But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
You said that. You were wrong to say that.
The JCVI are saying there is a balance to weigh up, he is not. The JCVI are saying there are pros and cons they are considering carefully, he is not. They are completely different things.
The data says that black and ethnic minority citizens are less likely to have been vaccinated than whites in America.
Will Mike and TSE be calling black and ethnic minority citizens who are resistant to taking vaccines ''ignorant cretins? ''
Or is that insult merely for people they would despise in any case, simply because they are Trump supporters...??
You’re putting word in Mike’s mouth. This is the context for his ‘cretins’ epithet: Daniel Darling, senior vice president of communications for the National Religious Broadcasters, was fired Friday (Aug. 27) after refusing to admit his pro-vaccine statements were mistaken…
That’s the idiocy you’re defending.
I am not defending anti-vaxxers. I never have. Vaccines are very effective, although its becoming clearer that they are not as effective as getting and surviving covid.
I am simply asking why one subset of the vaccine hesitant (Trump supporting whites), is called 'ignorant cretins' and not all of those subsets.
You do realise 1 in 3 American evangelicals are not white? Not particularly different to the US population as a whole. So when someone is criticising evangelicals the only link to white/not white criticism from that comment exists in your head, not from the person who said it.
Very few blacks are Trump voters though and yet he mysteriously appears in the header. Its pretty clear who is being singled out here, and its pretty clear why. Fair enough.
There’s nothing mysterious about it. There is a very obvious distinction between hesitancy and denialism, which a i’ve pointed out to you a couple of times in this thread. The latter has become part of a political identity, and is utterly irrational.
Oh I see so all vaccine hesitant people are vaccine hesitant, but some are more justifiably vaccine hesitant than others. The more 'justifiably' vaccine hesitant being black and ethnic minority people, and less 'justifiably' vaccine hesitant white Trump supporters. In other words prejudice, plain and simple. Lets call it what it is.
And as I point out below the only anti-vaxxers I have seen online are medical professionals. IE doctors. Are these people Trump supporters? who the heck knows.
That's remarkable if you've been able to see only the tiny proportion of online antivax nuttery that comes from medical professionals.
Quite so, I wasn't aware that Laurence Fox and his admirers were medical professionals. Far from it. This is a typical Lozza contribution from the other day: In the end, it will be the unvaccinated that preserve the remnants of what used to be a liberal democracy.
I wonder if our contrarian friend supports Lozza's sentiment?
Lozza's output gets ever more crazy. I really don't know where it's all going to end up for him. I somehow can't quite go the whole "denounce this rancid far right commentator!" with him because it's a certain type of dense plonkery that comes through most strongly, plus those Lewises are still playing on repeat and there he still is as Hathaway.
Hathaway was one of my favourite characters on TV. Though I suppose any one of a number of competent actors could easily have played him.
I clearly have a different view on woke to you, and was pleased that someone on telly - an actor, FFS! - said what he did on Question Time. Which wasn't actually terribly controversial with the 90% of the country with its head not up its own arse. He should have stuck there. Or at least, stuck at that level - rational voice calling out the most egregious excesses of woke. Instead, he seems to have become intoxicated by notoriety and sought out edgier and edgier causes. He is, after all, an actor. A breed which lies for a living and often confuses its own intellect and abilities with those of the characters it portrays.
That is what I think has happened with him. He's not the brightest and he's getting high on his own supply. I wouldn't go with "edgy", though, as a description of the sort of stuff he's now pushing. It's all very tawdry.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
In which case we're all doomed anyway*, so what difference the immigration regime will make I don't know. It would still be cheaper for your remote worker in Portugal to keep on working remotely from Portugal even if we were still in the EU and therefore had a completely open border with Portugal.
*Well, most of us are doomed. Amongst the saved are those in niche high-end manufacturing that's too difficult to uproot/not worth the upheaval of moving somewhere with lower labour costs. (Buffs nails.)
We're not doomed.
It's just that those of us born in the UK or the US or Australia or wherever, well we got the Charlie Bucket golden ticket. We got to be better educated than people in the rest of the world, and we got to be paid more for our level of education and intelligence than we would get paid elsewhere in the world.
Of course we attracted immigrants! If you can earn more washing cars in Acton than as an accountant in Albania, then it's pretty logical to try and get to London.
But the world is changing. Technology means that education is going to be available to more people than ever before; and it means that someone can probably do your job for less, and without having to move country.
This doesn't mean we're doomed. It merely means that we'll receive the same reward for a piece of work as someone in Karachi, not a massive multiple based on the lottery of place of birth.
That'll be a hard pill for those in the West to swallow. But it'll be an incredibly opportunity for those in poorer parts of the world.
Well, we shall see in the fullness of time. Certainly an offshoring-induced employment apocalypse has been predicted for a lot longer than, say, the imminent collapse of the Eurozone, but we're no nearer to either actually coming to pass.
I distinctly remember when, about twenty years ago, I used to work in life and pensions. Our call centre got moved to India, so naturally we wondered whether we were next. The computer systems would, presumably, have been easy enough to transfer over, it wouldn't have taken much effort to load the old paper records into a couple of trucks and have them flown out there, companies always love sacking workers to redistribute the wages as executive share options and dividends, and the new admin staff would've been paid a pittance even in comparison to our rubbish wages.
It never happened, of course. Years after I left, thank God, for something better, the office finally closed down as a result of yet another merger, and the work - and all the remaining employees - went five miles down the road. Not to Bangalore.
Thus, I can't summon the energy to get too agitated about whatever this months' Great Upheaval is meant to be. Admittedly personal circumstances play a big part in this - I'm a middle-aged guy with a modest lifestyle, no mortgage, no car, no kids and quite a lot of savings, so I could afford to live off a minimum wage shit job if push came to shove - but, after all the historical episodes that I've already borne mostly passive witness to, I'm simply past the point when the latest prognostications of doom really bother me that much. Provided I don't spend too much time brooding over some of the more potentially catastrophic ones, like the climate crisis, I'm fine.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
There are zillions of examples of the orthodoxy being overturned. As I said it's obvious until it isn't obvious. But if no one asks the questions then nothing moves forward.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
You said that. You were wrong to say that.
The JCVI are saying there is a balance to weigh up, he is not. The JCVI are saying there are pros and cons they are considering carefully, he is not. They are completely different things.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
You said that. You were wrong to say that.
The JCVI are saying there is a balance to weigh up, he is not. The JCVI are saying there are pros and cons they are considering carefully, he is not. They are completely different things.
I’ve said many times that on the whole I would be inclined to offer the vaccine to teenagers if it were my decision (which it isn’t) but one thing we should remember is that many of them are ambivalent on the subject as well. Not just for health reasons either. Many teenagers genuinely do care deeply about the world around them (it’s one of their many great features) and if the opportunity cost of them getting the vaccine is a vulnerable person in Nairobi or Mumbai doesn’t, that gives them pause.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
There are zillions of examples of the orthodoxy being overturned. As I said it's obvious until it isn't obvious. But if no one asks the questions then nothing moves forward.
Asking questions is good.
Giving fraudulent answers to questions is not.
I think you're missing the wood for the trees.
Every dot and comma might not be impeccable but his general thrust is important. Of course there will be overshoot.
@PoliticsForAlI Police cars revolving light | NEW: The doorman at the Aberdeen club is claiming Gove tried to avoid paying the £5 entry fee by boasting he was the “Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster”.
Much as I dislike Gove we’ve all done something like this. In the mid-90s I tried to get into a club in St Petersburg by pretending I was on the crew of Goldeneye.
Isn't Gove going to say all this was research for his vaxports for nightclubs project?
Talk of making him Foreign Secretary this week. I wonder how difficult it would be for a foreign spy agency to get him to compromise himself and find himself blackmailed.
In previous times that would be disqualifying for a senior cabinet role, let alone Foreign Secretary.
Isn't the role of Foreign Secretary redundant anyway ? Since the USA decides our foreign policy for us.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
You said that. You were wrong to say that.
The JCVI are saying there is a balance to weigh up, he is not. The JCVI are saying there are pros and cons they are considering carefully, he is not. They are completely different things.
I’ve said many times that on the whole I would be inclined to offer the vaccine to teenagers if it were my decision (which it isn’t) but one thing we should remember is that many of them are ambivalent on the subject as well. Not just for health reasons either. Many teenagers genuinely do care deeply about the world around them (it’s one of their many great features) and if the opportunity cost of them getting the vaccine is a vulnerable person in Nairobi or Mumbai doesn’t, that gives them pause.
Didn't stop you splashing the cash and hogging the flu vaccine when it should have gone to someone more needy (ie everyone else apart from you).
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
So, much as you may dislike this @rcs1000 I am with you on a lot of this. You are already seeing it. Facebook, Google et al delaying a return to the office and offering “work from wherever but take a pay cut” alternatives to staff, The advantage for firms is they can offer both slightly lower wages - which is a big saving on absolute terms - and reduce their property costs. For many tech firms - US and U.K. - it also means they don’t have to go through expensive Visa processes.
One slight caveat with the Indian analyst example. Our bank tried it nearly 20 years ago and it just didn’t work - the analysts would come in the morning and find some VOD from India had completely fucked up the models and / or decided to do their own thing. It may have changed now.
I think initial experiments of outsourcing parts of the analyst role failed because they thought "building models" was a role distinct from the team.
So you'd have a bunch of people in X, who would know Excel and accounting, but wouldn't know anything about the industry they were supposed to be modeling.
In the future, there won't be a Mumbai Model Team, there'll be a couple of members of the Morgan Stanley Capital Goods research team who are remote.
Yes, I see that and the banks are already doing this, which is why they are paying junior bankers more - it’s another front on the juniorisation of research, replace expensive analysts with cheap ones who are more motivated. MS have been aggressive on this front recently.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
You said that. You were wrong to say that.
The JCVI are saying there is a balance to weigh up, he is not. The JCVI are saying there are pros and cons they are considering carefully, he is not. They are completely different things.
I’ve said many times that on the whole I would be inclined to offer the vaccine to teenagers if it were my decision (which it isn’t) but one thing we should remember is that many of them are ambivalent on the subject as well. Not just for health reasons either. Many teenagers genuinely do care deeply about the world around them (it’s one of their many great features) and if the opportunity cost of them getting the vaccine is a vulnerable person in Nairobi or Mumbai doesn’t, that gives them pause.
Didn't stop you splashing the cash and hogging the flu vaccine when it should have gone to someone more needy (ie everyone else apart from you).
You really are touchy about your military record, aren’t you?
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
Churchill was wrong about lots of things in the Wilderness Years and very unpopular in the Conservative Party. It was not just that he was seen as a treachorous warmonger, and had ratted and re-ratted to whichever party offered him the best chance of a government post, but he was also very active on the wrong side of the abdication crisis and Indian independence.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
Churchill was wrong about lots of things in the Wilderness Years and very unpopular in the Conservative Party. It was not just that he was seen as a treachorous warmonger, and had ratted and re-ratted to whichever party offered him the best chance of a government post, but he was also very active on the wrong side of the abdication crisis and Indian independence.
And Japan and Italy. Don’t forget those. It didn’t help that he was inconsistent in his opposition to appeasement.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
Churchill was wrong about lots of things in the Wilderness Years and very unpopular in the Conservative Party. It was not just that he was seen as a treachorous warmonger, and had ratted and re-ratted to whichever party offered him the best chance of a government post, but he was also very active on the wrong side of the abdication crisis and Indian independence.
Absolutely. But when he came to Hitler, he was certainly seen as bordering on nut job territory
@PoliticsForAlI Police cars revolving light | NEW: The doorman at the Aberdeen club is claiming Gove tried to avoid paying the £5 entry fee by boasting he was the “Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster”.
Much as I dislike Gove we’ve all done something like this. In the mid-90s I tried to get into a club in St Petersburg by pretending I was on the crew of Goldeneye.
Isn't Gove going to say all this was research for his vaxports for nightclubs project?
Talk of making him Foreign Secretary this week. I wonder how difficult it would be for a foreign spy agency to get him to compromise himself and find himself blackmailed.
In previous times that would be disqualifying for a senior cabinet role, let alone Foreign Secretary.
Isn't the role of Foreign Secretary redundant anyway ? Since the USA decides our foreign policy for us.
A gross exaggeration. If that were true then Brexit would never have happened. Obama would've vetoed Cameron's referendum wheeze.
I'll let everyone else scratch each others' eyes out over whether or not it would've been preferable for the Americans to make David Cameron's foreign policy for him, given the subsequent course of events.
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
Farthing's threatening phone call to the MoD official, followed by death threats presumably from 'supporters', was quite something.
I make it quarantine for the doggos will cost about £200k.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
We need contrarians but not contrarian. He's not a moron though. He's a troll who's having a good time on here. Like you.
I know the discussion is relatively complex but that was embarrassing by any measure.
Except not because I'm right. Contrarian posts in jest mostly about Covid. He'll be chuckling as much at your ardent defence of him as 'plucky voice in the wilderness' as at those who write reams to rebut his complete and utter tosh. I know these things. It's my gift and my curse.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
There are zillions of examples of the orthodoxy being overturned. As I said it's obvious until it isn't obvious. But if no one asks the questions then nothing moves forward.
The key is to keep asking questions and be open to changing tack if the question is answered in a honest and forthright way. I think one of the mistakes being made with the anti-vaxxers is the tendency to shout “loon!” when they make a point. Better to explain your point of view (which if it is good enough should be enough and, if not, should make you question your assumptions).
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
You said that. You were wrong to say that.
The JCVI are saying there is a balance to weigh up, he is not. The JCVI are saying there are pros and cons they are considering carefully, he is not. They are completely different things.
I’ve said many times that on the whole I would be inclined to offer the vaccine to teenagers if it were my decision (which it isn’t) but one thing we should remember is that many of them are ambivalent on the subject as well. Not just for health reasons either. Many teenagers genuinely do care deeply about the world around them (it’s one of their many great features) and if the opportunity cost of them getting the vaccine is a vulnerable person in Nairobi or Mumbai doesn’t, that gives them pause.
Didn't stop you splashing the cash and hogging the flu vaccine when it should have gone to someone more needy (ie everyone else apart from you).
You really are touchy about your military record, aren’t you?
Sadly, it’s a bit late to do anything about it.
LOL
If not barista then perhaps farm labourer. The sooner you give your erstwhile students a chance in life by fucking off somewhere else the better for them.
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
Farthing's threatening phone call to the MoD official, followed by death threats presumably from 'supporters', was quite something.
I make it quarantine for the doggos will cost about £200k.
Speaking of extortionate costs and animals, did you get anywhere with that ridiculous cost to euthanase your rabbit? (I think it was you, although I have been dipping in and out and could be wrong.)
@PoliticsForAlI Police cars revolving light | NEW: The doorman at the Aberdeen club is claiming Gove tried to avoid paying the £5 entry fee by boasting he was the “Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster”.
Much as I dislike Gove we’ve all done something like this. In the mid-90s I tried to get into a club in St Petersburg by pretending I was on the crew of Goldeneye.
Isn't Gove going to say all this was research for his vaxports for nightclubs project?
Talk of making him Foreign Secretary this week. I wonder how difficult it would be for a foreign spy agency to get him to compromise himself and find himself blackmailed.
In previous times that would be disqualifying for a senior cabinet role, let alone Foreign Secretary.
Isn't the role of Foreign Secretary redundant anyway ? Since the USA decides our foreign policy for us.
No. And it doesn't. Our foreign policy is of course impacted by them more than anyone else, as they are the dominant global power, but in no sense do they decide for us. China, EU, Russia, and many other countries also impact our foreign policy.
The Tory backbenchers who queued up to lambast the prime minister in the Commons see further evidence that Boris Johnson is no good in a crisis. Reputational damage has also been inflicted on the prime minister’s titular deputy, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab. If a contest to be the next leader of the Conservative party were to be held tomorrow, the chancellor would be the man to beat.
One reason for Mr Johnson to resent Mr Sunak is that he is not the chancellor that the prime minister thought he was getting when he promoted the much younger man to Number 11. His expectation then was that he would be an unshowy and pliant next-door neighbour willing to rubber-stamp all the cheques that the prime minister wanted to cash to make himself popular. [Yet] is keen on self-promotion with a talent for charming Tory MPs.
Jealousy may be another factor at work. Mr Johnson’s personal money troubles are a persistent topic of conversation among his friends and a source of stories that generate a stink.
It is against this background of paranoia and recrimination in Downing Street that the government is heading into an autumn during which spending and debt will be dominant and highly divisive issues.
A relationship made toxic by personal resentments, ideological differences and rival ambitions is a highly combustible cocktail.
I did briefly wonder if Rishi Sunak leaked the swimming pool story himself in order to wind up his neighbour who is still smarting over having to pay for some overpriced wallpaper and a new couch he thought he was getting for free. Of course he did not but that may well be its effect.
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
They aren't any of them cute and cuddly, they've been handed in because their owners can't cope with them. The "rescue" thing is a fraud - a rescue centre is in reality a second hand dog shop, with purchases prices rebadged as "rehoming fees."
I’ve had notification tonight that I’ve been identified as a close contact of someone who is positive for Covid. Accordingly, and in line with the rules, I’ll be self-isolating pending a PCR test result. My thanks to all the contact tracers working so hard in NHS Test & Protect. https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1432059509133004801
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
You said that. You were wrong to say that.
The JCVI are saying there is a balance to weigh up, he is not. The JCVI are saying there are pros and cons they are considering carefully, he is not. They are completely different things.
I’ve said many times that on the whole I would be inclined to offer the vaccine to teenagers if it were my decision (which it isn’t) but one thing we should remember is that many of them are ambivalent on the subject as well. Not just for health reasons either. Many teenagers genuinely do care deeply about the world around them (it’s one of their many great features) and if the opportunity cost of them getting the vaccine is a vulnerable person in Nairobi or Mumbai doesn’t, that gives them pause.
Didn't stop you splashing the cash and hogging the flu vaccine when it should have gone to someone more needy (ie everyone else apart from you).
You really are touchy about your military record, aren’t you?
Sadly, it’s a bit late to do anything about it.
LOL
If not barista then perhaps farm labourer. The sooner you give your erstwhile students a chance in life by fucking off somewhere else the better for them.
And is this you going back to ignoring me?
Well, quarrels like this are tedious for everyone else.
I can’t help the fact that you got where you are because your mother was having sex with the right man (the right man being your father, and your father being Mr Topping Sr, to avoid any ambiguity) nine months before you were born, despite the fact you are a coward, a liar, a bully and clearly rather dim.
Equally, you can’t seem to deal with the fact that I’m highly intelligent, have published several articles and written four books, been in teaching less than ten years and risen to senior management on my own merits before deciding I’m fed up taking orders from people as nasty and stupid as you and want to try something else.
But why should we inflict that argument on others? The facts are not going to change even if you have difficulty dealing with facts as we see in your increasingly bizarre defences of contrarian (‘only one view’ doesn’t apply to facts unless you are Trump’s press secretary).
Much easier just to ignore each other.
After all, your slightly strange hatred for and jealousy of me is your problem. Given your evident flaws I can wear it as a badge of honour.
At the same time, I’m sitting peacefully in my garden and enjoying your impotent rage while you reveal yourself in full colours.
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
They aren't any of them cute and cuddly, they've been handed in because their owners can't cope with them. The "rescue" thing is a fraud - a rescue centre is in reality a second hand dog shop, with purchases prices rebadged as "rehoming fees."
That is pushing it a bit - quite a lot of well-loved animals have to be given up, particularly in cases where owners have died, gone into care homes or fallen upon hard times - but there's a significant fraction of psychologically disturbed cases as well.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
We need contrarians but not contrarian. He's not a moron though. He's a troll who's having a good time on here. Like you.
I know the discussion is relatively complex but that was embarrassing by any measure.
Except not because I'm right. Contrarian posts in jest mostly about Covid. He'll be chuckling as much at your ardent defence of him as 'plucky voice in the wilderness' as at those who write reams to rebut his complete and utter tosh. I know these things. It's my gift and my curse.
Yes you are right. I have understood for quite some time how important it is for you to believe that so here it is from me, and I know if it doesn't come from me it's not that important for you: You are right. Great analysis.
I’ve had notification tonight that I’ve been identified as a close contact of someone who is positive for Covid. Accordingly, and in line with the rules, I’ll be self-isolating pending a PCR test result. My thanks to all the contact tracers working so hard in NHS Test & Protect. https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1432059509133004801
Is that the rule in Scotland?
I thought you don't need to self-isolate if pinged provided you've been double-vaccinated >14 days ago in England.
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
Farthing's threatening phone call to the MoD official, followed by death threats presumably from 'supporters', was quite something.
I make it quarantine for the doggos will cost about £200k.
Does anyone know how much truth, if any, there is in the threatening phone call allegations?
I'm assuming that the cost of quarantine, at least, will fall upon the charity rather than the taxpayer? Although that said, to the extent that any donations to the charity have been gift aided, we'll all collectively be stumping up some of the costs indirectly.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
You said that. You were wrong to say that.
The JCVI are saying there is a balance to weigh up, he is not. The JCVI are saying there are pros and cons they are considering carefully, he is not. They are completely different things.
I’ve said many times that on the whole I would be inclined to offer the vaccine to teenagers if it were my decision (which it isn’t) but one thing we should remember is that many of them are ambivalent on the subject as well. Not just for health reasons either. Many teenagers genuinely do care deeply about the world around them (it’s one of their many great features) and if the opportunity cost of them getting the vaccine is a vulnerable person in Nairobi or Mumbai doesn’t, that gives them pause.
Didn't stop you splashing the cash and hogging the flu vaccine when it should have gone to someone more needy (ie everyone else apart from you).
You really are touchy about your military record, aren’t you?
Sadly, it’s a bit late to do anything about it.
LOL
If not barista then perhaps farm labourer. The sooner you give your erstwhile students a chance in life by fucking off somewhere else the better for them.
And is this you going back to ignoring me?
Well, quarrels like this are tedious for everyone else.
I can’t help the fact that you got where you are because your mother was having sex with the right man (the right man being your father, and your father being Mr Topping Sr, to avoid any ambiguity) nine months before you were born, despite the fact you are a coward, a liar, a bully and clearly rather dim.
Equally, you can’t seem to deal with the fact that I’m highly intelligent, have published several articles and written four books, been in teaching less than ten years and risen to senior management on my own merits before deciding I’m fed up taking orders from people as nasty and stupid as you and want to try something else.
But why should we inflict that argument on others? The facts are not going to change even if you have difficulty dealing with facts as we see in your increasingly bizarre defences of contrarian (‘only one view’ doesn’t apply to facts unless you are Trump’s press secretary).
Much easier just to ignore each other.
After all, your slightly strange hatred for and jealousy of me is your problem. Given your evident flaws I can wear it as a badge of honour.
At the same time, I’m sitting peacefully in my garden and enjoying your impotent rage while you reveal yourself in full colours.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
I don't think Trump can really be blamed too much for this given even he told his supporters to get the vaccine
TBF to Trump he was banking on vaccine from the start. I am not sure he understood exactly what constitutes a vaccine, leading us down the road of ingesting household chemicals, but in this instance I think in very general terms he was always on the right track.
The argument around the economic impact of a reduced labour market is complex and has many nuances.
To this observer, the most obvious impact is rising labour costs should be leading companies to invest in improving business processes through technology whether though improved business systems or even the use of robots. It's not a question of whether a robot can serve you coffee (probably could) but whether the current way the process of ordering, preparation and delivery can be made more efficient and improved.
The skilled worker will be at an advantage if the skills are transferrable - they can almost command a wage, either you pay me more or I'm off to a company that will.
The alternative approach is to look to outsource - in a sense, home or remote working is a form of outsourcing especially if organisations take the opportunity to reduce or re-configure their space away from the traditional banks of desks to something more useful. Obviously, the thorny old issue of sending it all to a business park in Bangalore will raise its head but are the savings that obvious?
We've already heard @rcs1000 claiming there'll be a new push for outsourcing - I doubt it. Companies and organisations who mange their property portfolios adroitly will realise some significant benefits.
As for unskilled workers, they too will be better off at least initially subject to them performing a function which can't be easily automated. The suspicion is future immigration policy will be focussed on bridging perceived or actual skills gaps or temporary requirements for unskilled workers.
The other aspect of home or remote working is the re-invigoration of commuter towns and dormitories during the day as places for home workers to go for lunch or entertainment. That may be to the detriment of the City centre but the small town or village and especially those with a few artisan or "unique" shops is going to prosper.
Outsourcing is perhaps the wrong word.
The point is that you no longer need to be in the office to do work. And that has been demonstrated in many, many businesses over the last 18 months.
And if you no longer need to be in London, why do you actually have to be in the UK?
Saying "oh it didn't work 20 years ago" misses the point. Two decades ago people didn't have 200mb/second internet at home, there was no Slack or Zoom. If you were at home you *might* have access to the file server via a VPN. But that was the preserve of Senior Management supported by a massive IT department.
We would never have considered remote employees a decade ago. Now we're contemplating not ever again getting a London office.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
I’ve had notification tonight that I’ve been identified as a close contact of someone who is positive for Covid. Accordingly, and in line with the rules, I’ll be self-isolating pending a PCR test result. My thanks to all the contact tracers working so hard in NHS Test & Protect. https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1432059509133004801
Is that the rule in Scotland?
I thought you don't need to self-isolate if pinged provided you've been double-vaccinated >14 days ago in England.
Although not 100% clear, it's implied by the end of that tweet that she may have been notified by NHS contact tracers rather than by the app - in which case, self-isolation is still a requirement (and I believe that's the case on both sides of the border.)
The Scottish online advice covering these circumstances says the following:
If you’re a close contact of someone who has tested positive
You should book a PCR test as soon as possible if you're a close contact of someone who has tested positive.
If you’re a close contact but you’ve already tested positive in the past 90 days, you should not get tested unless you develop new symptoms yourself.
Elsewhere, there is advice stating that you must follow the instructions of the contact tracers, even if you have been vaccinated, followed by this:
If you're fully vaccinated
As a close contact, you can end self-isolation if all of the following apply:
*you're fully vaccinated – this means you’ve received 2 doses from the NHS and have had your second dose more than 14 days ago *you receive a negative PCR test result *you do not have, or develop, symptoms
If you’re a close contact and you’ve tested positive for coronavirus in the last 90 days, you do not have to self-isolate or book a test if you’re fully vaccinated unless you develop new symptoms.
Based on all of that, I'm assuming that Nicola Sturgeon will be stuck at home until she (presumably) gets her negative PCR result back, upon which event she gets let straight back out.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
So, much as you may dislike this @rcs1000 I am with you on a lot of this. You are already seeing it. Facebook, Google et al delaying a return to the office and offering “work from wherever but take a pay cut” alternatives to staff, The advantage for firms is they can offer both slightly lower wages - which is a big saving on absolute terms - and reduce their property costs. For many tech firms - US and U.K. - it also means they don’t have to go through expensive Visa processes.
One slight caveat with the Indian analyst example. Our bank tried it nearly 20 years ago and it just didn’t work - the analysts would come in the morning and find some VOD from India had completely fucked up the models and / or decided to do their own thing. It may have changed now.
I think initial experiments of outsourcing parts of the analyst role failed because they thought "building models" was a role distinct from the team.
So you'd have a bunch of people in X, who would know Excel and accounting, but wouldn't know anything about the industry they were supposed to be modeling.
In the future, there won't be a Mumbai Model Team, there'll be a couple of members of the Morgan Stanley Capital Goods research team who are remote.
Yes, I see that and the banks are already doing this, which is why they are paying junior bankers more - it’s another front on the juniorisation of research, replace expensive analysts with cheap ones who are more motivated. MS have been aggressive on this front recently.
The reality is that in any given sector, there'll be two or three star analysts, and there'll be a bunch of newly minted MBAs.
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
Farthing's threatening phone call to the MoD official, followed by death threats presumably from 'supporters', was quite something.
I make it quarantine for the doggos will cost about £200k.
Does anyone know how much truth, if any, there is in the threatening phone call allegations?
I'm assuming that the cost of quarantine, at least, will fall upon the charity rather than the taxpayer? Although that said, to the extent that any donations to the charity have been gift aided, we'll all collectively be stumping up some of the costs indirectly.
It was on voicemail. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
He could have waved his animals goodbye and stayed in Kabul...
Based on all of that, I'm assuming that Nicola Sturgeon will be stuck at home until she (presumably) gets her negative PCR result back, upon which event she gets let straight back out.
You make her sound like a prisoner on remand or something.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
Yes his mistake was not sticking to his agreement to back Howard for leader in 1997. Then Howard would have beaten Clarke but lost to Blair in 2001 and Hague would have been ideally placed to win the 2001 leadership election rather than IDS and he would have made the gains Howard did in 2005 after Iraq while still being young enough unlike Howard to stay leader.
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
Farthing's threatening phone call to the MoD official, followed by death threats presumably from 'supporters', was quite something.
I make it quarantine for the doggos will cost about £200k.
Does anyone know how much truth, if any, there is in the threatening phone call allegations?
I'm assuming that the cost of quarantine, at least, will fall upon the charity rather than the taxpayer? Although that said, to the extent that any donations to the charity have been gift aided, we'll all collectively be stumping up some of the costs indirectly.
It was on voicemail. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
He could have waved his animals goodbye and stayed in Kabul...
After all his blathering, how he could have got on the transport when his staff were left behind is extraordinary.
The number of new Covid cases reported in Scotland has hit another record high of 7,113.
Around two thirds of cases are in the under-40 group. About 30% of Covid-related hospital admissions in the last month were also from the same age bracket.
Is the date on the age brake down of Scottish cases available?
On the gov COVID dashboard, there is an breakdown by age group for England but not Scotland. it would be good to see how much of the growth in cases in Scotland over the last 2 weeks has been in school age kids.
Or a breakdown of whether they're suffering any symptoms or not, bearing in mind that "asymptomatic Covid" is an oxymoron. The 7113 stat seems to be the number of people who've tested positive for SARSCoV2 in the past 24 hours, regardless of whether they're at death's door, otherwise in hospital, or feeling as fit as a fiddle. Only 507 are "in hospital with Covid" and one presumes they aren't all new cases. How many were even hospitalised for symptoms of Covid? Which hasn't stopped the BBC from using the stat as support for the notion that the NHS faces a "perfect storm".
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
Farthing's threatening phone call to the MoD official, followed by death threats presumably from 'supporters', was quite something.
I make it quarantine for the doggos will cost about £200k.
Does anyone know how much truth, if any, there is in the threatening phone call allegations?
I'm assuming that the cost of quarantine, at least, will fall upon the charity rather than the taxpayer? Although that said, to the extent that any donations to the charity have been gift aided, we'll all collectively be stumping up some of the costs indirectly.
It was on voicemail. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
He could have waved his animals goodbye and stayed in Kabul...
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
They aren't any of them cute and cuddly, they've been handed in because their owners can't cope with them. The "rescue" thing is a fraud - a rescue centre is in reality a second hand dog shop, with purchases prices rebadged as "rehoming fees."
That is pushing it a bit - quite a lot of well-loved animals have to be given up, particularly in cases where owners have died, gone into care homes or fallen upon hard times - but there's a significant fraction of psychologically disturbed cases as well.
That's fair enough. Some rescue dogs are absolutely fine, but others have (in my friends' and neighbours' experience) proved irredeemable.
I don't think Trump can really be blamed too much for this given even he told his supporters to get the vaccine
TBF to Trump he was banking on vaccine from the start. I am not sure he understood exactly what constitutes a vaccine, leading us down the road of ingesting household chemicals, but in this instance I think in very general terms he was always on the right track.
Mmmm....
Jan. 22, 2020 “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
Feb. 2, 2020 “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
Feb. 10, 2020 "Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
Feb. 24, 2020 “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… the Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
May 8, 2020 “This is going to go away without a vaccine. It is going to go away. We are not going to see it again.”
May 9, 2020 “This is going to go away without a vaccine.”
June 15, 2020 “At some point this stuff goes away and it’s going away.”
June 17, 2020 “It’s fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
Yes his mistake was not sticking to his agreement to back Howard for leader in 1997. Then Howard would have beaten Clarke but lost to Blair in 2001 and Hague would have been ideally placed to win the 2001 leadership election rather than IDS and he would have made the gains Howard did in 2005 after Iraq while still being young enough unlike Howard to stay leader.
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
Had he not stood, Clarke (not Howard) would have won. But that couldn’t possibly have been worse than Hague’s leadership which just oozed inexperience from every pore. At least Clarke would have been a credible voice on the economy.
Howard might have won a leadership contest in 2001, and then Hague could have taken over in 2005.
And that would have been the right time. Hague vs Brown would surely have been a small overall majority for the Tories.
Canada poll tracker tonight has the Conservatives ahead in the popular vote on average by 32.9% to 31.8% for the Liberals with the NDP on 20%.
Yet the Liberals are projected to still win most seats, 143 to 129 for the Conservatives. However that will be entirely down to Quebec with the Liberals projected to win 34-44 seats there to just 9-13 for the Conservatives
It would be the first time Quebec has made the difference in a Canadian election since Justin Trudeau's father Pierre's Liberals narrowly beat Joe Clark's Progressive Conservatives in 1980
Canada poll tracker tonight has the Conservatives ahead in the popular vote on average by 32.9% to 31.8% for the Liberals with the NDP on 20%.
Yet the Liberals are projected to still win most seats, 143 to 129 for the Conservatives. However that will be entirely down to Quebec with the Liberals projected to win 34-44 seats there to just 9-13 for the Conservatives
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
So in your parallel universe of PM Hague, Johnson remains an itinerant game show host, Corbyn is still utterly hopeless, but incognito, and the EU Referendum never happens because Hague is less arrogant than Dave.
I like it, but can I remind you of Hague's "save the pound" campaign. He was not averse to foolishness, or do you put that episode down to youthful exuberance?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
There are zillions of examples of the orthodoxy being overturned. As I said it's obvious until it isn't obvious. But if no one asks the questions then nothing moves forward.
Asking questions is good.
Giving fraudulent answers to questions is not.
Crappy rhetoric referring to air raid shelters and the obvious logical problem with what you say about what caused what you saw in footage from India etc. aren't great either.
My guess is that those among the lurkers here who are unvaccinated - who surely are not all flat-Earthers, Trumpians, moon landing sceptics, evangelicals, table-thumpers, right-wing, whatever - will not be rushing to participate here on the vaccination issue, for fear of the keyboard kicking they might get. (I say this with constructive intent: if you want to hear from some of them, maybe tone it down a bit.)
Canada poll tracker tonight has the Conservatives ahead in the popular vote on average by 32.9% to 31.8% for the Liberals with the NDP on 20%.
Yet the Liberals are projected to still win most seats, 143 to 129 for the Conservatives. However that will be entirely down to Quebec with the Liberals projected to win 34-44 seats there to just 9-13 for the Conservatives
The key is Ontario - can the Conservatives get a big enough swing from the Liberals there to pick up lots of seats? If not then Liberals will still be the biggest party even if they are second in the share of the vote.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
Yes his mistake was not sticking to his agreement to back Howard for leader in 1997. Then Howard would have beaten Clarke but lost to Blair in 2001 and Hague would have been ideally placed to win the 2001 leadership election rather than IDS and he would have made the gains Howard did in 2005 after Iraq while still being young enough unlike Howard to stay leader.
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
Had he not stood, Clarke (not Howard) would have won. But that couldn’t possibly have been worse than Hague’s leadership which just oozed inexperience from every pore. At least Clarke would have been a credible voice on the economy.
Howard might have won a leadership contest in 2001, and then Hague could have taken over in 2005.
And that would have been the right time. Hague vs Brown would surely have been a small overall majority for the Tories.
Howard I think would have beaten Clarke as the Eurosceptic candidate in the final round in 1997 but yes I agree Hague v Brown would surely have seen Hague in No 10
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
Churchill was wrong about lots of things in the Wilderness Years and very unpopular in the Conservative Party. It was not just that he was seen as a treachorous warmonger, and had ratted and re-ratted to whichever party offered him the best chance of a government post, but he was also very active on the wrong side of the abdication crisis and Indian independence.
Absolutely. But when he came to Hitler, he was certainly seen as bordering on nut job territory
Canada poll tracker tonight has the Conservatives ahead in the popular vote on average by 32.9% to 31.8% for the Liberals with the NDP on 20%.
Yet the Liberals are projected to still win most seats, 143 to 129 for the Conservatives. However that will be entirely down to Quebec with the Liberals projected to win 34-44 seats there to just 9-13 for the Conservatives
The key is Ontario - can the Conservatives get a big enough swing from the Liberals there to pick up lots of seats? If not then Liberals will still be the biggest party even if they are second in the share of the vote.
The other big question is what happens to the NDP: because they are significantly to the Left of the Liberals.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
So in your parallel universe of PM Hague, Johnson remains an itinerant game show host, Corbyn is still utterly hopeless, but incognito, and the EU Referendum never happens because Hague is less arrogant than Dave.
I like it, but can I remind you of Hague's "save the pound" campaign. He was not averse to foolishness, or do you put that episode down to youthful exuberance?
I put that down to desperation. He had (or so I gather) been shown polling that suggested even his core vote was drifting away from him because they preferred Tony Blair. He decided he need to frighten them back into line.
That would scarcely have been a problem in 2010.
Equally, it has tainted his reputation and is another example of where his inexperience told against him.
It has to be said Clarke and Howard,who both quit the front bench during his leadership leaving him with the likes of Peter Lilley, Michael Ancram and the misfiring Portillo as his supporters, did not help matters. But he looked five years short of being ready.
I should add - I voted for him, but largely because I was angry at Blair calling an election in the middle of FMD. In 2010, I would have voted for him as a potential PM.
Telegraph saying the decision as to when and who gets booster is awaiting results of a major trial led by Southampton
They will establish the Solent facts via a Test and get it Wight.
Come on, this deserves about 30 likes
I don't know, @ydoethur is far too Hamble to want a lot of likes.
That’s the Gosport truth.
(Yeah, that’s a feeble one, but it’s the best I could manage, Southampton not being a Cinque port.)
Netley. Cowes it's tricky in those circs.
I tried to get Calshot in, but I couldn't. Fascinating place which HYUFD would love as it has a Henry VIII coastal fort. With the addition of a WW1 seaplane base and a WW2 Sunderland flying boat hangars. All on a long spit of land reached by a long drive past Fawley Refinery.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
So in your parallel universe of PM Hague, Johnson remains an itinerant game show host, Corbyn is still utterly hopeless, but incognito, and the EU Referendum never happens because Hague is less arrogant than Dave.
I like it, but can I remind you of Hague's "save the pound" campaign. He was not averse to foolishness, or do you put that episode down to youthful exuberance?
Actually, freed of the burdens of the Premiership, Boris Johnson would have been able to develop the vaccine by the end of April 2020, and Covid would have been largely averted.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
He's written several well regarded books.
Hard to make that pay particularly well. One book every two years that sells 50,000 copies (which makes it a best seller), is not going to keep you in Nyetimber.
I do not understand the attraction of Milford Haven when Holyhead would love to have them, and even has a load of empty docking facilities that would take them.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
So in your parallel universe of PM Hague, Johnson remains an itinerant game show host, Corbyn is still utterly hopeless, but incognito, and the EU Referendum never happens because Hague is less arrogant than Dave.
I like it, but can I remind you of Hague's "save the pound" campaign. He was not averse to foolishness, or do you put that episode down to youthful exuberance?
Actually, freed of the burdens of the Premiership, Boris Johnson would have been able to develop the vaccine by the end of April 2020, and Covid would have been largely averted.
You forgot clean fusion energy. And the resolution of Goldbach's Conjecture. Not to mention the missing books of Livy.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
There are zillions of examples of the orthodoxy being overturned. As I said it's obvious until it isn't obvious. But if no one asks the questions then nothing moves forward.
Asking questions is good.
Giving fraudulent answers to questions is not.
Crappy rhetoric referring to air raid shelters and the obvious logical problem with what you say about what caused what you saw in footage from India etc. aren't great either.
My guess is that those among the lurkers here who are unvaccinated - who surely are not all flat-Earthers, Trumpians, moon landing sceptics, evangelicals, table-thumpers, right-wing, whatever - will not be rushing to participate here on the vaccination issue, for fear of the keyboard kicking they might get. (I say this with constructive intent: if you want to hear from some of them, maybe tone it down a bit.)
I can't read your posts without being reminded of that Dylan line "It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe." So come on, genius, what was really going on in that India footage?
The argument around the economic impact of a reduced labour market is complex and has many nuances.
To this observer, the most obvious impact is rising labour costs should be leading companies to invest in improving business processes through technology whether though improved business systems or even the use of robots. It's not a question of whether a robot can serve you coffee (probably could) but whether the current way the process of ordering, preparation and delivery can be made more efficient and improved.
The skilled worker will be at an advantage if the skills are transferrable - they can almost command a wage, either you pay me more or I'm off to a company that will.
The alternative approach is to look to outsource - in a sense, home or remote working is a form of outsourcing especially if organisations take the opportunity to reduce or re-configure their space away from the traditional banks of desks to something more useful. Obviously, the thorny old issue of sending it all to a business park in Bangalore will raise its head but are the savings that obvious?
We've already heard @rcs1000 claiming there'll be a new push for outsourcing - I doubt it. Companies and organisations who mange their property portfolios adroitly will realise some significant benefits.
As for unskilled workers, they too will be better off at least initially subject to them performing a function which can't be easily automated. The suspicion is future immigration policy will be focussed on bridging perceived or actual skills gaps or temporary requirements for unskilled workers.
The other aspect of home or remote working is the re-invigoration of commuter towns and dormitories during the day as places for home workers to go for lunch or entertainment. That may be to the detriment of the City centre but the small town or village and especially those with a few artisan or "unique" shops is going to prosper.
Outsourcing is perhaps the wrong word.
The point is that you no longer need to be in the office to do work. And that has been demonstrated in many, many businesses over the last 18 months.
And if you no longer need to be in London, why do you actually have to be in the UK?
Saying "oh it didn't work 20 years ago" misses the point. Two decades ago people didn't have 200mb/second internet at home, there was no Slack or Zoom. If you were at home you *might* have access to the file server via a VPN. But that was the preserve of Senior Management supported by a massive IT department.
We would never have considered remote employees a decade ago. Now we're contemplating not ever again getting a London office.
That's a pretty major shift.
Yes but I think there are some issues not factored in with remote working, some of which @TheScreamingEagles has occasionally mentioned. One is security; one-and-a-half is confidentiality. Then there is tax: if your employees each work in a different country, are you deducting (or not) income tax or the local equivalents correctly? And H&S legislation as it might affect their home offices? Then there is extra-territorial legislation like the Bribery Act or the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or whatever is the Latvian equivalent – and by "or" I mean "and" because all might apply to the same transaction.
I expect you are right that WFH and foreign WFH will continue to grow but for some employers, there will be tears before bedtime.
I do not understand the attraction of Milford Haven when Holyhead would love to have them, and even has a load of empty docking facilities that would take them.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
Yes his mistake was not sticking to his agreement to back Howard for leader in 1997. Then Howard would have beaten Clarke but lost to Blair in 2001 and Hague would have been ideally placed to win the 2001 leadership election rather than IDS and he would have made the gains Howard did in 2005 after Iraq while still being young enough unlike Howard to stay leader.
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
Had he not stood, Clarke (not Howard) would have won. But that couldn’t possibly have been worse than Hague’s leadership which just oozed inexperience from every pore. At least Clarke would have been a credible voice on the economy.
Howard might have won a leadership contest in 2001, and then Hague could have taken over in 2005.
And that would have been the right time. Hague vs Brown would surely have been a small overall majority for the Tories.
Howard I think would have beaten Clarke as the Eurosceptic candidate in the final round in 1997 but yes I agree Hague v Brown would surely have seen Hague in No 10
I don’t agree - because actually I think the Eurosceptic vote would, like Redwood himself, have broken for Clarke had Thatcher not intervened as a late revenge for Clarke’s role in her ousting, simply on the basis of a Clarke’s talent and appeal - but ultimately that would be a sterile discussion. We can’t know who would have won, however much we might read the tea leaves.
All we can say is that Hague despite his many qualities that could have made him an excellent PM at the right time wasn’t ready. And I think - for once! - we’re all on PB on common ground here.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
Yes his mistake was not sticking to his agreement to back Howard for leader in 1997. Then Howard would have beaten Clarke but lost to Blair in 2001 and Hague would have been ideally placed to win the 2001 leadership election rather than IDS and he would have made the gains Howard did in 2005 after Iraq while still being young enough unlike Howard to stay leader.
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
Had he not stood, Clarke (not Howard) would have won. But that couldn’t possibly have been worse than Hague’s leadership which just oozed inexperience from every pore. At least Clarke would have been a credible voice on the economy.
Howard might have won a leadership contest in 2001, and then Hague could have taken over in 2005.
And that would have been the right time. Hague vs Brown would surely have been a small overall majority for the Tories.
Surely it was Hague's own decision to retire from frontline politics when he stood down as Foreign Secretary late in the 2010 Parliament. Had he still the ambition and remained an MP, he would likely have been a serious contender to succeed Cameron in 2016 - but he had moved on to another life by that time.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
Yes his mistake was not sticking to his agreement to back Howard for leader in 1997. Then Howard would have beaten Clarke but lost to Blair in 2001 and Hague would have been ideally placed to win the 2001 leadership election rather than IDS and he would have made the gains Howard did in 2005 after Iraq while still being young enough unlike Howard to stay leader.
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
Had he not stood, Clarke (not Howard) would have won. But that couldn’t possibly have been worse than Hague’s leadership which just oozed inexperience from every pore. At least Clarke would have been a credible voice on the economy.
Howard might have won a leadership contest in 2001, and then Hague could have taken over in 2005.
And that would have been the right time. Hague vs Brown would surely have been a small overall majority for the Tories.
Surely it was Hague's own decision to retire from frontline politics when he stood down as Foreign Secretary late in the 2010 Parliament. Had he still the ambition and remained an MP, he would likely have been a serious contender to succeed Cameron in 2016 - but he had moved on to another life by that time.
What was it the press said - he’d take the leadership if offered, a la Howard, but wouldn’t stand for it.
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
Yes his mistake was not sticking to his agreement to back Howard for leader in 1997. Then Howard would have beaten Clarke but lost to Blair in 2001 and Hague would have been ideally placed to win the 2001 leadership election rather than IDS and he would have made the gains Howard did in 2005 after Iraq while still being young enough unlike Howard to stay leader.
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
Had he not stood, Clarke (not Howard) would have won. But that couldn’t possibly have been worse than Hague’s leadership which just oozed inexperience from every pore. At least Clarke would have been a credible voice on the economy.
Howard might have won a leadership contest in 2001, and then Hague could have taken over in 2005.
And that would have been the right time. Hague vs Brown would surely have been a small overall majority for the Tories.
Howard I think would have beaten Clarke as the Eurosceptic candidate in the final round in 1997 but yes I agree Hague v Brown would surely have seen Hague in No 10
I don’t agree - because actually I think the Eurosceptic vote would, like Redwood himself, have broken for Clarke had Thatcher not intervened as a late revenge for Clarke’s role in her ousting, simply on the basis of a Clarke’s talent and appeal - but ultimately that would be a sterile discussion. We can’t know who would have won, however much we might read the tea leaves.
All we can say is that Hague despite his many qualities that could have made him an excellent PM at the right time wasn’t ready. And I think - for once! - we’re all on PB on common ground here.
Thatcher would surely have endorsed Howard instead of Hague to be the stop Clarke candidate.
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
Farthing's threatening phone call to the MoD official, followed by death threats presumably from 'supporters', was quite something.
I make it quarantine for the doggos will cost about £200k.
Does anyone know how much truth, if any, there is in the threatening phone call allegations?
I'm assuming that the cost of quarantine, at least, will fall upon the charity rather than the taxpayer? Although that said, to the extent that any donations to the charity have been gift aided, we'll all collectively be stumping up some of the costs indirectly.
It was on voicemail. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
He could have waved his animals goodbye and stayed in Kabul...
After all his blathering, how he could have got on the transport when his staff were left behind is extraordinary.
Agreed Pen Farthing´s behaviour -as reported- is pretty terrible, but on the other hand he is clearly being set up to take some flack while Raab et al try and spread the heat from the unfolding catastophe. Mic Wright´s The Conquest of the Useless blog is, as usual, on the money for the smears emerging from the various press offices that are attempting to share the shit around a bit.
However, the truth is that the whole stramash is a fiasco qua non, and in the end the buck stops with Downing St... so good luck pushing any kind of accountability onto Worzel and still less the tenth rate cretins that comprise his cabinet.
Tom Tugendhat¨s speach may be yesterday´s chip wrapper, but there are plenty of Tory MPs who are in an existential despair at what is happening and Worzel will be in deep do-do if the remaining Brits (and protected Afghans) are indeed put to the sword.
An easily understood story of a guy taking up maybe 60 human seats with 200 dogs instead is manna from heaven for the dirty tricks brigade, but I am not sure that it will be sufficient distraction to save Clueless Raab or even Qinietiq Wallace once the butchers bill is in.
"DHSC ‘playbook’ orders trusts to describe big building projects as ‘new hospitals’
Building plan A communications ‘playbook’ for the government’s NHS building programme tells trusts that major refurbishments and new wings/units which are part of the scheme ‘must always be referred to as a new hospital’. "
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
Yes his mistake was not sticking to his agreement to back Howard for leader in 1997. Then Howard would have beaten Clarke but lost to Blair in 2001 and Hague would have been ideally placed to win the 2001 leadership election rather than IDS and he would have made the gains Howard did in 2005 after Iraq while still being young enough unlike Howard to stay leader.
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
Had he not stood, Clarke (not Howard) would have won. But that couldn’t possibly have been worse than Hague’s leadership which just oozed inexperience from every pore. At least Clarke would have been a credible voice on the economy.
Howard might have won a leadership contest in 2001, and then Hague could have taken over in 2005.
And that would have been the right time. Hague vs Brown would surely have been a small overall majority for the Tories.
Surely it was Hague's own decision to retire from frontline politics when he stood down as Foreign Secretary late in the 2010 Parliament. Had he still the ambition and remained an MP, he would likely have been a serious contender to succeed Cameron in 2016 - but he had moved on to another life by that time.
Yes, that may be so. He probably doesn't want the NATO job now.
Here's a rhetorical question: If a large fraction of us refuse to get jabbed, in spite of science urging otherwise, how probable is it that most the world community will believe in global climate change and significantly modify their life style accordingly?
"DHSC ‘playbook’ orders trusts to describe big building projects as ‘new hospitals’
Building plan A communications ‘playbook’ for the government’s NHS building programme tells trusts that major refurbishments and new wings/units which are part of the scheme ‘must always be referred to as a new hospital’. "
This I don't get. Folk know if they have a new hospital. There is one where there wasn't before. A new unit is not that. If they hear there is one in Plymouth say (whether it is a real one or not), their reaction will be where is ours?
Deepti Gurdasani @dgurdasani1 · 12m Later this week, we will have unvaccinated children going to school in England with infection rates 26x higher than they were in Sept last year, with a more transmissible variant. Last Sept cases quadrupled after schools reopened in 4 weeks. What's going to happen this time?
What is he actually doing these days? He was only 55/6when he left the Commons - surely too young to retire?
Well he is a member of the Lords and is chairman of the Royal Foundation, a charity under the auspices of the Cambridges and is VP of Friends of the British Library.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
Well, there are worse fates in life I suppose.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
Yes his mistake was not sticking to his agreement to back Howard for leader in 1997. Then Howard would have beaten Clarke but lost to Blair in 2001 and Hague would have been ideally placed to win the 2001 leadership election rather than IDS and he would have made the gains Howard did in 2005 after Iraq while still being young enough unlike Howard to stay leader.
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
Had he not stood, Clarke (not Howard) would have won. But that couldn’t possibly have been worse than Hague’s leadership which just oozed inexperience from every pore. At least Clarke would have been a credible voice on the economy.
Howard might have won a leadership contest in 2001, and then Hague could have taken over in 2005.
And that would have been the right time. Hague vs Brown would surely have been a small overall majority for the Tories.
Howard I think would have beaten Clarke as the Eurosceptic candidate in the final round in 1997 but yes I agree Hague v Brown would surely have seen Hague in No 10
I don’t agree - because actually I think the Eurosceptic vote would, like Redwood himself, have broken for Clarke had Thatcher not intervened as a late revenge for Clarke’s role in her ousting, simply on the basis of a Clarke’s talent and appeal - but ultimately that would be a sterile discussion. We can’t know who would have won, however much we might read the tea leaves.
All we can say is that Hague despite his many qualities that could have made him an excellent PM at the right time wasn’t ready. And I think - for once! - we’re all on PB on common ground here.
Thatcher would surely have endorsed Howard instead of Hague to be the stop Clarke candidate.
Though agree on Hague
I think that unlikely, because he was one of those who told her she couldn’t win (although not as acidly as Clarke) so was another of the ‘smiling traitors’she bore such a long grudge against.
Hague, however, was untainted. He had only been in Parliament eighteen months when she was removed and was chiefly known for *that* speech in 1977. The fact that he wasn’t involved must have made it easier for her to back him against Clarke.
But, I could easily be wrong and you right. She really did have a legacy of bitterness to Clarke and his friend Heseltine that may have overcome all else.
I do not understand the attraction of Milford Haven when Holyhead would love to have them, and even has a load of empty docking facilities that would take them.
So Pen Farthing came back with all his animals but not all his staff.
Limited space? Presumably he had to prioritise.
Please tell me that isn't what happened.
Between Biden, the Taliban and our government his staff weren't allowed on.
All we need now is for it to be discovered that the animals all have notifiable diseases and have to be humanely destroyed (resulting, most likely, in another eighteen month legal battle, this time over the fate of 200 Afghan Geronimos,) and the fiasco will be complete.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
Farthing's threatening phone call to the MoD official, followed by death threats presumably from 'supporters', was quite something.
I make it quarantine for the doggos will cost about £200k.
Does anyone know how much truth, if any, there is in the threatening phone call allegations?
I'm assuming that the cost of quarantine, at least, will fall upon the charity rather than the taxpayer? Although that said, to the extent that any donations to the charity have been gift aided, we'll all collectively be stumping up some of the costs indirectly.
It was on voicemail. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
He could have waved his animals goodbye and stayed in Kabul...
After all his blathering, how he could have got on the transport when his staff were left behind is extraordinary.
Agreed Pen Farthing´s behaviour -as reported- is pretty terrible, but on the other hand he is clearly being set up to take some flack while Raab et al try and spread the heat from the unfolding catastophe. Mic Wright´s The Conquest of the Useless blog is, as usual, on the money for the smears emerging from the various press offices that are attempting to share the shit around a bit.
However, the truth is that the whole stramash is a fiasco qua non, and in the end the buck stops with Downing St... so good luck pushing any kind of accountability onto Worzel and still less the tenth rate cretins that comprise his cabinet.
Tom Tugendhat¨s speach may be yesterday´s chip wrapper, but there are plenty of Tory MPs who are in an existential despair at what is happening and Worzel will be in deep do-do if the remaining Brits (and protected Afghans) are indeed put to the sword.
An easily understood story of a guy taking up maybe 60 human seats with 200 dogs instead is manna from heaven for the dirty tricks brigade, but I am not sure that it will be sufficient distraction to save Clueless Raab or even Qinietiq Wallace once the butchers bill is in.
While the political decisions both at home and abroad have a lot to answer for, most of the fiasco has to be laid at the feet of our militaries and intelligence services. Sure, the evacuation has been successful over the last week, but that has been by the favour of the Taliban.
It is a sacred cow to criticise our troops, and even more so across the pond, and I am sure a lot individual bravery, but organisationally, and strategically a disaster.
"DHSC ‘playbook’ orders trusts to describe big building projects as ‘new hospitals’
Building plan A communications ‘playbook’ for the government’s NHS building programme tells trusts that major refurbishments and new wings/units which are part of the scheme ‘must always be referred to as a new hospital’. "
This I don't get. Folk know if they have a new hospital. There is one where there wasn't before. A new unit is not that. If they hear there is one in Plymouth say (whether it is a real one or not), their reaction will be where is ours?
Reminds me of the inverse convention that building a warship in the days of sail always had to be a "large repair" to get past Parliament. Even of the older ship of the same name was so completely rotten that they'd be lucky to reuse the belfry.
Comments
The JCVI are saying there is a balance to weigh up, he is not. The JCVI are saying there are pros and cons they are considering carefully, he is not. They are completely different things.
I distinctly remember when, about twenty years ago, I used to work in life and pensions. Our call centre got moved to India, so naturally we wondered whether we were next. The computer systems would, presumably, have been easy enough to transfer over, it wouldn't have taken much effort to load the old paper records into a couple of trucks and have them flown out there, companies always love sacking workers to redistribute the wages as executive share options and dividends, and the new admin staff would've been paid a pittance even in comparison to our rubbish wages.
It never happened, of course. Years after I left, thank God, for something better, the office finally closed down as a result of yet another merger, and the work - and all the remaining employees - went five miles down the road. Not to Bangalore.
Thus, I can't summon the energy to get too agitated about whatever this months' Great Upheaval is meant to be. Admittedly personal circumstances play a big part in this - I'm a middle-aged guy with a modest lifestyle, no mortgage, no car, no kids and quite a lot of savings, so I could afford to live off a minimum wage shit job if push came to shove - but, after all the historical episodes that I've already borne mostly passive witness to, I'm simply past the point when the latest prognostications of doom really bother me that much. Provided I don't spend too much time brooding over some of the more potentially catastrophic ones, like the climate crisis, I'm fine.
Giving fraudulent answers to questions is not.
FFS.
That said, he must be suffering with something or other as that is not rational behaviour.
And what on earth is going on w Michael Gove?!
Mid life crisis, divorce and other factors yet to be confirmed.
Every dot and comma might not be impeccable but his general thrust is important. Of course there will be overshoot.
This clearly doesn’t apply to Gavin Williamson, as everyone outside South Staffs knows how useless he is.
Sadly, it’s a bit late to do anything about it.
Well, either that or the animals are all rehomed, and then one or more of them turns out to be off its rocker and random innocent members of the public are savaged to death. Rescue animals aren't all cute and cuddly, despite what Dogs Trust would have us believe.
I'll let everyone else scratch each others' eyes out over whether or not it would've been preferable for the Americans to make David Cameron's foreign policy for him, given the subsequent course of events.
I make it quarantine for the doggos will cost about £200k.
If not barista then perhaps farm labourer. The sooner you give your erstwhile students a chance in life by fucking off somewhere else the better for them.
And is this you going back to ignoring me?
https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1432059509133004801
I can’t help the fact that you got where you are because your mother was having sex with the right man (the right man being your father, and your father being Mr Topping Sr, to avoid any ambiguity) nine months before you were born, despite the fact you are a coward, a liar, a bully and clearly rather dim.
Equally, you can’t seem to deal with the fact that I’m highly intelligent, have published several articles and written four books, been in teaching less than ten years and risen to senior management on my own merits before deciding I’m fed up taking orders from people as nasty and stupid as you and want to try something else.
But why should we inflict that argument on others? The facts are not going to change even if you have difficulty dealing with facts as we see in your increasingly bizarre defences of contrarian (‘only one view’ doesn’t apply to facts unless you are Trump’s press secretary).
Much easier just to ignore each other.
After all, your slightly strange hatred for and jealousy of me is your problem. Given your evident flaws I can wear it as a badge of honour.
At the same time, I’m sitting peacefully in my garden and enjoying your impotent rage while you reveal yourself in full colours.
No, I have not been hacked by @Leon.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/william-hague-tipped-as-next-nato-chief-zs3wcmk5m
I thought you don't need to self-isolate if pinged provided you've been double-vaccinated >14 days ago in England.
I'm assuming that the cost of quarantine, at least, will fall upon the charity rather than the taxpayer? Although that said, to the extent that any donations to the charity have been gift aided, we'll all collectively be stumping up some of the costs indirectly.
*tiptoes away feeling slightly guilty at triggering an episode*
Edit: rereading and trying to make sense of your second paragraph. Please help. Where does the "despite" fit in.
Take a moment if you need.
Otherwise he lives in £2.5 m Cyfronydd Hall in Powys with Ffion
The point is that you no longer need to be in the office to do work. And that has been demonstrated in many, many businesses over the last 18 months.
And if you no longer need to be in London, why do you actually have to be in the UK?
Saying "oh it didn't work 20 years ago" misses the point. Two decades ago people didn't have 200mb/second internet at home, there was no Slack or Zoom. If you were at home you *might* have access to the file server via a VPN. But that was the preserve of Senior Management supported by a massive IT department.
We would never have considered remote employees a decade ago. Now we're contemplating not ever again getting a London office.
That's a pretty major shift.
He made one terrible mistake. He stood for the Tory leadership in 1997.
Imagine him as Tory leader in 2005 with Osborne as Shadow Chancellor and Cameron as SFS.
That would have been much better all around than what happened.
The Scottish online advice covering these circumstances says the following:
If you’re a close contact of someone who has tested positive
You should book a PCR test as soon as possible if you're a close contact of someone who has tested positive.
If you’re a close contact but you’ve already tested positive in the past 90 days, you should not get tested unless you develop new symptoms yourself.
Elsewhere, there is advice stating that you must follow the instructions of the contact tracers, even if you have been vaccinated, followed by this:
If you're fully vaccinated
As a close contact, you can end self-isolation if all of the following apply:
*you're fully vaccinated – this means you’ve received 2 doses from the NHS and have had your second dose more than 14 days ago
*you receive a negative PCR test result
*you do not have, or develop, symptoms
If you’re a close contact and you’ve tested positive for coronavirus in the last 90 days, you do not have to self-isolate or book a test if you’re fully vaccinated unless you develop new symptoms.
Based on all of that, I'm assuming that Nicola Sturgeon will be stuck at home until she (presumably) gets her negative PCR result back, upon which event she gets let straight back out.
He could have waved his animals goodbye and stayed in Kabul...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AvhEnb6iro
It could then have been Hague who won most seats in 2010 over Brown not Cameron. All because he could not wait to run for leader
Jan. 22, 2020 “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
Feb. 2, 2020 “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
Feb. 10, 2020 "Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
Feb. 24, 2020 “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… the Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
May 8, 2020 “This is going to go away without a vaccine. It is going to go away. We are not going to see it again.”
May 9, 2020 “This is going to go away without a vaccine.”
June 15, 2020 “At some point this stuff goes away and it’s going away.”
June 17, 2020 “It’s fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
Howard might have won a leadership contest in 2001, and then Hague could have taken over in 2005.
And that would have been the right time. Hague vs Brown would surely have been a small overall majority for the Tories.
Yet the Liberals are projected to still win most seats, 143 to 129 for the Conservatives. However that will be entirely down to Quebec with the Liberals projected to win 34-44 seats there to just 9-13 for the Conservatives
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/
It would be the first time Quebec has made the difference in a Canadian election since Justin Trudeau's father Pierre's Liberals narrowly beat Joe Clark's Progressive Conservatives in 1980
Please keep ‘em coming.
I like it, but can I remind you of Hague's "save the pound" campaign. He was not averse to foolishness, or do you put that episode down to youthful exuberance?
My guess is that those among the lurkers here who are unvaccinated - who surely are not all flat-Earthers, Trumpians, moon landing sceptics, evangelicals, table-thumpers, right-wing, whatever - will not be rushing to participate here on the vaccination issue, for fear of the keyboard kicking they might get. (I say this with constructive intent: if you want to hear from some of them, maybe tone it down a bit.)
Hmmm....
That would scarcely have been a problem in 2010.
Equally, it has tainted his reputation and is another example of where his inexperience told against him.
It has to be said Clarke and Howard,who both quit the front bench during his leadership leaving him with the likes of Peter Lilley, Michael Ancram and the misfiring Portillo as his supporters, did not help matters. But he looked five years short of being ready.
I should add - I voted for him, but largely because I was angry at Blair calling an election in the middle of FMD. In 2010, I would have voted for him as a potential PM.
https://nation.cymru/news/trident-nuclear-weapons-could-end-up-in-wales-within-three-years-of-scottish-independence/
I expect you are right that WFH and foreign WFH will continue to grow but for some employers, there will be tears before bedtime.
FFS.
"A Covid sceptic who thought he couldn't get ill because he exercised five times a week has died from the virus."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9937949/Anti-vaxxer-musician-dies-Covid-hospital-aged-40.html
All we can say is that Hague despite his many qualities that could have made him an excellent PM at the right time wasn’t ready. And I think - for once! - we’re all on PB on common ground here.
Seems plausible.
It was a shame though.
Though agree on Hague
However, the truth is that the whole stramash is a fiasco qua non, and in the end the buck stops with Downing St... so good luck pushing any kind of accountability onto Worzel and still less the tenth rate cretins that comprise his cabinet.
Tom Tugendhat¨s speach may be yesterday´s chip wrapper, but there are plenty of Tory MPs who are in an existential despair at what is happening and Worzel will be in deep do-do if the remaining Brits (and protected Afghans) are indeed put to the sword.
An easily understood story of a guy taking up maybe 60 human seats with 200 dogs instead is manna from heaven for the dirty tricks brigade, but I am not sure that it will be sufficient distraction to save Clueless Raab or even Qinietiq Wallace once the butchers bill is in.
"DHSC ‘playbook’ orders trusts to describe big building projects as ‘new hospitals’
Building plan
A communications ‘playbook’ for the government’s NHS building programme tells trusts that major refurbishments and new wings/units which are part of the scheme ‘must always be referred to as a new hospital’. "
https://www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/dhsc-playbook-orders-trusts-to-describe-big-building-projects-as-new-hospitals/7030790.article
If a large fraction of us refuse to get jabbed, in spite of science urging otherwise, how probable is it that most the world community will believe in global climate change and significantly modify their life style accordingly?
I think I know the answer.
If they hear there is one in Plymouth say (whether it is a real one or not), their reaction will be where is ours?
Deepti Gurdasani
@dgurdasani1
·
12m
Later this week, we will have unvaccinated children going to school in England with infection rates 26x higher than they were in Sept last year, with a more transmissible variant. Last Sept cases quadrupled after schools reopened in 4 weeks. What's going to happen this time?
Hague, however, was untainted. He had only been in Parliament eighteen months when she was removed and was chiefly known for *that* speech in 1977. The fact that he wasn’t involved must have made it easier for her to back him against Clarke.
But, I could easily be wrong and you right. She really did have a legacy of bitterness to Clarke and his friend Heseltine that may have overcome all else.
It is a sacred cow to criticise our troops, and even more so across the pond, and I am sure a lot individual bravery, but organisationally, and strategically a disaster.