Known unknowns. The General Election 2023/4 – politicalbetting.com

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Known unknowns. The General Election 2023/4 – politicalbetting.com

Donald Rumsfeld, who died in June, will always be remembered for his statement about ‘known unknowns’ with reference to Iraq. The term was apparently already in use at NASA for risks that one is aware of, which is where Rumsfeld came across it. 

Read the full story here

TheScreamingEagles

Test.

IshmaelZ

TheScreamingEagles said:

Test.

Not looking good.

IanB2

Day 2 test

Philip_Thompson

TheScreamingEagles said:

Test.

Bowlers good.
Openers not.

IanB2

There’s a decent chance that Johnson’s nakedness for high office will be widely appreciated by the time the next vote comes.

TOPPING

IanB2 said:

There’s a decent chance that Johnson’s nakedness for high office will be widely appreciated by the time the next vote comes.

You are kidding.

His nakedness was apparent from day one. The issue is that the voters like that nakedness.

CarlottaVance

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

IshmaelZ

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

Gallowgate

Happy Friday

Foxy

NZ intelligence services seem on the ball. They had this chap tailed at the time when he grabbed a knife in a supermarket.

https://twitter.com/CityAM/status/1433687990488997888?s=19

CarlottaVance

A decision on extending Covid vaccinations to 12- to 15-year-olds is expected to be announced imminently, following days of increasing pressure on the government’s vaccinations watchdog to approve the idea.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) held a long discussion on the issue on Thursday, followed by a vote.

While officials and scientists would not comment before a formal announcement, which could come as early as Friday, ministers are known to be hugely keen to press ahead with the programme, with the bulk of English schools returning this week.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/02/uk-decision-covid-vaccines-children-expected-imminently

IanB2

IshmaelZ said:

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

Whereas they ought to be worrying that their party has put an inadequate indecisive buffoon into the highest office of the land…

Philip_Thompson

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Philip_Thompson

IshmaelZ said:

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

Perhaps but those are the worst elements of the Tory Party. 👎 Our equivalent of the Corbynista far left.

TheWhiteRabbit

I really hope the care costs cap goes through. It really is the first step to a system of national social care we simply don't have.

Let people insure or save against it.

rottenborough

IshmaelZ said:

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

Thanks.

Are they disillusioned enough to sit it out though when faced with a GE and a choice between Johnson or Starmer in Downing Street?

RochdalePioneers

I loved Rumsfeld's "unknowns" speech - succinct, elegant, insightful. People whose brain is wired opposite to mine hate it for all the opposite reasons. Yes Rummy was a warmongering lunatic whose Project for the New American Century delivered its US Reichstag fire, but the unknowns speech is one thing he got right.

Anyway, as I can't see that clearly to the end of this year never mind the end of 2023, who knows where we will be. I would like to think that punters realise they can see Boris's Johnson rather than his elegant suit of laddism, but they show no signs of waking up from the despair squid ink as yet.

What would be tragic is if the decaying GB goes further down the current American path where lies become partisan truth. We used to debate on facts and disagree on policy, but these days even self-evident truths get discarded because of partisan stupidity. America is transforming into Gilead, England doesn't have to follow suit.

IshmaelZ

Philip_Thompson said:

IshmaelZ said:

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

Perhaps but those are the worst elements of the Tory Party. 👎 Our equivalent of the Corbynista far left.

Yay, Philibet the Libertarian is up and about DISAPPROVING OF THINGS, because that's what libertarians do best.

I don't know why you are at daggers drawn with the tank commander, because you are peas in a pod*. You have this essentialist view of what is a good tory or a loyal tory, whereas the adults are talking about where crosses are going on ballot papers.

*Perhaps one of you is the other's sockpuppet, and the spats are scripted to keep us entertained?

Foxy

Good header from @rottenborough.

Of these perhaps the biggest known unknowns are how Covid-19 will drag on. It does have a rather exhausting persistence to it.

In particular it is likely to grind on in many developing countries, thereby impacting on the developed ones.

That pesky inflation too. The vast stimulus of the last 2 years may have speeded recovery, but does have a whiff of Barber Boom to it.

I am not sure if it would count as a known or unknown unknown, but a major financial crisis from something like Chinese real estate, or collapse of crypto currencies should feature too.

Malmesbury

Foxy said:

NZ intelligence services seem on the ball. They had this chap tailed at the time when he grabbed a knife in a supermarket.

https://twitter.com/CityAM/status/1433687990488997888?s=19

As ever, the problem is that if they arrested every weirdo with nasty fantasies, then you would have a Gulag full of people with no trial possible and no release date.

DecrepiterJohnL

Isn't it Cameron mi, rather than Cameron minor?

On inflation, it was not just unaffordable repayments that meant handing back the keys, it was those combined with negative equity that meant you could not (sell or) remortgage the house either. And the high interest rates were not just to fight inflation but more importantly to support the pound the the European monetary system, which was the policy of our most pro-European party – I forget the name – Consumptatives, Consumatives, something like that anyway.

OldKingCole

IshmaelZ said:

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

I used to live in the long-term safe Tory seat of Castle Point. In 1992 the well-liked old-fashioned Conservative MP, Bernard Braine, retired and was succeeded by the slightly odd, modern Tory Bob Spink.
Castle Point was 40% Labour-ish Canvey Island, 60% pretty solidly Tory Benfleet. However, in 1997, so the story goes, Spink managed to upset the very active Canvey Island Conservative Womens Association, who, as a result decided to go back home during the election campaign.
Spink managed to lose the seat.
Mended his fences and won it back later, but that's another story.

So, Mr I, I would not be at all surprised if you are right.

IshmaelZ

rottenborough said:

IshmaelZ said:

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

Thanks.

Are they disillusioned enough to sit it out though when faced with a GE and a choice between Johnson or Starmer in Downing Street?

I think so. Starmer isn't Corbyn, and Sunak's tax and spend plans are going to converge considerably on Starmer's. So much so that Starmer might get away with that Blair thing of saying he would match spending plans.

rottenborough

My piece may be out of date by next week - at least on the unfixed social care mess - if the Telegraph lead story turns out not just to be kite flying.

Gallowgate

I must admit I’m terrified of inflation

rcs1000

Shall I tell you what I love about this site: I often disagree with @CarlottaVance (or indeed any number of other posters), but this is a site where people come together when they agree on specific issues.

In the last day (s)he has posted a dozen or more pieces, all of which have made me nod my head, even if I don't agree with all of them.

It's how politics is supposed to work. It shouldn't be two monolithic blocks, and you have to agree with 100% or 0% - people should use their brain and back what is right in this specific circumstance.

Whatever works, folks. Whatever works.

Nigelb

RochdalePioneers said:

I loved Rumsfeld's "unknowns" speech - succinct, elegant, insightful. People whose brain is wired opposite to mine hate it for all the opposite reasons. Yes Rummy was a warmongering lunatic whose Project for the New American Century delivered its US Reichstag fire, but the unknowns speech is one thing he got right.

Anyway, as I can't see that clearly to the end of this year never mind the end of 2023, who knows where we will be. I would like to think that punters realise they can see Boris's Johnson rather than his elegant suit of laddism, but they show no signs of waking up from the despair squid ink as yet.

What would be tragic is if the decaying GB goes further down the current American path where lies become partisan truth. We used to debate on facts and disagree on policy, but these days even self-evident truths get discarded because of partisan stupidity. America is transforming into Gilead, England doesn't have to follow suit.

Nothing wrong with the speech in itself - it was the context: a completely dishonest assessment of the likelihood of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war.

And Rumsfeld as much as anyone is responsible for the Afghan debacle because of that.

londonpubman

Excellent thread header thanks @rottenborough

I think it will be close 1992 style with small CON Maj

Starmer won't win an election as he doesn't offer any vision or direction

IanB2

Foxy said:

Good header from @rottenborough.

Of these perhaps the biggest known unknowns are how Covid-19 will drag on. It does have a rather exhausting persistence to it.

In particular it is likely to grind on in many developing countries, thereby impacting on the developed ones.

That pesky inflation too. The vast stimulus of the last 2 years may have speeded recovery, but does have a whiff of Barber Boom to it.

I am not sure if it would count as a known or unknown unknown, but a major financial crisis from something like Chinese real estate, or collapse of crypto currencies should feature too.

If covid drags on, the significance won’t so much be medical as social - many of the changes that people currently see as temporary will become solidified as cultural norms.

DavidL

The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.

For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.

rottenborough

Foxy said:

Good header from @rottenborough.

Of these perhaps the biggest known unknowns are how Covid-19 will drag on. It does have a rather exhausting persistence to it.

In particular it is likely to grind on in many developing countries, thereby impacting on the developed ones.

That pesky inflation too. The vast stimulus of the last 2 years may have speeded recovery, but does have a whiff of Barber Boom to it.

I am not sure if it would count as a known or unknown unknown, but a major financial crisis from something like Chinese real estate, or collapse of crypto currencies should feature too.

Thanks.

Yes, good point the China implodes financially is definitely a possible known unknown I think. AEP in Telegraph was warning of meltdown from that direction yesterday.

rcs1000

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Wait:

I thought we were getting Kylie.

Morris_Dancer

Mr. L, the PM's spend-happy, thoughtless approach to buying headlines with billions is not helpful.

rottenborough

TheWhiteRabbit said:

I really hope the care costs cap goes through. It really is the first step to a system of national social care we simply don't have.

Let people insure or save against it.

This. 100x this.

rcs1000

Foxy said:

NZ intelligence services seem on the ball. They had this chap tailed at the time when he grabbed a knife in a supermarket.

https://twitter.com/CityAM/status/1433687990488997888?s=19

Chap? She looks like some kind of deranged woman to me.

DavidL

rottenborough said:

Foxy said:

Good header from @rottenborough.

Of these perhaps the biggest known unknowns are how Covid-19 will drag on. It does have a rather exhausting persistence to it.

In particular it is likely to grind on in many developing countries, thereby impacting on the developed ones.

That pesky inflation too. The vast stimulus of the last 2 years may have speeded recovery, but does have a whiff of Barber Boom to it.

I am not sure if it would count as a known or unknown unknown, but a major financial crisis from something like Chinese real estate, or collapse of crypto currencies should feature too.

Thanks.

Yes, good point the China implodes financially is definitely a possible known unknown I think. AEP in Telegraph was warning of meltdown from that direction yesterday.

So we can score that off the list of concerns then?

IshmaelZ

rcs1000 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Wait:

I thought we were getting Kylie.

Natalie.

"Torn" is a great song.

rcs1000

londonpubman said:

Excellent thread header thanks @rottenborough

I think it will be close 1992 style with small CON Maj

Starmer won't win an election as he doesn't offer any vision or direction

I think Johnson II will do better than Major - I'd expect a majority in the 30 to 50 range.

DavidL

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. L, the PM's spend-happy, thoughtless approach to buying headlines with billions is not helpful.

I think it proved very helpful when trying to keep the economy alive during a pandemic. But the bill is now due and going forward the government is going to have to say no a lot more often.

Nigelb

rottenborough said:

Foxy said:

Good header from @rottenborough.

Of these perhaps the biggest known unknowns are how Covid-19 will drag on. It does have a rather exhausting persistence to it.

In particular it is likely to grind on in many developing countries, thereby impacting on the developed ones.

That pesky inflation too. The vast stimulus of the last 2 years may have speeded recovery, but does have a whiff of Barber Boom to it.

I am not sure if it would count as a known or unknown unknown, but a major financial crisis from something like Chinese real estate, or collapse of crypto currencies should feature too.

Thanks.

Yes, good point the China implodes financially is definitely a possible known unknown I think. AEP in Telegraph was warning of meltdown from that direction yesterday.

The latter is meaningless in predictive terms, though. He's been writing persuasive articles along those lines every week for the last couple of decades.

I'm not sure I can see the systemic risk in China, though, given the policy levers available to a totalitarian government ?There's a longer term risk that Xi will strangle enterprise, which might be of more significance.

Benpointer

rcs1000 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Wait:

I thought we were getting Kylie.

Can't they just let us win the Ashes? (But not make it obvious, obvs.)

RochdalePioneers

rcs1000 said:

Shall I tell you what I love about this site: I often disagree with @CarlottaVance (or indeed any number of other posters), but this is a site where people come together when they agree on specific issues.

In the last day (s)he has posted a dozen or more pieces, all of which have made me nod my head, even if I don't agree with all of them.

It's how politics is supposed to work. It shouldn't be two monolithic blocks, and you have to agree with 100% or 0% - people should use their brain and back what is right in this specific circumstance.

Whatever works, folks. Whatever works.

The opposite shurely. America is stick in idiotville where you either support Gilead or support making meat illegal - we don't need to adopt the same 0% or 100% mindset.

Whatever works is right - the brilliance of Clinton and Blair's Third Way approach. What a shame that partisan hacks on both sides have torn that consensus appart.

DecrepiterJohnL

rottenborough said:

My piece may be out of date by next week - at least on the unfixed social care mess - if the Telegraph lead story turns out not just to be kite flying.

Good header. I'd not realised it was yours till this post. Perhaps when guest pieces are posted the author's name could be added to the top as well as the bottom, otherwise we just see the name of the mod who posted it – @TheScreamingEagles in this case.

Philip_Thompson

rcs1000 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Wait:

I thought we were getting Kylie.

Worse.

Jason Donovan.

TOPPING

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

SO GIVE THEM THE FUCKING AZ VACCINES.

Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.

Benpointer

DavidL said:

The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.

For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.

When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/16/covid-impact-forces-sunak-to-consider-delaying-budget-until-next-year

Nigelb

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. L, the PM's spend-happy, thoughtless approach to buying headlines with billions is not helpful.

Which gives rise to another known unknown.
Sunak seems determined to send him the bill in terms of tax rises. A war between PM and Chancellor is not impossible.

RochdalePioneers

Nigelb said:

RochdalePioneers said:

I loved Rumsfeld's "unknowns" speech - succinct, elegant, insightful. People whose brain is wired opposite to mine hate it for all the opposite reasons. Yes Rummy was a warmongering lunatic whose Project for the New American Century delivered its US Reichstag fire, but the unknowns speech is one thing he got right.

Anyway, as I can't see that clearly to the end of this year never mind the end of 2023, who knows where we will be. I would like to think that punters realise they can see Boris's Johnson rather than his elegant suit of laddism, but they show no signs of waking up from the despair squid ink as yet.

What would be tragic is if the decaying GB goes further down the current American path where lies become partisan truth. We used to debate on facts and disagree on policy, but these days even self-evident truths get discarded because of partisan stupidity. America is transforming into Gilead, England doesn't have to follow suit.

Nothing wrong with the speech in itself - it was the context: a completely dishonest assessment of the likelihood of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war.

And Rumsfeld as much as anyone is responsible for the Afghan debacle because of that.

Indeed - I have just described him as a "warmongering lunatic". But the knowns bit was perfect. For those unfamiliar:

Known knowns: things we know we know
Unknown knowns: things we don't know we know
Knowns unknowns: things we know we don't know
Unknown unknowns: things we don't know we don't know

DavidL

Gallowgate said:

I must admit I’m terrified of inflation

Why? Do you not have a big enough mortgage?

Philip_Thompson

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

SO GIVE THEM THE FUCKING AZ VACCINES.

Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.

If we give them AZ now, they'll give us AZ later. Do we need or want that swap given we're producing our own AZ?

Scott_xP

rcs1000 said:

It's how politics is supposed to work. It shouldn't be two monolithic blocks, and you have to agree with 100% or 0% - people should use their brain and back what is right in this specific circumstance.

Whatever works, folks. Whatever works.

You mean not everybody has to worship Radiohead?

Foxy

rcs1000 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Wait:

I thought we were getting Kylie.

ABBA it seems will have to do.

RochdalePioneers

rcs1000 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Wait:

I thought we were getting Kylie.

Just for you. Her best album cover on an hour of pop perfection

DavidL

Benpointer said:

DavidL said:

The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.

For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.

When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/16/covid-impact-forces-sunak-to-consider-delaying-budget-until-next-year

I thought it was going to be about December but given how rapidly the numbers are changing you can see the temptation for a delay.

CarlottaVance

Not as extensive as the Guardian write up, but some interesting snippets:

https://www.politico.eu/article/queen-elizabeth-death-plan-britain-operation-london-bridge/

Malmesbury

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

SO GIVE THEM THE FUCKING AZ VACCINES.

Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.

If we give them AZ now, they'll give us AZ later. Do we need or want that swap given we're producing our own AZ?

There is a serious problem with anti-AZ attitudes in Australia, I believe.

rottenborough

Gallowgate said:

I must admit I’m terrified of inflation

Rightly. A little bit it ok. Some economists even think there's a sweet spot (2 or 3%?) where it is positively beneficial (if I have understood things correctly). But big problems once it starts feeding on itself.

eek

Gallowgate said:

I must admit I’m terrified of inflation

Why? It's need to restore some sanity into various market segments such as housing.

Also none zero interest rates may introduce some sanity into borrowing decisions.

londonpubman

Benpointer said:

DavidL said:

The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.

For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.

When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/16/covid-impact-forces-sunak-to-consider-delaying-budget-until-next-year

Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.

What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books

Nigelb

RochdalePioneers said:

Nigelb said:

RochdalePioneers said:

I loved Rumsfeld's "unknowns" speech - succinct, elegant, insightful. People whose brain is wired opposite to mine hate it for all the opposite reasons. Yes Rummy was a warmongering lunatic whose Project for the New American Century delivered its US Reichstag fire, but the unknowns speech is one thing he got right.

Anyway, as I can't see that clearly to the end of this year never mind the end of 2023, who knows where we will be. I would like to think that punters realise they can see Boris's Johnson rather than his elegant suit of laddism, but they show no signs of waking up from the despair squid ink as yet.

What would be tragic is if the decaying GB goes further down the current American path where lies become partisan truth. We used to debate on facts and disagree on policy, but these days even self-evident truths get discarded because of partisan stupidity. America is transforming into Gilead, England doesn't have to follow suit.

Nothing wrong with the speech in itself - it was the context: a completely dishonest assessment of the likelihood of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war.

And Rumsfeld as much as anyone is responsible for the Afghan debacle because of that.

Indeed - I have just described him as a "warmongering lunatic". But the knowns bit was perfect. For those unfamiliar:

Known knowns: things we know we know
Unknown knowns: things we don't know we know
Knowns unknowns: things we know we don't know
Unknown unknowns: things we don't know we don't know

Perfect like Susan Collins declaring herself pro choice as she voted to confirm Kavanaugh ?

TheWhiteRabbit

eek said:

Gallowgate said:

I must admit I’m terrified of inflation

Why? It's need to restore some sanity into various market segments such as housing.

Also none zero interest rates may introduce some sanity into borrowing decisions.

Inflation works well for the market, doesn't mean it helps you personally.

TOPPING

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.

If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.

Foxy

Nigelb said:

rottenborough said:

Foxy said:

Good header from @rottenborough.

Of these perhaps the biggest known unknowns are how Covid-19 will drag on. It does have a rather exhausting persistence to it.

In particular it is likely to grind on in many developing countries, thereby impacting on the developed ones.

That pesky inflation too. The vast stimulus of the last 2 years may have speeded recovery, but does have a whiff of Barber Boom to it.

I am not sure if it would count as a known or unknown unknown, but a major financial crisis from something like Chinese real estate, or collapse of crypto currencies should feature too.

Thanks.

Yes, good point the China implodes financially is definitely a possible known unknown I think. AEP in Telegraph was warning of meltdown from that direction yesterday.

The latter is meaningless in predictive terms, though. He's been writing persuasive articles along those lines every week for the last couple of decades.

I'm not sure I can see the systemic risk in China, though, given the policy levers available to a totalitarian government ?There's a longer term risk that Xi will strangle enterprise, which might be of more significance.

Xi has an interesting programme of levelling up in the Red Wall areas...

https://twitter.com/business/status/1433408150661705730?s=19

paulyork64

IshmaelZ said:

rottenborough said:

IshmaelZ said:

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

Thanks.

Are they disillusioned enough to sit it out though when faced with a GE and a choice between Johnson or Starmer in Downing Street?

I think so. Starmer isn't Corbyn, and Sunak's tax and spend plans are going to converge considerably on Starmer's. So much so that Starmer might get away with that Blair thing of saying he would match spending plans.

Unfortunately Rishi seems to be spending but not taxing (yet). Which upsets another block of traditional Tories. Although I don't know where else their votes would go.

Stuartinromford

Nigelb said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. L, the PM's spend-happy, thoughtless approach to buying headlines with billions is not helpful.

Which gives rise to another known unknown.
Sunak seems determined to send him the bill in terms of tax rises. A war between PM and Chancellor is not impossible.

Especially since the low-hanging fruit of easy spending cuts has been picked. (Foreign Aid and that blooming red bus were both about "don't spend money on them, spend it on us".)

Getting the economic and electoral cycles back in synch by 2023/4 is going to be an impressive trick if they can do it.

CarlottaVance

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

SO GIVE THEM THE FUCKING AZ VACCINES.

Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.

We are:

The UK will this week begin delivering 9 million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, including to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced today (Wednesday 28 July).

Five million doses are being offered to COVAX, the scheme to ensure equitable, global access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX will urgently distribute them to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need....

The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.

This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall, with 30 million due to be sent by the end of the year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-begins-donating-millions-of-covid-19-vaccines-overseas

eek

TheWhiteRabbit said:

I really hope the care costs cap goes through. It really is the first step to a system of national social care we simply don't have.

Let people insure or save against it.

Let people insure against the uncapped costs - why should the young pay for something they don't see an instant benefit from while those who do benefit from it don't have to contribute via higher NI rates.

If they want to solve social care, it should be on council tax or even used as a justification to rerate council tax or fix it via a land value tax that replaces council tax.

TOPPING

RochdalePioneers said:

I loved Rumsfeld's "unknowns" speech - succinct, elegant, insightful. People whose brain is wired opposite to mine hate it for all the opposite reasons. Yes Rummy was a warmongering lunatic whose Project for the New American Century delivered its US Reichstag fire, but the unknowns speech is one thing he got right.

Anyway, as I can't see that clearly to the end of this year never mind the end of 2023, who knows where we will be. I would like to think that punters realise they can see Boris's Johnson rather than his elegant suit of laddism, but they show no signs of waking up from the despair squid ink as yet.

What would be tragic is if the decaying GB goes further down the current American path where lies become partisan truth. We used to debate on facts and disagree on policy, but these days even self-evident truths get discarded because of partisan stupidity. America is transforming into Gilead, England doesn't have to follow suit.

Still rewatching the West Wing. Last night a Bartlett joke: two politicians publicly debating each other, one says to the other "you're lying"; the other says "yes, but hear me out".

And as you say, for Rumsfeld's unknowns, few people have been able to insert into the modern language such an acute and insightful concept that has now become part of the global lingua franca.

Benpointer

Enjoyable header, with a few quirky suggestions if I may say so (e.g. Cummings launch a new party - not a chance of that taking off).

Perversely, I think Johnson's best hope for the next GE will be if Covid rumbles on. That might allow him to kick the hard tax decisions further down the road past a GE 2023/24 and ho could go to the polls as a Pandemic-war-leader with a 'Keep Buggering On' pitch.

Scott_xP

One unknown on social care: Will the Government try to mask the manifesto breach?

Tax rise may be dubbed a “health and care levy”, arguing it’s a separate tax and not strictly a national insurance rate rise

Or they may be explicit: Yup, we’re breaking pledge but for good reason
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1433697864404848664

Malmesbury

Nigelb said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Nigelb said:

RochdalePioneers said:

I loved Rumsfeld's "unknowns" speech - succinct, elegant, insightful. People whose brain is wired opposite to mine hate it for all the opposite reasons. Yes Rummy was a warmongering lunatic whose Project for the New American Century delivered its US Reichstag fire, but the unknowns speech is one thing he got right.

Anyway, as I can't see that clearly to the end of this year never mind the end of 2023, who knows where we will be. I would like to think that punters realise they can see Boris's Johnson rather than his elegant suit of laddism, but they show no signs of waking up from the despair squid ink as yet.

What would be tragic is if the decaying GB goes further down the current American path where lies become partisan truth. We used to debate on facts and disagree on policy, but these days even self-evident truths get discarded because of partisan stupidity. America is transforming into Gilead, England doesn't have to follow suit.

Nothing wrong with the speech in itself - it was the context: a completely dishonest assessment of the likelihood of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war.

And Rumsfeld as much as anyone is responsible for the Afghan debacle because of that.

Indeed - I have just described him as a "warmongering lunatic". But the knowns bit was perfect. For those unfamiliar:

Known knowns: things we know we know
Unknown knowns: things we don't know we know
Knowns unknowns: things we know we don't know
Unknown unknowns: things we don't know we don't know

Perfect like Susan Collins declaring herself pro choice as she voted to confirm Kavanaugh ?

I've also seen the same concept - in matrix form - used in software engineering, way before Rumsfeld. The idea is that you make people consider what could go in each category. Unknown unknowns is looked at by trying to get people to challenge their internal mental assumptions.

another_richard

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.

If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.

Actually Australia is desperately in need of vaccine right now as its attempts to control Delta are failing.

There's likely 10k+ Australian lives dependent upon it completing its vaccination program this month.

eek

Scott_xP said:

One unknown on social care: Will the Government try to mask the manifesto breach?

Tax rise may be dubbed a “health and care levy”, arguing it’s a separate tax and not strictly a national insurance rate rise

Or they may be explicit: Yup, we’re breaking pledge but for good reason
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1433697864404848664

Won't make any difference, unless I've missed something it is still a tax the young will pay that those who gain from it will be excluded from paying.

kle4

Dura_Ace said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

However, does anyone share my fear that the might of the earth's climate changes are so great that mankind will not be able to mitigate it, no matter how it is approached

Yes. It can't be a surprise though. The Greens have been saying this for decades but you all found it easier to contemplate the end of the world rather than the end of capitalism.

If they've been saying the change cannot be mitigated then of course people wont attempt mitigation, what would be the point?

I don't think your post makes the point about unreasonability you think it does. To borrow from another saying its like suggesting our house is on fire and we will definitely burn to death no matter what and getting mad we are reluctant to go and fix that wobbly shelf in the kitchen.

Theres a big difference between not being able to stop something and being unable to mitigate it.

Benpointer

londonpubman said:

Benpointer said:

DavidL said:

The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.

For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.

When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/16/covid-impact-forces-sunak-to-consider-delaying-budget-until-next-year

Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.

What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books

"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.

Malmesbury

Benpointer said:

Enjoyable header, with a few quirky suggestions if I may say so (e.g. Cummings launch a new party - not a chance of that taking off).

Perversely, I think Johnson's best hope for the next GE will be if Covid rumbles on. That might allow him to kick the hard tax decisions further down the road past a GE 2023/24 and ho could go to the polls as a Pandemic-war-leader with a 'Keep Buggering On' pitch.

Quite. A Cummings launched party would make Alba look like it had achieved a landslide.

TOPPING

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

SO GIVE THEM THE FUCKING AZ VACCINES.

Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.

If we give them AZ now, they'll give us AZ later. Do we need or want that swap given we're producing our own AZ?

Philip the point is we are giving/swapping/donating 4m (Pfizer) vaccines to Australia. Fine. Great.

But of all the countries in the world that need vaccines I would put Australia in the bottom 1%. Meanwhile, say, Africa really needs vaccines.

PB is trying to make itself feel better by saying oh it's the Pfizer don't you understand, the darkies can't do cold chain logistics...

But we, the UK are sending vaccines out to another country. We have plenty of AZ vaccines so the idea of sending any vaccines out to Australia instead of Africa is imo an extraordinary misapplication of resources.

Stuartinromford

paulyork64 said:

IshmaelZ said:

rottenborough said:

IshmaelZ said:

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

Thanks.

Are they disillusioned enough to sit it out though when faced with a GE and a choice between Johnson or Starmer in Downing Street?

I think so. Starmer isn't Corbyn, and Sunak's tax and spend plans are going to converge considerably on Starmer's. So much so that Starmer might get away with that Blair thing of saying he would match spending plans.

Unfortunately Rishi seems to be spending but not taxing (yet). Which upsets another block of traditional Tories. Although I don't know where else their votes would go.

They don't have to to anywhere- they could just stay at home and watch The One Show instead.

Starmer won't induce the genuine fear that Corbyn did- the worst you can say of him is "meh".

The other thing the Conservatives had in 2019 was "They will take your precious Brexit away." Will that work next time?

kle4

Scott_xP said:

One unknown on social care: Will the Government try to mask the manifesto breach?

Tax rise may be dubbed a “health and care levy”, arguing it’s a separate tax and not strictly a national insurance rate rise

Or they may be explicit: Yup, we’re breaking pledge but for good reason
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1433697864404848664

Masking never works, but it's what they did with council tax to keep the referendum lock, adding a levy.

I dont think people are very reasonable, but the gov has the votes for unpopular actions and if they think this is needed take the hit and say a pledge break is appropriate.

TOPPING

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

SO GIVE THEM THE FUCKING AZ VACCINES.

Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.

We are:

The UK will this week begin delivering 9 million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, including to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced today (Wednesday 28 July).

Five million doses are being offered to COVAX, the scheme to ensure equitable, global access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX will urgently distribute them to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need....

The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.

This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall, with 30 million due to be sent by the end of the year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-begins-donating-millions-of-covid-19-vaccines-overseas

As I said, 40% (4m/9m) or 30% (4m/13m) of our initial covax effort is going to....Australia.

kjh

Foxy said:

rcs1000 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Wait:

I thought we were getting Kylie.

ABBA it seems will have to do.

Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.

TOPPING

another_richard said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.

If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.

Actually Australia is desperately in need of vaccine right now as its attempts to control Delta are failing.

There's likely 10k+ Australian lives dependent upon it completing its vaccination program this month.

OK that's cool. Australia's need is higher than Africa's. Gotit.

Edit: when you read back your post about how Australia is more needy than Africa doesn't it seem a teensy bit fucking ridiculous to you? How many African lives depend on vaccines "right now"?

RochdalePioneers

Malmesbury said:

Benpointer said:

Enjoyable header, with a few quirky suggestions if I may say so (e.g. Cummings launch a new party - not a chance of that taking off).

Perversely, I think Johnson's best hope for the next GE will be if Covid rumbles on. That might allow him to kick the hard tax decisions further down the road past a GE 2023/24 and ho could go to the polls as a Pandemic-war-leader with a 'Keep Buggering On' pitch.

Quite. A Cummings launched party would make Alba look like it had achieved a landslide.

I like Alba! I am hopeful that it will help split the SNP vote for our council elections next May. (spoiler alert - it won't...)

Scott_xP

eek said:

Won't make any difference, unless I've missed something it is still a tax the young will pay that those who gain from it will be excluded from paying.

It will allow the fanbois to keep cheering BoZo

Malmesbury

another_richard said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.

If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.

Actually Australia is desperately in need of vaccine right now as its attempts to control Delta are failing.

There's likely 10k+ Australian lives dependent upon it completing its vaccination program this month.

But Australian lives are worth less than African lives.

But then again, First Australian lives - are they worth more or less than African lives?

another_richard

DavidL said:

The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.

For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.

A tax on businesses which have used furlough to the max and then made their employees redundant after it ends.

There's been a lot of freeloading off the taxpayer during the last 18 months.

CarlottaVance

Six managers of an Italian company that makes military-grade drones for Nato have been reported to prosecutors after a lengthy investigation by financial crimes police. Tax police said the takeover of the unnamed company in north-east Italy, had broken arms laws.

Investigators said a firm based in Hong Kong had bought a majority stake in the drone company at 90 times its value. But the real buyer, they said, was two state-owned companies in China.

They alleged a complex and opaque web of corporate holdings had been used to cover up the true identity of the new owner of 75% of the company. The financial crimes unit also suspects the 2018 deal may have broken Italian "golden power" rules that bar or limit the sales of strategic assets to foreign investors.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58426878

MaxPB

Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.

It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.

Dura_Ace

paulyork64 said:

IshmaelZ said:

rottenborough said:

IshmaelZ said:

Good header.

People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.

Thanks.

Are they disillusioned enough to sit it out though when faced with a GE and a choice between Johnson or Starmer in Downing Street?

I think so. Starmer isn't Corbyn, and Sunak's tax and spend plans are going to converge considerably on Starmer's. So much so that Starmer might get away with that Blair thing of saying he would match spending plans.

Unfortunately Rishi seems to be spending but not taxing (yet). Which upsets another block of traditional Tories. Although I don't know where else their votes would go.

Who is it upsetting? The pb.com tories seem to have effortlessly and shamelessly shifted to full throated support of defecit funded interventionist Corbynomics as dispensed by Johnson and the Sunakster.

Sandpit

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

SO GIVE THEM THE FUCKING AZ VACCINES.

Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.

We are:

The UK will this week begin delivering 9 million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, including to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced today (Wednesday 28 July).

Five million doses are being offered to COVAX, the scheme to ensure equitable, global access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX will urgently distribute them to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need....

The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.

This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall, with 30 million due to be sent by the end of the year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-begins-donating-millions-of-covid-19-vaccines-overseas

As I said, 40% (4m/9m) or 30% (4m/13m) of our initial covax effort is going to....Australia.

What’s wrong with helping out Australia with a vaccine swap?

This isn’t part of the Covax donatation, it’s trading vaccines we don’t need now for those we might need in the future, to help out a friendly nation which is struggling.

Nigelb

Malmesbury said:

Nigelb said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Nigelb said:

RochdalePioneers said:

I loved Rumsfeld's "unknowns" speech - succinct, elegant, insightful. People whose brain is wired opposite to mine hate it for all the opposite reasons. Yes Rummy was a warmongering lunatic whose Project for the New American Century delivered its US Reichstag fire, but the unknowns speech is one thing he got right.

Anyway, as I can't see that clearly to the end of this year never mind the end of 2023, who knows where we will be. I would like to think that punters realise they can see Boris's Johnson rather than his elegant suit of laddism, but they show no signs of waking up from the despair squid ink as yet.

What would be tragic is if the decaying GB goes further down the current American path where lies become partisan truth. We used to debate on facts and disagree on policy, but these days even self-evident truths get discarded because of partisan stupidity. America is transforming into Gilead, England doesn't have to follow suit.

Nothing wrong with the speech in itself - it was the context: a completely dishonest assessment of the likelihood of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war.

And Rumsfeld as much as anyone is responsible for the Afghan debacle because of that.

Indeed - I have just described him as a "warmongering lunatic". But the knowns bit was perfect. For those unfamiliar:

Known knowns: things we know we know
Unknown knowns: things we don't know we know
Knowns unknowns: things we know we don't know
Unknown unknowns: things we don't know we don't know

Perfect like Susan Collins declaring herself pro choice as she voted to confirm Kavanaugh ?

I've also seen the same concept - in matrix form - used in software engineering, way before Rumsfeld. The idea is that you make people consider what could go in each category. Unknown unknowns is looked at by trying to get people to challenge their internal mental assumptions.

That was my point.
It was a facile statement, however neatly laid out, of someone's else's ideas from a man who had no intention whatsoever of challenging his own assumptions.

Malmesbury

RochdalePioneers said:

Malmesbury said:

Benpointer said:

Enjoyable header, with a few quirky suggestions if I may say so (e.g. Cummings launch a new party - not a chance of that taking off).

Perversely, I think Johnson's best hope for the next GE will be if Covid rumbles on. That might allow him to kick the hard tax decisions further down the road past a GE 2023/24 and ho could go to the polls as a Pandemic-war-leader with a 'Keep Buggering On' pitch.

Quite. A Cummings launched party would make Alba look like it had achieved a landslide.

I like Alba! I am hopeful that it will help split the SNP vote for our council elections next May. (spoiler alert - it won't...)

The biggest problem Alba has is also the source of its ability to exist in the first place. The marmite problem.

Benpointer

kjh said:

Foxy said:

rcs1000 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Wait:

I thought we were getting Kylie.

ABBA it seems will have to do.

Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.

I respect your personal taste but...

I used to think ABBA were totally naff back in the day. But now when I hear their old songs I can't help singing along. They are very well crafted pop songs.

rottenborough

RochdalePioneers said:

Malmesbury said:

Benpointer said:

Enjoyable header, with a few quirky suggestions if I may say so (e.g. Cummings launch a new party - not a chance of that taking off).

Perversely, I think Johnson's best hope for the next GE will be if Covid rumbles on. That might allow him to kick the hard tax decisions further down the road past a GE 2023/24 and ho could go to the polls as a Pandemic-war-leader with a 'Keep Buggering On' pitch.

Quite. A Cummings launched party would make Alba look like it had achieved a landslide.

I like Alba! I am hopeful that it will help split the SNP vote for our council elections next May. (spoiler alert - it won't...)

I was being a bit flippant. My point was the Cummings Party (aka Tear Down the State and all its Works) need only take a few % of protesting Tories votes in a few marginals to help deprive Johnson of a majority.

Scott_xP

@RMCunliffe: Oh I see, we're back to a social care plan that raises taxes on the poorest in society to safeguard the inheritance… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1433700675951677465

eek

another_richard said:

DavidL said:

The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.

For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.

A tax on businesses which have used furlough to the max and then made their employees redundant after it ends.

There's been a lot of freeloading off the taxpayer during the last 18 months.

What does that achieve beyond penalising companies that acted as "good neighbours".

Stocky

MaxPB said:

Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.

It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.

"the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income"

Yes, broad agreement on this. But they can't do the right thing because political opponents and the media will politick it as a broken manifesto promise.

CarlottaVance

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

SO GIVE THEM THE FUCKING AZ VACCINES.

Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.

We are:

The UK will this week begin delivering 9 million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, including to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced today (Wednesday 28 July).

Five million doses are being offered to COVAX, the scheme to ensure equitable, global access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX will urgently distribute them to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need....

The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.

This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall, with 30 million due to be sent by the end of the year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-begins-donating-millions-of-covid-19-vaccines-overseas

As I said, 40% (4m/9m) or 30% (4m/13m) of our initial covax effort is going to....Australia.

Australia is not COVAX

Australia is a swap. It is not part of our 100 million pledge.

100% of our COVAX donation is going to the developing world.

kle4

kjh said:

Foxy said:

rcs1000 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

CarlottaVance said:

FPT:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.

Pfizer.

Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.

Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.

40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.

It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.

Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.

Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.

“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”

Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-border-will-reopen-for-states-that-reach-80-percent-target-as-country-scores-more-pfizer-20210903-p58oi9.html

I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.

We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.

They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.

Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.

Purely logical and sensible thing to do.

Wait:

I thought we were getting Kylie.

ABBA it seems will have to do.

Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.

*faints*

eek

RochdalePioneers said:

Malmesbury said:

Benpointer said:

Enjoyable header, with a few quirky suggestions if I may say so (e.g. Cummings launch a new party - not a chance of that taking off).

Perversely, I think Johnson's best hope for the next GE will be if Covid rumbles on. That might allow him to kick the hard tax decisions further down the road past a GE 2023/24 and ho could go to the polls as a Pandemic-war-leader with a 'Keep Buggering On' pitch.

Quite. A Cummings launched party would make Alba look like it had achieved a landslide.

I like Alba! I am hopeful that it will help split the SNP vote for our council elections next May. (spoiler alert - it won't...)

Do you seriously expect the next Scottish local elections to be another SNP landslide because #Freedom