to. Allegedly.
Supermarkets struggling to keep shelves filled
Logistics UK said that 14,000 EU HGV drivers left employment in the UK in the year to June 2020, and only 600 had returned.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/shops-farms-and-restaurants-turn-to-prisons-to-fill-staff-shortages-j2qgd38td
Can you draw me a Venn diagram of people who defended Boris Johnson's letterbox/burqa comments and those outraged by the use of 'pass it on' by the Labour party.
Andrew has clearly let her down, although he's surely innocent (of the accusations) until proven otherwise.
Let him keep one role and be faded out elsewhere. Of course, if he's ever proven guilty of some of these charges then he'll have to step down, and moreover should face the consequences.
Oh no 🙈
I suspect that genuinely the situation is both.
He looks doomed to me. Might be the excuse Johnson finally needs to have a long long overdue reshuffle and ditch the trash.
If you were in her situation, how would you respond to their attacks? (And it is surely at the stage now where H&M are attacking the family - it cannot be excused as 'misunderstandings').
I bet no negative unintended consequences happened after this tweet.
https://twitter.com/JoshMandelOhio/status/1428784031638949899?s=19
It may be equivalent to the loss of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane in April 1975 which saw Communism advance significantly in Indo-China.
It's nowhere near as bad as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which saw the fall of one of America and the West's most valued allies and his replacement by a virulently anti-America regime (the only saving grace was it wasn't pro-Moscow) or arguably the fall of Cuba to Communism in 1959.
I don't know what will happen if/when the Russians march into Kiev - that will be a disaster for the West.
The real acid test would be any attempt to directly attack a NATO member because then and only then will the key pillar of western defence since 1949 - collective security - be tested.
How this will look in South Korea and Taiwan I'm not sure - again, it's been 70 years since the last time a North Korean leader attempted their version of unification - would the current incumbent see events in Kabul as an opportunity to try his luck? I doubt it.
I'm far from convinced the Taliban hold on Afghanistan is secure - we may see more signs of resistance in the days and weeks to come.
We aren't (or are) predisposed to believe something based on our existing prejudices. Therefore, if you think China is an aggressive power, who is the biggest threat to the West, then you will be predisposed to believe that (at the very least) Covid leaked from a lab. On the other hand, if you are Chinese - and it's your country - and even if you're living overseas and have access to the full Internet, you will be predisposed to believe that your country has behaved well, and it's all a Western conspiracy to do your country down.
An extreme example of this is QAnon supporters. They believe some seriously crazy shit. But it's not lying when they spread around Pizzagate conspiracies - it's their sincere belief, that is primed by their existing prejudices. Ditto people disbelieved Trump when it came from a lab, because Trump had lied about so many things already.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9913203/ICU-doctor-reveals-90-cent-Covid-patients-ward-vaccine-refuseniks.html
TSE using "venn diagram" and "Siri" has made it even worse
We are 14,000 EU drivers short
Should we let them return
Should we demand the employers pay higher wages and train our own drivers
And it's well worth remembering that the West can make life very difficult for the new Taliban state if they wish. Exports are negligible, and the price of opium has collapsed. They are extremely dependent on just two hydropower dams for electricity in Kabul. And while there are no doubt mineral reserves to be exploited, there is little infrastructure to enable its extraction.
It's worth remembering that the Americans and their NATO allies use of Afghan's telecoms services accounted for 10% of exports last year and an even greater share of the government's tax take. The basic import bill - just for food, fuel and electricity - for Afghanistan is $6bn/year. Legal exports are just a tenth of that.
And now BoZo has been explicitly fingered for Raab's fuckup.
Oops.
Currently 5/2...
The PM chose Raab to stand in for him when he was in intensive care. The two now appear to be locked in a briefing war.
https://twitter.com/REWearmouth/status/1429137004810342402
I was talking to a couple of people today who blame Biden totally and I asked what their opinion of Raab was and they both answered they will always try to find someone to blame
And neither are political and of course we need to see how this plays in the polls, but the vast majority of people are not political geeks
Oh, wait.
But that kind of flexibility is hard for governments.
You also want to monitor what British firms are paying to get goods moved one mile, and to compare it with rates in other places. Because while it might be great to have British HGV drivers earning £125k/year against say £50k on the Continent, then that will passed through to British consumers by higher grocery bills, and will disadvantage British exporters.
Mail
How far can you get from London by bus (not coach) in 24 hours:
https://twitter.com/politic_animal/status/1428438081871433731
And yes, he actually does the trip.
The last I remember was 1.6 million and that was for the beginning of July.
How long before someone finds and does a longer one?
https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1429116701598158848?s=19
The increase in wages for low skilled jobs is a big step in the right direction in terms of producing a more cohesive society. If that means another 10p on a cup of cappuccino for the better off its a price well worth paying. We need to drive employers to pay more, to invest more, to improve productivity and to want to train their staff.
In a new book, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, former Guardian journalist Spencer Ackerman argues that the worst damage was self-inflicted, through the impact of the “global war on terror” and all its excesses: torture, mass surveillance, militarism and authoritarianism.
“Of all the endless costs of terrorism, the most important is the least tallied: what fighting it has cost our democracy,” Ackerman writes. “How like America it is not to recognise that the true threat was counterterrorism, nor terrorism.”
The backlash produced a repugnance in US public opinion for foreign intervention.
It isn’t black and white, like anything in life. To pretend otherwise is dishonest.
Why wasn't that on a bus?
I personally thought the letter boxes satire was unpleasant racist dog whistling. But what do I know as a humourless wokist?
I’m always going to support higher salaries for workers but to pretend there are no downsides is just wrong.
https://twitter.com/chriscurtis94/status/1429104991017578497
You need a new horror story to scare the children Scott