(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
I was told by a bus driver (TfL), not long before COVID, that stopping a bus between stops was banned.
And that undercover bus inspectors would pull up a bus driver if he/she did it in front of them (the inspector) and pull them off the job then and there for disciplinary proceedings.
To be fair, at least in London, the number of stops seems to have doubled and there is live timetabling so this policy is more reasonable than it would have been 20 years ago, when they often would stop if they could.
Just shows how out of touch whoever wrote it is, probably not used a bus in the last decade yet refers to them casually over something serious.
The suggestion on here of allowing the arrested to whatsapp a photo of the warrant card makes much more sense.
OTOH, makes it much easier to fake up a warrant card, no?
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
The latest antibody survey shows that we've comfortably above 90% in the UK. You are coming across as detached from reality.
93.6% in England 91.2% in Wales 91.9% in Northern Ireland 93.3% in Scotland
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
Everyone adult who wants to be vaccinated is double-vaccinated by now.
Yes we can get on with our lives. "Squashing" Covid is a pipe-dream unless you really mean "stop testing for Covid and declare it squashed".
You haven't answered my point about travel. You may be happy that it is done. Countries like Germany are not. We currently have a waiver for the mandatory quarantine that pox rates as high as here demand. If they pull that waiver then we won't be welcome in non-UK countries.
Wanting Covid to be over and saying so domestically is one thing. Covid really being over and other countries being willing to accept our pretence is another. We could be working harder to get more people vaccinated but won't. Others will.
Not the end of the world either way. Meat is meat.
British producers thank you for your support ! Next you’ll be spinning the devastating losses incurred by British fisheries into a positive .
I will say the same for fisheries as I say for farming, driver's salaries or anything else ... Let the market sort it out.
If our fishermen have a competitive advantage then great, exercise it, if not then c'est la vie.
The fisheries have been screwed because of Bozos deal . The NTBs in that deal is what has caused all the issues . You seem happy to see many sectors go to the wall which is rather unpatriotic given I thought voting Brexit was a badge of patriotism and all Remainers like myself were allegedly not patriotic enough !
Philip Thompson is a libertarian free trader who I believe wants global free trade with no tariffs and customs barriers anywhere and no state subsidies for farming or industry.
Though I don't think he has gone so far as to support free movement globally and accepts Boris' points system for migrants
... yes a strange ommission to his liberatarian ideals.
Why's it strange?
I've said I don't care if people are free to come here so long as we eliminate the green belt and people are free to build too. Since we don't have free construction, we can't justify free movement either. The two need to go hand-in-hand.
I back free construction though. I back the elimination of the green belt and the elimination of planning permission (though I'd keep restrictions exclusively for AONBs etc).
So people are free to come here without limit if we concrete all over the green belt and most of the English countryside to build all the extra homes for them. A deeply unpopular proposal (and most people don't live within easy reach of AONB and National Parks, especially in London and the Home Counties)
Now here is a dilemma as I agree with both @HYUFD and @Philip_Thompson (I know I'm a LD and so you should expect nothing different that I support both sides of the argument).
I believe in free movement of goods and labour in theory. However with different countries at different levels of prosperity that is not possible with labour as there would be mass migration. There is not the infrastructure to support that and I don't want the greenbelt destroyed. Once we do it's gone forever.
I did like what we had in the EU. Introducing countries under but close to our level of prosperity, causing immigration and bringing those countries up to our level fairly quickly after which the movement would balance out nicely.
Fairly balanced and indeed but the problem is that the EU countries aren't quickly coming up to our level of prosperity.
Maybe it was balancing out until the 90s, but our population has grown by over 10 million within a generation and that wasn't slowing down. Now as I've said repeatedly I don't care if we have population growth so long as we have the construction to match it, but we never did which is why house price to earnings ratio when from 3.5x in 2003 before Eastern accession to ~6-7x just a few years later.
Do you think its fair to link the concepts of free movement with free construction? If we aren't going to have one, how can we justify the other?
I'm not sure your memory of UK house prices to earnings ratios is entirely accurate:
You're right I muddled up different ratios - but still the reality was bad enough.
Look at that steep climb following EU expansion. Which predated interest rate cuts a few years later.
In 2003, house price to earnings for the UK were just under 5, as I read the chart. And on the eve of the Brexit referendum in 2015, they were... just over 5.
Now you're misreading it. They didn't reach just under 5 until ~2005, the surge happened after expansion. It was more like ~3.5 in 2003.
And if you look at the monthly data that verifies it too.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
I was told by a bus driver (TfL), not long before COVID, that stopping a bus between stops was banned.
And that undercover bus inspectors would pull up a bus driver if he/she did it in front of them (the inspector) and pull them off the job then and there for disciplinary proceedings.
To be fair, at least in London, the number of stops seems to have doubled and there is live timetabling so this policy is more reasonable than it would have been 20 years ago, when they often would stop if they could.
Just shows how out of touch whoever wrote it is, probably not used a bus in the last decade yet refers to them casually over something serious.
The suggestion on here of allowing the arrested to whatsapp a photo of the warrant card makes much more sense.
OTOH, makes it much easier to fake up a warrant card, no?
Sure some techies could take this further using something like google authenticator texting a code to a central police number which replies instantly with valid/fake and stores the numbers of both the officer and member of the public.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
Everyone adult who wants to be vaccinated is double-vaccinated by now.
Yes we can get on with our lives. "Squashing" Covid is a pipe-dream unless you really mean "stop testing for Covid and declare it squashed".
You haven't answered my point about travel. You may be happy that it is done. Countries like Germany are not. We currently have a waiver for the mandatory quarantine that pox rates as high as here demand. If they pull that waiver then we won't be welcome in non-UK countries.
Wanting Covid to be over and saying so domestically is one thing. Covid really being over and other countries being willing to accept our pretence is another. We could be working harder to get more people vaccinated but won't. Others will.
We have a higher vaccination rate than Germany.
We have a higher infection rate than Germany too...
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
Everyone adult who wants to be vaccinated is double-vaccinated by now.
Yes we can get on with our lives. "Squashing" Covid is a pipe-dream unless you really mean "stop testing for Covid and declare it squashed".
You haven't answered my point about travel. You may be happy that it is done. Countries like Germany are not. We currently have a waiver for the mandatory quarantine that pox rates as high as here demand. If they pull that waiver then we won't be welcome in non-UK countries.
Wanting Covid to be over and saying so domestically is one thing. Covid really being over and other countries being willing to accept our pretence is another. We could be working harder to get more people vaccinated but won't. Others will.
We have a higher vaccination rate than Germany.
We have a massively higher rate of vaccination than Germany. Although, come to mention it, so does every other Western European country.
Not the end of the world either way. Meat is meat.
British producers thank you for your support ! Next you’ll be spinning the devastating losses incurred by British fisheries into a positive .
I will say the same for fisheries as I say for farming, driver's salaries or anything else ... Let the market sort it out.
If our fishermen have a competitive advantage then great, exercise it, if not then c'est la vie.
The fisheries have been screwed because of Bozos deal . The NTBs in that deal is what has caused all the issues . You seem happy to see many sectors go to the wall which is rather unpatriotic given I thought voting Brexit was a badge of patriotism and all Remainers like myself were allegedly not patriotic enough !
Philip Thompson is a libertarian free trader who I believe wants global free trade with no tariffs and customs barriers anywhere and no state subsidies for farming or industry.
Though I don't think he has gone so far as to support free movement globally and accepts Boris' points system for migrants
... yes a strange ommission to his liberatarian ideals.
Why's it strange?
I've said I don't care if people are free to come here so long as we eliminate the green belt and people are free to build too. Since we don't have free construction, we can't justify free movement either. The two need to go hand-in-hand.
I back free construction though. I back the elimination of the green belt and the elimination of planning permission (though I'd keep restrictions exclusively for AONBs etc).
So people are free to come here without limit if we concrete all over the green belt and most of the English countryside to build all the extra homes for them. A deeply unpopular proposal (and most people don't live within easy reach of AONB and National Parks, especially in London and the Home Counties)
Now here is a dilemma as I agree with both @HYUFD and @Philip_Thompson (I know I'm a LD and so you should expect nothing different that I support both sides of the argument).
I believe in free movement of goods and labour in theory. However with different countries at different levels of prosperity that is not possible with labour as there would be mass migration. There is not the infrastructure to support that and I don't want the greenbelt destroyed. Once we do it's gone forever.
I did like what we had in the EU. Introducing countries under but close to our level of prosperity, causing immigration and bringing those countries up to our level fairly quickly after which the movement would balance out nicely.
Fairly balanced and indeed but the problem is that the EU countries aren't quickly coming up to our level of prosperity.
Maybe it was balancing out until the 90s, but our population has grown by over 10 million within a generation and that wasn't slowing down. Now as I've said repeatedly I don't care if we have population growth so long as we have the construction to match it, but we never did which is why house price to earnings ratio when from 3.5x in 2003 before Eastern accession to ~6-7x just a few years later.
Do you think its fair to link the concepts of free movement with free construction? If we aren't going to have one, how can we justify the other?
I'm not sure your memory of UK house prices to earnings ratios is entirely accurate:
You're right I muddled up different ratios - but still the reality was bad enough.
Look at that steep climb following EU expansion. Which predated interest rate cuts a few years later.
In 2003, house price to earnings for the UK were just under 5, as I read the chart. And on the eve of the Brexit referendum in 2015, they were... just over 5.
The big change, as I have mentioned on here before was Big Bang and when all the American IBs came over and catapulted banking into the stratosphere earnings-wise vs every other profession. That lead to the start of the house price boom which we are still seeing albeit as you note, it has fluctuated more normally since.
And also, what mood exactly do you have to be in to appreciate In Rainbows to the maximum?
Yes but that was mainly an issue in London and the Home Counties which came on top of the expansion in workers coming from the EU due to free movement from the new accession nations with Blair not imposing transition controls.
North of the Watford gap as the chart shows the house price to earnings ratio is not a problem and the vast majority of average earners can afford to buy a house, unlike their counterparts on average wages in London and the South East
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
The latest antibody survey shows that we've comfortably above 90% in the UK. You are coming across as detached from reality.
93.6% in England 91.2% in Wales 91.9% in Northern Ireland 93.3% in Scotland
Well clearly! And the sustained 30-40k new cases each day prove that there is no pox here any more.
Someone is detached from reality. Don't think its me luv.
I, my wife and my 8yo son make up some of those statistics this week. My wife and I feel like we have a cold. My son is now off school for a week and is racing around the garden playing football as there is nothing wrong with him. My 3yo and 12yo children are Covid free. Other than the 12yo still able to go to secondary we are locked up for a week at home. The statistics suggest that most cases at the moment are people like us. That is why hospitalisations and deaths continue to trend downwards.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
It's not so much of a London problem (for now), but in quite a few places, there's a significant reduction in bus services at the moment.
Something to do with a lack of drivers, for some reason.
Not the end of the world either way. Meat is meat.
British producers thank you for your support ! Next you’ll be spinning the devastating losses incurred by British fisheries into a positive .
I will say the same for fisheries as I say for farming, driver's salaries or anything else ... Let the market sort it out.
If our fishermen have a competitive advantage then great, exercise it, if not then c'est la vie.
The fisheries have been screwed because of Bozos deal . The NTBs in that deal is what has caused all the issues . You seem happy to see many sectors go to the wall which is rather unpatriotic given I thought voting Brexit was a badge of patriotism and all Remainers like myself were allegedly not patriotic enough !
Philip Thompson is a libertarian free trader who I believe wants global free trade with no tariffs and customs barriers anywhere and no state subsidies for farming or industry.
Though I don't think he has gone so far as to support free movement globally and accepts Boris' points system for migrants
... yes a strange ommission to his liberatarian ideals.
Why's it strange?
I've said I don't care if people are free to come here so long as we eliminate the green belt and people are free to build too. Since we don't have free construction, we can't justify free movement either. The two need to go hand-in-hand.
I back free construction though. I back the elimination of the green belt and the elimination of planning permission (though I'd keep restrictions exclusively for AONBs etc).
So people are free to come here without limit if we concrete all over the green belt and most of the English countryside to build all the extra homes for them. A deeply unpopular proposal (and most people don't live within easy reach of AONB and National Parks, especially in London and the Home Counties)
Now here is a dilemma as I agree with both @HYUFD and @Philip_Thompson (I know I'm a LD and so you should expect nothing different that I support both sides of the argument).
I believe in free movement of goods and labour in theory. However with different countries at different levels of prosperity that is not possible with labour as there would be mass migration. There is not the infrastructure to support that and I don't want the greenbelt destroyed. Once we do it's gone forever.
I did like what we had in the EU. Introducing countries under but close to our level of prosperity, causing immigration and bringing those countries up to our level fairly quickly after which the movement would balance out nicely.
Fairly balanced and indeed but the problem is that the EU countries aren't quickly coming up to our level of prosperity.
Maybe it was balancing out until the 90s, but our population has grown by over 10 million within a generation and that wasn't slowing down. Now as I've said repeatedly I don't care if we have population growth so long as we have the construction to match it, but we never did which is why house price to earnings ratio when from 3.5x in 2003 before Eastern accession to ~6-7x just a few years later.
Do you think its fair to link the concepts of free movement with free construction? If we aren't going to have one, how can we justify the other?
I'm not sure your memory of UK house prices to earnings ratios is entirely accurate:
You're right I muddled up different ratios - but still the reality was bad enough.
Look at that steep climb following EU expansion. Which predated interest rate cuts a few years later.
In 2003, house price to earnings for the UK were just under 5, as I read the chart. And on the eve of the Brexit referendum in 2015, they were... just over 5.
Now you're misreading it. They didn't reach just under 5 until ~2005, the surge happened after expansion. It was more like ~3.5 in 2003.
And if you look at the monthly data that verifies it too.
This exemplifies the problem. The Met, the London Mayor and the Home Office have had months, literally months to come up with some practical response to what they knew was coming.
And their answer was ...... drum roll ....... buses. Seriously. They think that (a) a bus will stop if a woman waves at it outside a bus stop (I mean have they even been to London?) and (b) that a bus driver will be able and willing to help a woman saying that a police officer is doing something he oughtn't.
Seriously?
And they didn't realise - in all these months - how stupid this sounds, how tin-eared, how offensively inappropriate, how inadequate.
It would be almost funny were the subject matter not so serious.
As it is, it is borderline cretinous. Never mind Dick being sacked. I'm of a mind to sack Patel, Khan and the nitwits at the Home Office, Mayoralty and Scotland Yard who thought this up.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
It's not so much of a London problem (for now), but in quite a few places, there's a significant reduction in bus services at the moment.
Something to do with a lack of drivers, for some reason.
I blame the bloody foreigners. Not coming here, not taking our jobs.
No surprise here. If he continues as he did yesterday and Johnson remains leader of the Tories I'd be surprised if Sir Keir isn't our next PM......
He may not be outwardly exciting but I saw something yesterday that I hadn't seen before. He has a personality that is engaging and he isn't smug. A nice contrast to Corbyn. He also seemed to me to be honest which is something no one could accuse Johnson of being. The downside is that he's a little bit Tory but nobody's perfect?
Johnson by contrast is becoming more untrustworthy as each day passes. Brexit is disintegrating. People are experiencing for themselves the damage it's causing and it's getting worse. (I myself got a letter yesterday cancelling something '....because of Brexit').
.......and as luck would have it all the architects are there together and in plain sight. They haven't even got the fig leaf of Dominic Cummings.
Shame - you really needed that brain transplant like yesterday.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
Everyone adult who wants to be vaccinated is double-vaccinated by now.
Yes we can get on with our lives. "Squashing" Covid is a pipe-dream unless you really mean "stop testing for Covid and declare it squashed".
You haven't answered my point about travel. You may be happy that it is done. Countries like Germany are not. We currently have a waiver for the mandatory quarantine that pox rates as high as here demand. If they pull that waiver then we won't be welcome in non-UK countries.
Wanting Covid to be over and saying so domestically is one thing. Covid really being over and other countries being willing to accept our pretence is another. We could be working harder to get more people vaccinated but won't. Others will.
The people not getting vaccinated in the UK are concentrated in various groups. There are on-going campaigns to reach out to them through their communities and through social media.
The problem is that it is a slow process - changing minds. Which is why the vaccination rate ticks up at about 0.1% per day.
Th reason that most of us don't see this is that most of (on PB) aren't in those groups.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
The latest antibody survey shows that we've comfortably above 90% in the UK. You are coming across as detached from reality.
93.6% in England 91.2% in Wales 91.9% in Northern Ireland 93.3% in Scotland
Well clearly! And the sustained 30-40k new cases each day prove that there is no pox here any more.
Someone is detached from reality. Don't think its me luv.
I, my wife and my 8yo son make up some of those statistics this week. My wife and I feel like we have a cold. My son is now off school for a week and is racing around the garden playing football as there is nothing wrong with him. My 3yo and 12yo children are Covid free. Other than the 12yo still able to go to secondary we are locked up for a week at home. The statistics suggest that most cases at the moment are people like us. That is why hospitalisations and deaths continue to trend downwards.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
Everyone adult who wants to be vaccinated is double-vaccinated by now.
Yes we can get on with our lives. "Squashing" Covid is a pipe-dream unless you really mean "stop testing for Covid and declare it squashed".
You haven't answered my point about travel. You may be happy that it is done. Countries like Germany are not. We currently have a waiver for the mandatory quarantine that pox rates as high as here demand. If they pull that waiver then we won't be welcome in non-UK countries.
Wanting Covid to be over and saying so domestically is one thing. Covid really being over and other countries being willing to accept our pretence is another. We could be working harder to get more people vaccinated but won't. Others will.
We have a higher vaccination rate than Germany.
We have a higher infection rate than Germany too...
Compare and contrast the below graphs. Do you really believe that it's the UK with a problem?
No surprise here. If he continues as he did yesterday and Johnson remains leader of the Tories I'd be surprised if Sir Keir isn't our next PM......
He may not be outwardly exciting but I saw something yesterday that I hadn't seen before. He has a personality that is engaging and he isn't smug. A nice contrast to Corbyn. He also seemed to me to be honest which is something no one could accuse Johnson of being. The downside is that he's a little bit Tory but nobody's perfect?
Johnson by contrast is becoming more untrustworthy as each day passes. Brexit is disintegrating. People are experiencing for themselves the damage it's causing and it's getting worse. (I myself got a letter yesterday cancelling something '....because of Brexit').
.......and as luck would have it all the architects are there together and in plain sight. They haven't even got the fig leaf of Dominic Cummings.
Shame - you really needed that brain transplant like yesterday.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
Everyone adult who wants to be vaccinated is double-vaccinated by now.
Yes we can get on with our lives. "Squashing" Covid is a pipe-dream unless you really mean "stop testing for Covid and declare it squashed".
You haven't answered my point about travel. You may be happy that it is done. Countries like Germany are not. We currently have a waiver for the mandatory quarantine that pox rates as high as here demand. If they pull that waiver then we won't be welcome in non-UK countries.
Wanting Covid to be over and saying so domestically is one thing. Covid really being over and other countries being willing to accept our pretence is another. We could be working harder to get more people vaccinated but won't. Others will.
There's nothing to answer in your point.
The reason we have a waiver is our rates aren't high. We're doing a lot of testing.
Name some nations with higher testing and lower rates than us?
The pox is over and we need to get on with our lives and so does every other nation on the planet. Even the Aussies are dropping restrictions not adding them now.
You should move on and stop self hating Britain. You're becoming as divorced from reality as Scott.
No surprise here. If he continues as he did yesterday and Johnson remains leader of the Tories I'd be surprised if Sir Keir isn't our next PM......
He may not be outwardly exciting but I saw something yesterday that I hadn't seen before. He has a personality that is engaging and he isn't smug. A nice contrast to Corbyn. He also seemed to me to be honest which is something no one could accuse Johnson of being. The downside is that he's a little bit Tory but nobody's perfect?
Johnson by contrast is becoming more untrustworthy as each day passes. Brexit is disintegrating. People are experiencing for themselves the damage it's causing and it's getting worse. (I myself got a letter yesterday cancelling something '....because of Brexit').
.......and as luck would have it all the architects are there together and in plain sight. They haven't even got the fig leaf of Dominic Cummings.
I would say
Truthful Boris 0/10 SKS 0/10 Engaging Boris 7/10 SKS 1/10 Trustworthy Boris 3/10 SKS 1/10 Anti Tory Boris 5/10 SKS 2/10 Election Winner Boris 9/10 SKS 0/10
So on your criteria I give it to Boris 24/50 to SKS 4/50
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
Everyone adult who wants to be vaccinated is double-vaccinated by now.
Yes we can get on with our lives. "Squashing" Covid is a pipe-dream unless you really mean "stop testing for Covid and declare it squashed".
You haven't answered my point about travel. You may be happy that it is done. Countries like Germany are not. We currently have a waiver for the mandatory quarantine that pox rates as high as here demand. If they pull that waiver then we won't be welcome in non-UK countries.
Wanting Covid to be over and saying so domestically is one thing. Covid really being over and other countries being willing to accept our pretence is another. We could be working harder to get more people vaccinated but won't. Others will.
We have a higher vaccination rate than Germany.
We have a higher infection rate than Germany too...
Compare and contrast the below graphs. Do you really believe that it's the UK with a problem?
There is an incredibly stark East-West divide in Europe. (Or you might call it a "Russian Influence" divide.)
Those countries in the West are well vaccinated. Those in the East are not. Bulgaria - IIRC - chose not to be involved in the EU vaccine purchase scheme. And then chose not to bother buying many vaccines themselves. Romania was in the scheme. But had lacklustre takeup.
The East-West divide is incredibly stark in Germany too. The worst performing Lander (from deaths and vaccinations) are all in the East, while vaccination rates in the West look like the UK or Belgium or wherever.
You need Boris to lead the Conservatives into the next election. Starmer to lead Labour. The Conservatives to not just lose their majority, but to lose it badly enough that Starmer can (and does) form the next government.
Impossible?
Far from it.
But not a 25% chance either.
Morning. Could you please let me know what the best Radiohead album is.
TIA
Asking FAF.
Obvs.
Well, I would do it in reverse: which Radiohead albums are not good?
And there's really only one "bad" Radiohead album - Pablo Honey. And that's not actually bad, just immature.
You then have two "middling" Radiohead albums - The Bends and Hail to the Thief. Both have their moments, but both do not reach the heights of some other albums.
Then there are the "great, but not the greatest" albums - The King of Limbs, Amnesiac, A Moon Shaped Pool. Some really cracking songs on those albums: Present Tense, Lotus Flower, and I Might Be Wrong being particularly great examples.
And then you have the Holy Trio: OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows. I am particularly fond of the last of these, but you can make a case for any of them to be Radiohead's GOAT.
You need Boris to lead the Conservatives into the next election. Starmer to lead Labour. The Conservatives to not just lose their majority, but to lose it badly enough that Starmer can (and does) form the next government.
Impossible?
Far from it.
But not a 25% chance either.
Morning. Could you please let me know what the best Radiohead album is.
TIA
Asking FAF.
Obvs.
Well, I would do it in reverse: which Radiohead albums are not good?
And there's really only one "bad" Radiohead album - Pablo Honey. And that's not actually bad, just immature.
You then have two "middling" Radiohead albums - The Bends and Hail to the Thief. Both have their moments, but both do not reach the heights of some other albums.
Then there are the "great, but not the greatest" albums - The King of Limbs, Amnesiac, A Moon Shaped Pool. Some really cracking songs on those albums: Present Tense, Lotus Flower, and I Might Be Wrong being particularly great examples.
And then you have the Holy Trio: OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows. I am particularly fond of the last of these, but you can make a case for any of them to be Radiohead's GOAT.
Not the end of the world either way. Meat is meat.
British producers thank you for your support ! Next you’ll be spinning the devastating losses incurred by British fisheries into a positive .
I will say the same for fisheries as I say for farming, driver's salaries or anything else ... Let the market sort it out.
If our fishermen have a competitive advantage then great, exercise it, if not then c'est la vie.
The fisheries have been screwed because of Bozos deal . The NTBs in that deal is what has caused all the issues . You seem happy to see many sectors go to the wall which is rather unpatriotic given I thought voting Brexit was a badge of patriotism and all Remainers like myself were allegedly not patriotic enough !
Philip Thompson is a libertarian free trader who I believe wants global free trade with no tariffs and customs barriers anywhere and no state subsidies for farming or industry.
Though I don't think he has gone so far as to support free movement globally and accepts Boris' points system for migrants
... yes a strange ommission to his liberatarian ideals.
Why's it strange?
I've said I don't care if people are free to come here so long as we eliminate the green belt and people are free to build too. Since we don't have free construction, we can't justify free movement either. The two need to go hand-in-hand.
I back free construction though. I back the elimination of the green belt and the elimination of planning permission (though I'd keep restrictions exclusively for AONBs etc).
So people are free to come here without limit if we concrete all over the green belt and most of the English countryside to build all the extra homes for them. A deeply unpopular proposal (and most people don't live within easy reach of AONB and National Parks, especially in London and the Home Counties)
Now here is a dilemma as I agree with both @HYUFD and @Philip_Thompson (I know I'm a LD and so you should expect nothing different that I support both sides of the argument).
I believe in free movement of goods and labour in theory. However with different countries at different levels of prosperity that is not possible with labour as there would be mass migration. There is not the infrastructure to support that and I don't want the greenbelt destroyed. Once we do it's gone forever.
I did like what we had in the EU. Introducing countries under but close to our level of prosperity, causing immigration and bringing those countries up to our level fairly quickly after which the movement would balance out nicely.
Fairly balanced and indeed but the problem is that the EU countries aren't quickly coming up to our level of prosperity.
Maybe it was balancing out until the 90s, but our population has grown by over 10 million within a generation and that wasn't slowing down. Now as I've said repeatedly I don't care if we have population growth so long as we have the construction to match it, but we never did which is why house price to earnings ratio when from 3.5x in 2003 before Eastern accession to ~6-7x just a few years later.
Do you think its fair to link the concepts of free movement with free construction? If we aren't going to have one, how can we justify the other?
I'm afraid I am going to come over all irrational (HYUFD will never let me forget this). I agree with free movement in labour and not in a free for all in construction and also appreciate that is in conflict with your completely rational position.
Sorry but a classic LD position from me. Sometimes we aren't hypocrites but just confused. I don't have an answer other than compromise.
You need Boris to lead the Conservatives into the next election. Starmer to lead Labour. The Conservatives to not just lose their majority, but to lose it badly enough that Starmer can (and does) form the next government.
Impossible?
Far from it.
But not a 25% chance either.
I'm normally quite close to you on the betting front but in this case not.
For me, Starmer and Johnson are almost nailed on to lead into the GE, so PM post that is a 2 horse race. This strong view of mine, that neither are going anywhere, is why I lumped on Starmer Next PM at 8 when it was available a few months ago post Hartlepool. I never saw him being unseated by the party before he has his shot, and I never gave much credence to the 'Boris out early and replaced by Rishi' scenario.
Now? Well I price the GE as follows:
Con maj 60% Con min 15% Lab maj 5% Lab min 20%
So, excluding the 'remotes' of either stepping down before the GE, or Johnson winning it and then in due course fighting another with Starmer staying on as LOTO and finally winning that one, which about cancel each other out, I have 25% as being about fair value right now for Starmer Next PM. But I don't truly think he will be so as soon as it goes under 4 I'll probably be laying my position back.
I'm also happy with my £300 to £100 with shrewdball @isam on Starmer being PM after the next GE - a slightly different bet to Next PM. And he's happy with it too, so that's nice, exactly what you want with a bet, just like that final hand in the Cincinnati Kid. Only question is, who's the Steve McQueen and who's the Edward G Robinson? I might look very like the former - cough - but I hope that's where the resemblance ends on this one.
You need Boris to lead the Conservatives into the next election. Starmer to lead Labour. The Conservatives to not just lose their majority, but to lose it badly enough that Starmer can (and does) form the next government.
Impossible?
Far from it.
But not a 25% chance either.
Morning. Could you please let me know what the best Radiohead album is.
TIA
Asking FAF.
Obvs.
Well, I would do it in reverse: which Radiohead albums are not good?
And there's really only one "bad" Radiohead album - Pablo Honey. And that's not actually bad, just immature.
You then have two "middling" Radiohead albums - The Bends and Hail to the Thief. Both have their moments, but both do not reach the heights of some other albums.
Then there are the "great, but not the greatest" albums - The King of Limbs, Amnesiac, A Moon Shaped Pool. Some really cracking songs on those albums: Present Tense, Lotus Flower, and I Might Be Wrong being particularly great examples.
And then you have the Holy Trio: OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows. I am particularly fond of the last of these, but you can make a case for any of them to be Radiohead's GOAT.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
I was told by a bus driver (TfL), not long before COVID, that stopping a bus between stops was banned.
And that undercover bus inspectors would pull up a bus driver if he/she did it in front of them (the inspector) and pull them off the job then and there for disciplinary proceedings.
To be fair, at least in London, the number of stops seems to have doubled and there is live timetabling so this policy is more reasonable than it would have been 20 years ago, when they often would stop if they could.
Just shows how out of touch whoever wrote it is, probably not used a bus in the last decade yet refers to them casually over something serious.
The suggestion on here of allowing the arrested to whatsapp a photo of the warrant card makes much more sense.
There are some London bus routes that do not use stops and do rely on being flagged down.
And while we are ranting about buses, the distinction between compulsory and request has all but vanished. Best always to press the bell or stick your hand out.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
Are we viewed as a pariah nation?
Certainly not here in Spain - where locally in Andalucia the big concern is a ...shortage of fruit & veg lorry drivers!
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
I was told by a bus driver (TfL), not long before COVID, that stopping a bus between stops was banned.
And that undercover bus inspectors would pull up a bus driver if he/she did it in front of them (the inspector) and pull them off the job then and there for disciplinary proceedings.
To be fair, at least in London, the number of stops seems to have doubled and there is live timetabling so this policy is more reasonable than it would have been 20 years ago, when they often would stop if they could.
Just shows how out of touch whoever wrote it is, probably not used a bus in the last decade yet refers to them casually over something serious.
The suggestion on here of allowing the arrested to whatsapp a photo of the warrant card makes much more sense.
Effectively we now have no functioning police force on London. If the Met itself is saying you can't trust us and you should check if a police officer is behaving lawfully (otherwise - whisper it quietly - if something bad happens to you, well it was partly your fault), then the police really can't do their job. They've lost their authority and face derision from some, bafflement from others and have now created a giant loophole through which criminals can walk.
And the people who dreamt this up are fit to be in charge, are they?
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
I was told by a bus driver (TfL), not long before COVID, that stopping a bus between stops was banned.
And that undercover bus inspectors would pull up a bus driver if he/she did it in front of them (the inspector) and pull them off the job then and there for disciplinary proceedings.
To be fair, at least in London, the number of stops seems to have doubled and there is live timetabling so this policy is more reasonable than it would have been 20 years ago, when they often would stop if they could.
Just shows how out of touch whoever wrote it is, probably not used a bus in the last decade yet refers to them casually over something serious.
The suggestion on here of allowing the arrested to whatsapp a photo of the warrant card makes much more sense.
OTOH, makes it much easier to fake up a warrant card, no?
There is a scene in the brilliant ITV docudrama Manhunter, Night Stalker, where the White DCI uses his Black DI's warrant card to get into Scotland Yard. "But I look nothing like you." "You're too modest."
No surprise here. If he continues as he did yesterday and Johnson remains leader of the Tories I'd be surprised if Sir Keir isn't our next PM......
He may not be outwardly exciting but I saw something yesterday that I hadn't seen before. He has a personality that is engaging and he isn't smug. A nice contrast to Corbyn. He also seemed to me to be honest which is something no one could accuse Johnson of being. The downside is that he's a little bit Tory but nobody's perfect?
Johnson by contrast is becoming more untrustworthy as each day passes. Brexit is disintegrating. People are experiencing for themselves the damage it's causing and it's getting worse. (I myself got a letter yesterday cancelling something '....because of Brexit').
.......and as luck would have it all the architects are there together and in plain sight. They haven't even got the fig leaf of Dominic Cummings.
I would say
Truthful Boris 0/10 SKS 0/10 Engaging Boris 7/10 SKS 1/10 Trustworthy Boris 3/10 SKS 1/10 Anti Tory Boris 5/10 SKS 2/10 Election Winner Boris 9/10 SKS 0/10
So on your criteria I give it to Boris 24/50 to SKS 4/50
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
I was told by a bus driver (TfL), not long before COVID, that stopping a bus between stops was banned.
And that undercover bus inspectors would pull up a bus driver if he/she did it in front of them (the inspector) and pull them off the job then and there for disciplinary proceedings.
To be fair, at least in London, the number of stops seems to have doubled and there is live timetabling so this policy is more reasonable than it would have been 20 years ago, when they often would stop if they could.
Just shows how out of touch whoever wrote it is, probably not used a bus in the last decade yet refers to them casually over something serious.
The suggestion on here of allowing the arrested to whatsapp a photo of the warrant card makes much more sense.
There are some London bus routes that do not use stops and do rely on being flagged down.
And while we are ranting about buses, the distinction between compulsory and request has all but vanished. Best always to press the bell or stick your hand out.
Yes, there are small number of such routes. The idea that stopping between stops on a stopping route is seen as terrible surprised me. I wonder what the rationale is? Or is it pure third degree clipboardism?
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
It's not so much of a London problem (for now), but in quite a few places, there's a significant reduction in bus services at the moment.
Something to do with a lack of drivers, for some reason.
Anyone this criminally cunning will now simply not stop someone on a bus route.
Who the hell gives Cressida Dick political cover? Both Labour and the Conservatives seem transfixed by her. Guys, its OK to fire a woman when she is fucking terrible at her job.
You need Boris to lead the Conservatives into the next election. Starmer to lead Labour. The Conservatives to not just lose their majority, but to lose it badly enough that Starmer can (and does) form the next government.
Impossible?
Far from it.
But not a 25% chance either.
Three ways that can happen.
One is that Bozza's next campaign is overconfident and bombs as badly as May did in 2017.
Next, things go so wrong for the government that being Boris's successor becomes a poisoned chalice that nobody sensible wants. That sort of kept Major in place between '95 and '97. The flaw with that is that I don't see BoJo having the sense of duty to stay on once everyone starts being nasty to him.
Third is that the equal pulls of Sunak and Truss trying to depose him (sorry, "friends of Sunak and Truss") create a strange equilibrium that stops the Bozzmeister falling.
All possible, I guess. But not 25% possible.
Yep, I tend to agree with you and RCS on this. No longer value. I followed Kinabalu's lead and backed at towards 8, but I traded out earlier today after I saw the jump. If the polls move towards Labour, he might come in more in the short term, but I'm not convinced enough people are paying attention for the polls to move.
I don't know how well the below post, but giving it a go. its from 'Our would in date'
there are lots of ways to masher how a nation is doing in comparison to others WRT COVID, non is perfect but some are more floored than others. you can look at cases, but this does depend very much on how much testing a nation is doing, and also the row number does not distinguish between old/venerable and heathy people. Alternately you can look at deaths, but nations meser this defiantly, depths with COVID Vs deaths of COVID, hospitalisation may be better but again there is some difference in repotting over the With and of COVID, I think perhaps the best is No in ICU, (again not saying its perfect) one draw back is that not all nations are repotting this, but 20 out of 27 EU nations are, and compared to them 13 have more in ICU (including France, Germany and Spain) and 7 have less in ICU (Including Italy)
So by this metric, we are on the better side of Mid table.
I don't know how well the below post, but giving it a go. its from 'Our would in date'
there are lots of ways to masher how a nation is doing in comparison to others WRT COVID, non is perfect but some are more floored than others. you can look at cases, but this does depend very much on how much testing a nation is doing, and also the row number does not distinguish between old/venerable and heathy people. Alternately you can look at deaths, but nations meser this defiantly, depths with COVID Vs deaths of COVID, hospitalisation may be better but again there is some difference in repotting over the With and of COVID, I think perhaps the best is No in ICU, (again not saying its perfect) one draw back is that not all nations are repotting this, but 20 out of 27 EU nations are, and compared to them 13 have more in ICU (including France, Germany and Spain) and 7 have less in ICU (Including Italy)
So by this metric, we are on the better side of Mid table.
Looks like my attempt to embed and image did not work, so here is the link:
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
Everyone adult who wants to be vaccinated is double-vaccinated by now.
Yes we can get on with our lives. "Squashing" Covid is a pipe-dream unless you really mean "stop testing for Covid and declare it squashed".
You haven't answered my point about travel. You may be happy that it is done. Countries like Germany are not. We currently have a waiver for the mandatory quarantine that pox rates as high as here demand. If they pull that waiver then we won't be welcome in non-UK countries.
Wanting Covid to be over and saying so domestically is one thing. Covid really being over and other countries being willing to accept our pretence is another. We could be working harder to get more people vaccinated but won't. Others will.
There's nothing to answer in your point.
The reason we have a waiver is our rates aren't high. We're doing a lot of testing.
Name some nations with higher testing and lower rates than us?
The pox is over and we need to get on with our lives and so does every other nation on the planet. Even the Aussies are dropping restrictions not adding them now.
You should move on and stop self hating Britain. You're becoming as divorced from reality as Scott.
Lol - I'm in the process of doing the paperwork for my trip to Germany via the Netherlands the week after next. If we had low case rates then we would not be on the list of countries that have restrictions for entry.
I would be delighted if case numbers collapsed back towards background rate again. But they aren't. Pointing that out isn't "self hating Britain". And even if I did stop pointing that out there will be an immigration officer to do it for me.
On topic, New Labour have had a good Conference. But how many activists they lose as a consequence is rather more pertinent than Starmer's immediate post-Conference polling.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
The latest antibody survey shows that we've comfortably above 90% in the UK. You are coming across as detached from reality.
93.6% in England 91.2% in Wales 91.9% in Northern Ireland 93.3% in Scotland
I don't know how well the below post, but giving it a go. its from 'Our would in date'
there are lots of ways to masher how a nation is doing in comparison to others WRT COVID, non is perfect but some are more floored than others. you can look at cases, but this does depend very much on how much testing a nation is doing, and also the row number does not distinguish between old/venerable and heathy people. Alternately you can look at deaths, but nations meser this defiantly, depths with COVID Vs deaths of COVID, hospitalisation may be better but again there is some difference in repotting over the With and of COVID, I think perhaps the best is No in ICU, (again not saying its perfect) one draw back is that not all nations are repotting this, but 20 out of 27 EU nations are, and compared to them 13 have more in ICU (including France, Germany and Spain) and 7 have less in ICU (Including Italy)
So by this metric, we are on the better side of Mid table.
Looks like my attempt to embed and image did not work, so here is the link:
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
It's not so much of a London problem (for now), but in quite a few places, there's a significant reduction in bus services at the moment.
Something to do with a lack of drivers, for some reason.
Anyone this criminally cunning will now simply not stop someone on a bus route.
Who the hell gives Cressida Dick political cover? Both Labour and the Conservatives seem transfixed by her. Guys, its OK to fire a woman when she is fucking terrible at her job.
Well, who better than the met commissioner to maintain a dossier of kompromat on all politicians in a position to get her sacked? Other explanations are hard to come by!
Edit: Although on second thoughts that would imply the presence of 'intelligence'...
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
The latest antibody survey shows that we've comfortably above 90% in the UK. You are coming across as detached from reality.
93.6% in England 91.2% in Wales 91.9% in Northern Ireland 93.3% in Scotland
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
It's not so much of a London problem (for now), but in quite a few places, there's a significant reduction in bus services at the moment.
Something to do with a lack of drivers, for some reason.
Anyone this criminally cunning will now simply not stop someone on a bus route.
Who the hell gives Cressida Dick political cover? Both Labour and the Conservatives seem transfixed by her. Guys, its OK to fire a woman when she is fucking terrible at her job.
Well, who better than the met commissioner to maintain a dossier of kompromat on all politicians in a position to get her sacked? Other explanations are hard to come by!
Not wanting to compromise any legal action over dismissal?
PS: yes, I do realise the irony of such punctiliousness.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
You need Boris to lead the Conservatives into the next election. Starmer to lead Labour. The Conservatives to not just lose their majority, but to lose it badly enough that Starmer can (and does) form the next government.
Impossible?
Far from it.
But not a 25% chance either.
Morning. Could you please let me know what the best Radiohead album is.
TIA
Asking FAF.
Obvs.
Well, I would do it in reverse: which Radiohead albums are not good?
And there's really only one "bad" Radiohead album - Pablo Honey. And that's not actually bad, just immature.
You then have two "middling" Radiohead albums - The Bends and Hail to the Thief. Both have their moments, but both do not reach the heights of some other albums.
Then there are the "great, but not the greatest" albums - The King of Limbs, Amnesiac, A Moon Shaped Pool. Some really cracking songs on those albums: Present Tense, Lotus Flower, and I Might Be Wrong being particularly great examples.
And then you have the Holy Trio: OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows. I am particularly fond of the last of these, but you can make a case for any of them to be Radiohead's GOAT.
So far I've found it impossible to get into Radiohead. But I'm determined to do it one day because so many people say they're an amazing band.
I am currently listening to In Rainbows.
My view is that it is ******** ******* ****
Edit: ******** ******* ****** ****
I completely read that as 'listening in to Rainbows' and wondered whether you had some retro kids TV on in the background or you had a daughter at an early afternoon Rainbows meeting.
This exemplifies the problem. The Met, the London Mayor and the Home Office have had months, literally months to come up with some practical response to what they knew was coming.
And their answer was ...... drum roll ....... buses. Seriously. They think that (a) a bus will stop if a woman waves at it outside a bus stop (I mean have they even been to London?) and (b) that a bus driver will be able and willing to help a woman saying that a police officer is doing something he oughtn't.
Seriously?
And they didn't realise - in all these months - how stupid this sounds, how tin-eared, how offensively inappropriate, how inadequate.
It would be almost funny were the subject matter not so serious.
As it is, it is borderline cretinous. Never mind Dick being sacked. I'm of a mind to sack Patel, Khan and the nitwits at the Home Office, Mayoralty and Scotland Yard who thought this up.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Good conference centre presumably. And I think theyd like being in a place which is not very supportive - if they get protestors harassing attendees it makes them look good by comparison.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5h We've now reached the point where the public are being advised to flag down buses to protect themselves from police officers. And the head of the Metropolitan Police remains in post. How does anyone in authority seriously think this is a sustainable position.
Indeed, it is silly, pretty sure no-one has successfully flagged down a bus in the last decade....
I was told by a bus driver (TfL), not long before COVID, that stopping a bus between stops was banned.
And that undercover bus inspectors would pull up a bus driver if he/she did it in front of them (the inspector) and pull them off the job then and there for disciplinary proceedings.
To be fair, at least in London, the number of stops seems to have doubled and there is live timetabling so this policy is more reasonable than it would have been 20 years ago, when they often would stop if they could.
Just shows how out of touch whoever wrote it is, probably not used a bus in the last decade yet refers to them casually over something serious.
The suggestion on here of allowing the arrested to whatsapp a photo of the warrant card makes much more sense.
Effectively we now have no functioning police force on London. If the Met itself is saying you can't trust us and you should check if a police officer is behaving lawfully (otherwise - whisper it quietly - if something bad happens to you, well it was partly your fault), then the police really can't do their job. They've lost their authority and face derision from some, bafflement from others and have now created a giant loophole through which criminals can walk.
And the people who dreamt this up are fit to be in charge, are they?
To be fair, the politicians daren't try and reign the police in because, if they do then the police will fit them up.
I mean, they were happy to do it with a Cabinet Minister, so the Mayor of London doesn't stand a chance.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Whats the bloody point? Seriously, why even bother asking? Its shit politics. You recall parliament for major crises. This is not remotely that.
It's a standard call, but itd achieve nothing and its not like there's going to be heartfelt speeches as with Afghanistan's collapse as a cathartic exercise.
He's doubled vaxxed and symptomless so probably no USA Supreme Court hilarity incoming
I started writing a thread about SCOTUS and hoping to do something about Clarence Thomas and Long Dong Silver.
Might have to wait a few weeks until this all blows over.
Did you see the coverage of Alito's event at Notra Dame?
If your opinion of him was that he is an absolute scum bucket you would not be disappointed. He managed to contradict himself within the space of a few sentences repeatedly.
Speaking on BBC Radio York, Conservative Mr Allott said women should be aware this was not an indictable offence - one considered serious enough to warrant a prison sentence or crown court hearing.
"So women, first of all, need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can't be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that," he said.
"Perhaps women need to consider in terms of the legal process, to just learn a bit about that legal process".
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Good conference centre presumably. And I think theyd like being in a place which is not very supportive - if they get protestors harassing attendees it makes them look good by comparison.
What's wrong with Glasgow? Dry run for COP26, plus polish the Unionist credential.
This exemplifies the problem. The Met, the London Mayor and the Home Office have had months, literally months to come up with some practical response to what they knew was coming.
And their answer was ...... drum roll ....... buses. Seriously. They think that (a) a bus will stop if a woman waves at it outside a bus stop (I mean have they even been to London?) and (b) that a bus driver will be able and willing to help a woman saying that a police officer is doing something he oughtn't.
Seriously?
And they didn't realise - in all these months - how stupid this sounds, how tin-eared, how offensively inappropriate, how inadequate.
It would be almost funny were the subject matter not so serious.
As it is, it is borderline cretinous. Never mind Dick being sacked. I'm of a mind to sack Patel, Khan and the nitwits at the Home Office, Mayoralty and Scotland Yard who thought this up.
They do know how stupid it sounds. The point of the more and more ridiculous Met statements about what women could do is to get the media focus on "what women could do" rather than on "what the police can do".
They are willing to sustain serious mockery if it means they avoid accountability and the need to reform.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Tories get between 10-20% of the vote across Manchester I think. Not much, and no representatives, but theres some out there.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
On topic, New Labour have had a good Conference. But how many activists they lose as a consequence is rather more pertinent than Starmer's immediate post-Conference polling.
You mean, they should be concerned that they might not lose enough activists?
Speaking on BBC Radio York, Conservative Mr Allott said women should be aware this was not an indictable offence - one considered serious enough to warrant a prison sentence or crown court hearing.
"So women, first of all, need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can't be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that," he said.
"Perhaps women need to consider in terms of the legal process, to just learn a bit about that legal process".
I'm glad to report I did not vote for this idiot.
What a fool. Itd be great if we all knew more, it's a major problem actually and it's not like the powers that be make justice or knowledge of the law easily accessible, but can he not see what what hes saying?
Speaking on BBC Radio York, Conservative Mr Allott said women should be aware this was not an indictable offence - one considered serious enough to warrant a prison sentence or crown court hearing.
"So women, first of all, need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can't be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that," he said.
"Perhaps women need to consider in terms of the legal process, to just learn a bit about that legal process".
I'm glad to report I did not vote for this idiot.
Quite apart from owt else... Does he think a swift "I know my rights, you can't handcuff me." Would have resulted in Ms Everard being allowed to proceed on her way? Imbecile. As well as an insensitive, thick one.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Good conference centre presumably. And I think theyd like being in a place which is not very supportive - if they get protestors harassing attendees it makes them look good by comparison.
Having been to several party conferences over the past few years Manchester is by far the best because of the way they can create a comfortable secure zone that includes the main hotels as well as the conference centre. Brighton is difficult because it is on the seafront and there is very little space for the screening area.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Tories get between 10-20% of the vote across Manchester I think. Not much, and no representatives, but theres some out there.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
Because they could go somewhere they have made inroads and celebrate it. Instead they're going to Manchester where in previous years there has been a rung of steel to protect delegates from the angry natives.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
The North West and Greater Manchester has plenty of Tories.
Speaking on BBC Radio York, Conservative Mr Allott said women should be aware this was not an indictable offence - one considered serious enough to warrant a prison sentence or crown court hearing.
"So women, first of all, need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can't be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that," he said.
"Perhaps women need to consider in terms of the legal process, to just learn a bit about that legal process".
I'm glad to report I did not vote for this idiot.
Jesus F.ing Christ.
A police officer can arrest you whenever they like & you’d be resisting arrest if you refused. The flimsiest justification is sufficient to keep them on the right side of the law.
Sure, it might be re-classified retrospectively as a wrongful arrest, but that doesn’t matter - legally at the time of the arrest every arrest is a legal arrest: it’s for the courts / the police to sort out the wronful from the, erm, rightful after the fact. So long as the officer in question can come up with a reasonable belief as a justification for the arrest at the time then they are within their powers to arrest anyone they like. In effect you cannot legally resist a wrongful arrest in this country; the law requires you to permit yourself to be arrested & to then challenge the arrest in court at a later date.
How can these people be this stupid? Do they really think we’ll believe the guff they’re spouting?
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Good conference centre presumably. And I think theyd like being in a place which is not very supportive - if they get protestors harassing attendees it makes them look good by comparison.
Having been to several party conferences over the past few years Manchester is by far the best because of the way they can create a comfortable secure zone that includes the main hotels as well as the conference centre. Brighton is difficult because it is on the seafront and there is very little space for the screening area.
Glasgow is also a good location.
Manchester has a very fine city centre, and the Reading Room of the John Rylands library is the best example of Victorian Gothic I've come across.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Tories get between 10-20% of the vote across Manchester I think. Not much, and no representatives, but theres some out there.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
Because they could go somewhere they have made inroads and celebrate it. Instead they're going to Manchester where in previous years there has been a rung of steel to protect delegates from the angry natives.
Seems an odd thing to argue for. There shouldn’t really be any no-go zones for the major parties.
On topic, New Labour have had a good Conference. But how many activists they lose as a consequence is rather more pertinent than Starmer's immediate post-Conference polling.
You mean, they should be concerned that they might not lose enough activists?
Exactly this. Yesterday we were talking about the non-candidacy of Corbyn under the Labour whip and @NickPalmer pointed out that swathes of Labour activists would descend into Islington to campaign for Corbyn (and against Labour thus getting them swiftly expelled from the party).
If your activist is the kind who wants to campaign against the party - or in many cases spent years doing so - then yes best to get shut of them. My favourite examples of entryist "activists" were two on Teesside. One had to be banned from the doorstep for jabbing her finger in too many voters faces. The other told lies about a branch meeting which went viral and ended up with the CLP being attacked on CNN America.
Completely OT but specially for TUD and the discussion the other day of Unionist?Brexit nostalgia for the good old 50s and 60s - I came across this when pressie-shopping: we even have retro JB 1960s toys.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Good conference centre presumably. And I think theyd like being in a place which is not very supportive - if they get protestors harassing attendees it makes them look good by comparison.
Having been to several party conferences over the past few years Manchester is by far the best because of the way they can create a comfortable secure zone that includes the main hotels as well as the conference centre. Brighton is difficult because it is on the seafront and there is very little space for the screening area.
Glasgow is also a good location.
The Tories also still remember the Brighton bomb too of course.
5 were killed on that dreadful night and 31 injured, an association chairwoman I knew was having drinks in the bar of the Grand Hotel when the bomb went off and had the windows blown out the other way she would have been killed
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Tories get between 10-20% of the vote across Manchester I think. Not much, and no representatives, but theres some out there.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
Because they could go somewhere they have made inroads and celebrate it. Instead they're going to Manchester where in previous years there has been a rung of steel to protect delegates from the angry natives.
So what? If they have to be protected from 'natives' it speaks very Ill of the natives. I'd be inclined to go back simply to show a lack of being intimidated.
But it seems it is just practicalities - it's a good place for conferences, no need to let political considerations affect that.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Tories get between 10-20% of the vote across Manchester I think. Not much, and no representatives, but theres some out there.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
Because they could go somewhere they have made inroads and celebrate it. Instead they're going to Manchester where in previous years there has been a rung of steel to protect delegates from the angry natives.
Seems an odd thing to argue for. There shouldn’t really be any no-go zones for the major parties.
Yep - seems counterproductive to suggest parties shouldn’t try and connect with areas that don’t predominantly vote for them.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Tories get between 10-20% of the vote across Manchester I think. Not much, and no representatives, but theres some out there.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
Because they could go somewhere they have made inroads and celebrate it. Instead they're going to Manchester where in previous years there has been a rung of steel to protect delegates from the angry natives.
Seems an odd thing to argue for. There shouldn’t really be any no-go zones for the major parties.
Shouldn't be. I dunno, was just a passing thought that the Tories under Beaker could have done a triumphantist conference in a place they would be largely welcomed as opposed to Manchester where its the opposite.
As a Lancastrian I'm very confident the city will be happy to take their money.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Tories get between 10-20% of the vote across Manchester I think. Not much, and no representatives, but theres some out there.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
Because they could go somewhere they have made inroads and celebrate it. Instead they're going to Manchester where in previous years there has been a rung of steel to protect delegates from the angry natives.
Seems an odd thing to argue for. There shouldn’t really be any no-go zones for the major parties.
Shouldn't be. I dunno, was just a passing thought that the Tories under Beaker could have done a triumphantist conference in a place they would be largely welcomed as opposed to Manchester where its the opposite.
As a Lancastrian I'm very confident the city will be happy to take their money.
Too many places to choose from. Why not instead base the decision on which place has the best facilities to host a conference, rather than triumphalism?
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
The latest antibody survey shows that we've comfortably above 90% in the UK. You are coming across as detached from reality.
93.6% in England 91.2% in Wales 91.9% in Northern Ireland 93.3% in Scotland
Well clearly! And the sustained 30-40k new cases each day prove that there is no pox here any more.
Someone is detached from reality. Don't think its me luv.
I, my wife and my 8yo son make up some of those statistics this week. My wife and I feel like we have a cold. My son is now off school for a week and is racing around the garden playing football as there is nothing wrong with him. My 3yo and 12yo children are Covid free. Other than the 12yo still able to go to secondary we are locked up for a week at home. The statistics suggest that most cases at the moment are people like us. That is why hospitalisations and deaths continue to trend downwards.
England Hospitalisations have plateaued and could even be rising.
This exemplifies the problem. The Met, the London Mayor and the Home Office have had months, literally months to come up with some practical response to what they knew was coming.
And their answer was ...... drum roll ....... buses. Seriously. They think that (a) a bus will stop if a woman waves at it outside a bus stop (I mean have they even been to London?) and (b) that a bus driver will be able and willing to help a woman saying that a police officer is doing something he oughtn't.
Seriously?
And they didn't realise - in all these months - how stupid this sounds, how tin-eared, how offensively inappropriate, how inadequate.
It would be almost funny were the subject matter not so serious.
As it is, it is borderline cretinous. Never mind Dick being sacked. I'm of a mind to sack Patel, Khan and the nitwits at the Home Office, Mayoralty and Scotland Yard who thought this up.
It’s astonishing, isn’t it?
How can they be this tone-deaf?
I can well believe it. Remember some of those early public statements by senior bankers which did nothing but infuriate everyone ("the time for apologies is over" etc)? These are the same.
It's what happens when an organization has not grasped the enormity of the mess it's in and how it's viewed, is panicking but is still largely talking to itself.
And no-one from the outside has the balls to go in and tell them to stop being so fucking stupid. Which would be pretty much what I would do - and at this point in those words - and what I have done in the past.
That is why Khan's statement is so damaging. There is no chance of the change that is so badly needed happening when the external stakeholders are so fucking feeble.
Honestly - apologies for all the swearing. But really this is just utterly scandalous.
PCC's are another utterly unfit Coalition wheeze. This N Yorkshire bloke seems to see his role to excuse the police.
I liked the coalition, but the PCCs were a joke and unnecessary. But we're stuck with them.
At the very least they could have stuck with calling them Sheriffs.
Of course for that London the PCC role is done by the mayor. In any other force we would have had people calling for the PCC's head as well as the Chief Constable. Instead we have the absurdity of a Met Officer committing those offences as a copper, then the force saying "flag down a bus" if you think you're being improperly arrested, the Commissioner saying "It wasn't me" and the Mayor backing her and the organisation.
A Sky News report just now seemed to be implying that most of the petrol problems are in London and that the situation in the rest of the country has improved a lot since a few days ago.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Tories get between 10-20% of the vote across Manchester I think. Not much, and no representatives, but theres some out there.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
Because they could go somewhere they have made inroads and celebrate it. Instead they're going to Manchester where in previous years there has been a rung of steel to protect delegates from the angry natives.
Seems an odd thing to argue for. There shouldn’t really be any no-go zones for the major parties.
Shouldn't be. I dunno, was just a passing thought that the Tories under Beaker could have done a triumphantist conference in a place they would be largely welcomed as opposed to Manchester where its the opposite.
As a Lancastrian I'm very confident the city will be happy to take their money.
Too many places to choose from. Why not instead base the decision on which place has the best facilities to host a conference, rather than triumphalism?
Because the PM loves triumphalism. Thats all he's got.
Tory conference next week in Manchester. I get why Call Me Dave wanted to head to places like Manchester but why is Boris bothering? Either head for the red wall you've conquered or stay in the south where you are welcomed. Birmingham. Stoke. Teesside (where the main man Matt Vickers can feed the PM a parmo). Not Manchester.
Was a thing among the major parties.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
So go to a city where you have a presence. That isn't Machester for the Tories. Having a big secure zone so delegates can go from the back of the Midland Hotel into GMEX without having to risk encountering the locals isn't worth the bother - they could be anywhere.
Tories get between 10-20% of the vote across Manchester I think. Not much, and no representatives, but theres some out there.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
Because they could go somewhere they have made inroads and celebrate it. Instead they're going to Manchester where in previous years there has been a rung of steel to protect delegates from the angry natives.
Seems an odd thing to argue for. There shouldn’t really be any no-go zones for the major parties.
Shouldn't be. I dunno, was just a passing thought that the Tories under Beaker could have done a triumphantist conference in a place they would be largely welcomed as opposed to Manchester where its the opposite.
As a Lancastrian I'm very confident the city will be happy to take their money.
Too many places to choose from. Why not instead base the decision on which place has the best facilities to host a conference, rather than triumphalism?
Because the PM loves triumphalism. Thats all he's got.
Except the conference is in Manchester. If it’s all he’s got, it’s be somewhere else according to your logic.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
The latest antibody survey shows that we've comfortably above 90% in the UK. You are coming across as detached from reality.
93.6% in England 91.2% in Wales 91.9% in Northern Ireland 93.3% in Scotland
Well clearly! And the sustained 30-40k new cases each day prove that there is no pox here any more.
Someone is detached from reality. Don't think its me luv.
I, my wife and my 8yo son make up some of those statistics this week. My wife and I feel like we have a cold. My son is now off school for a week and is racing around the garden playing football as there is nothing wrong with him. My 3yo and 12yo children are Covid free. Other than the 12yo still able to go to secondary we are locked up for a week at home. The statistics suggest that most cases at the moment are people like us. That is why hospitalisations and deaths continue to trend downwards.
England Hospitalisations have plateaued and could even be rising.
Speaking on BBC Radio York, Conservative Mr Allott said women should be aware this was not an indictable offence - one considered serious enough to warrant a prison sentence or crown court hearing.
"So women, first of all, need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can't be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that," he said.
"Perhaps women need to consider in terms of the legal process, to just learn a bit about that legal process".
I'm glad to report I did not vote for this idiot.
Quite apart from owt else... Does he think a swift "I know my rights, you can't handcuff me." Would have resulted in Ms Everard being allowed to proceed on her way? Imbecile. As well as an insensitive, thick one.
Speaking on BBC Radio York, Conservative Mr Allott said women should be aware this was not an indictable offence - one considered serious enough to warrant a prison sentence or crown court hearing.
"So women, first of all, need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can't be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that," he said.
"Perhaps women need to consider in terms of the legal process, to just learn a bit about that legal process".
I'm glad to report I did not vote for this idiot.
Quite apart from owt else... Does he think a swift "I know my rights, you can't handcuff me." Would have resulted in Ms Everard being allowed to proceed on her way? Imbecile. As well as an insensitive, thick one.
And, barely, 24 hours since the sentence, he is - as is all too typical - blaming women.
Among far too many men, there is a barely suppressed attitude that It Is Our Fault If Bad Things Happen To Us.
As Donald Trump observed, the more you test, the more you find.
Best to stop testing people. If we stop testing then there is zero covid and we can all get on with our lives!
What do these other countries mean they won't let us in???
Why should we care what they do or do not allow? But yes, stopping testing is what almost every other nation has done relative to what we're doing.
Mass testing for a virus we're vaccinated against is beyond ridiculous now. Complete waste of money, its time to stop it and get on with our lives.
Only two thirds of us are vaccinated.
Question - will we be able to "get on with our lives" as a pariah nation where we need to quarantine before being allowed into other nations? Our "high risk" / "extremely high risk" status will become a ball-ache pretty quickly if most of the rest of the world has squashed Covid and we haven't.
The latest antibody survey shows that we've comfortably above 90% in the UK. You are coming across as detached from reality.
93.6% in England 91.2% in Wales 91.9% in Northern Ireland 93.3% in Scotland
Well clearly! And the sustained 30-40k new cases each day prove that there is no pox here any more.
Someone is detached from reality. Don't think its me luv.
I, my wife and my 8yo son make up some of those statistics this week. My wife and I feel like we have a cold. My son is now off school for a week and is racing around the garden playing football as there is nothing wrong with him. My 3yo and 12yo children are Covid free. Other than the 12yo still able to go to secondary we are locked up for a week at home. The statistics suggest that most cases at the moment are people like us. That is why hospitalisations and deaths continue to trend downwards.
England Hospitalisations have plateaued and could even be rising.
Comments
(edit - him, not you.)
Someone is detached from reality. Don't think its me luv.
https://www.nationwidehousepriceindex.co.uk/charts/
The average for 2003 was just over 4.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccination-doses-per-capita?country=GBR~DEU~FRA~ITA~ESP
North of the Watford gap as the chart shows the house price to earnings ratio is not a problem and the vast majority of average earners can afford to buy a house, unlike their counterparts on average wages in London and the South East
Something to do with a lack of drivers, for some reason.
Only since then have prices increased (probably by 20% above the 2004 prices).
And their answer was ...... drum roll ....... buses. Seriously. They think that (a) a bus will stop if a woman waves at it outside a bus stop (I mean have they even been to London?) and (b) that a bus driver will be able and willing to help a woman saying that a police officer is doing something he oughtn't.
Seriously?
And they didn't realise - in all these months - how stupid this sounds, how tin-eared, how offensively inappropriate, how inadequate.
It would be almost funny were the subject matter not so serious.
As it is, it is borderline cretinous. Never mind Dick being sacked. I'm of a mind to sack Patel, Khan and the nitwits at the Home Office, Mayoralty and Scotland Yard who thought this up.
The problem is that it is a slow process - changing minds. Which is why the vaccination rate ticks up at about 0.1% per day.
Th reason that most of us don't see this is that most of (on PB) aren't in those groups.
and in absolute numbers
The reason we have a waiver is our rates aren't high. We're doing a lot of testing.
Name some nations with higher testing and lower rates than us?
The pox is over and we need to get on with our lives and so does every other nation on the planet. Even the Aussies are dropping restrictions not adding them now.
You should move on and stop self hating Britain. You're becoming as divorced from reality as Scott.
Truthful Boris 0/10 SKS 0/10
Engaging Boris 7/10 SKS 1/10
Trustworthy Boris 3/10 SKS 1/10
Anti Tory Boris 5/10 SKS 2/10
Election Winner Boris 9/10 SKS 0/10
So on your criteria I give it to Boris 24/50 to SKS 4/50
Burnham gets 8,8,8,9,7 ie 40/50
Get him a seat quick
Those countries in the West are well vaccinated. Those in the East are not. Bulgaria - IIRC - chose not to be involved in the EU vaccine purchase scheme. And then chose not to bother buying many vaccines themselves. Romania was in the scheme. But had lacklustre takeup.
The East-West divide is incredibly stark in Germany too. The worst performing Lander (from deaths and vaccinations) are all in the East, while vaccination rates in the West look like the UK or Belgium or wherever.
Sorry but a classic LD position from me. Sometimes we aren't hypocrites but just confused. I don't have an answer other than compromise.
For me, Starmer and Johnson are almost nailed on to lead into the GE, so PM post that is a 2 horse race. This strong view of mine, that neither are going anywhere, is why I lumped on Starmer Next PM at 8 when it was available a few months ago post Hartlepool. I never saw him being unseated by the party before he has his shot, and I never gave much credence to the 'Boris out early and replaced by Rishi' scenario.
Now? Well I price the GE as follows:
Con maj 60%
Con min 15%
Lab maj 5%
Lab min 20%
So, excluding the 'remotes' of either stepping down before the GE, or Johnson winning it and then in due course fighting another with Starmer staying on as LOTO and finally winning that one, which about cancel each other out, I have 25% as being about fair value right now for Starmer Next PM. But I don't truly think he will be so as soon as it goes under 4 I'll probably be laying my position back.
I'm also happy with my £300 to £100 with shrewdball @isam on Starmer being PM after the next GE - a slightly different bet to Next PM. And he's happy with it too, so that's nice, exactly what you want with a bet, just like that final hand in the Cincinnati Kid. Only question is, who's the Steve McQueen and who's the Edward G Robinson? I might look very like the former - cough - but I hope that's where the resemblance ends on this one.
My view is that it is ******** ******* ****
Edit: ******** ******* ****** ****
And while we are ranting about buses, the distinction between compulsory and request has all but vanished. Best always to press the bell or stick your hand out.
And the people who dreamt this up are fit to be in charge, are they?
Who the hell gives Cressida Dick political cover? Both Labour and the Conservatives seem transfixed by her. Guys, its OK to fire a woman when she is fucking terrible at her job.
there are lots of ways to masher how a nation is doing in comparison to others WRT COVID, non is perfect but some are more floored than others. you can look at cases, but this does depend very much on how much testing a nation is doing, and also the row number does not distinguish between old/venerable and heathy people. Alternately you can look at deaths, but nations meser this defiantly, depths with COVID Vs deaths of COVID, hospitalisation may be better but again there is some difference in repotting over the With and of COVID, I think perhaps the best is No in ICU, (again not saying its perfect) one draw back is that not all nations are repotting this, but 20 out of 27 EU nations are, and compared to them 13 have more in ICU (including France, Germany and Spain) and 7 have less in ICU (Including Italy)
So by this metric, we are on the better side of Mid table.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=population&Metric=ICU+patients&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=PRT~ESP~DNK~IRL~FIN~DEU~FRA~ITA~European+Union~GBR~POL~NLD~BEL~CZE~SWE~HUN~AUT~BGR~CHE~SVK~HRV~LTU~SVN~LVA~EST~CYP~LUX~ROU
I would be delighted if case numbers collapsed back towards background rate again. But they aren't. Pointing that out isn't "self hating Britain". And even if I did stop pointing that out there will be an immigration officer to do it for me.
Edit: Although on second thoughts that would imply the presence of 'intelligence'...
PS: yes, I do realise the irony of such punctiliousness.
Big cities are easier to have a secure zone.
Plus it allows you bring in more revenue from people who take ads at the conference.
I was a bit surprised by your strong reaction.
How can they be this tone-deaf?
Edit: Sorry, wrong: the Met: but who's in charge?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/01/police-must-win-back-public-confidence-after-sarah-everard-case-says-minister
I mean, they were happy to do it with a Cabinet Minister, so the Mayor of London doesn't stand a chance.
If your opinion of him was that he is an absolute scum bucket you would not be disappointed. He managed to contradict himself within the space of a few sentences repeatedly.
Speaking on BBC Radio York, Conservative Mr Allott said women should be aware this was not an indictable offence - one considered serious enough to warrant a prison sentence or crown court hearing.
"So women, first of all, need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can't be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that," he said.
"Perhaps women need to consider in terms of the legal process, to just learn a bit about that legal process".
I'm glad to report I did not vote for this idiot.
Mind, the natives do like to take the pish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=DiMXuEmqAHA&feature=emb_logo
They are willing to sustain serious mockery if it means they avoid accountability and the need to reform.
The problem isn't women, it's the police. The only woman seeming to be worthy of condemnation is Dick.
I dont really get the objection, why not go there? Even if support was literally zero so what, it's a conference it doesnt matter where its held.
Does he think a swift "I know my rights, you can't handcuff me." Would have resulted in Ms Everard being allowed to proceed on her way?
Imbecile. As well as an insensitive, thick one.
Glasgow is also a good location.
A police officer can arrest you whenever they like & you’d be resisting arrest if you refused. The flimsiest justification is sufficient to keep them on the right side of the law.
Sure, it might be re-classified retrospectively as a wrongful arrest, but that doesn’t matter - legally at the time of the arrest every arrest is a legal arrest: it’s for the courts / the police to sort out the wronful from the, erm, rightful after the fact. So long as the officer in question can come up with a reasonable belief as a justification for the arrest at the time then they are within their powers to arrest anyone they like. In effect you cannot legally resist a wrongful arrest in this country; the law requires you to permit yourself to be arrested & to then challenge the arrest in court at a later date.
How can these people be this stupid? Do they really think we’ll believe the guff they’re spouting?
If your activist is the kind who wants to campaign against the party - or in many cases spent years doing so - then yes best to get shut of them. My favourite examples of entryist "activists" were two on Teesside. One had to be banned from the doorstep for jabbing her finger in too many voters faces. The other told lies about a branch meeting which went viral and ended up with the CLP being attacked on CNN America.
https://uk.corgi.co.uk/products/james-bond-db5-261-goldfinger-60s-version-rt26101?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Pay+attention,+007!&utm_campaign=Corgi+(Airfix)+-+James+Bond+(RT26101)+-+week+27+2021/2022
5 were killed on that dreadful night and 31 injured, an association chairwoman I knew was having drinks in the bar of the Grand Hotel when the bomb went off and had the windows blown out the other way she would have been killed
But it seems it is just practicalities - it's a good place for conferences, no need to let political considerations affect that.
At the very least they could have stuck with calling them Sheriffs.
As a Lancastrian I'm very confident the city will be happy to take their money.
A prime slot from the podium for Burnham.
It's what happens when an organization has not grasped the enormity of the mess it's in and how it's viewed, is panicking but is still largely talking to itself.
And no-one from the outside has the balls to go in and tell them to stop being so fucking stupid. Which would be pretty much what I would do - and at this point in those words - and what I have done in the past.
That is why Khan's statement is so damaging. There is no chance of the change that is so badly needed happening when the external stakeholders are so fucking feeble.
Honestly - apologies for all the swearing. But really this is just utterly scandalous.
It is, however, an argument for elected pcc’s
The idiot can be voted out.
Among far too many men, there is a barely suppressed attitude that It Is Our Fault If Bad Things Happen To Us.
Edit: Sorry, just saw you said England.