You long for a time where the US ambassador is as repulsed by the Uk as you are ?
England is not the UK. And I am English, why would England repulse me? I just know there’s a lot more to it than white cliffs, steam trains and churches.
What should be captured in a hokey 1 minute video? Its impossible to capture everything.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
Let me let you into a little secret: no-one cares about multiculturalism. It's an obsession of sociologists and politicians but every major Western nation has it and it's totally indistinctive.
I saw clips of beautiful scenery, towns, villages, coastline and fishing villages. I also saw modern architecture in the Shard.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England.
I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embraced and managed multiculturalism better than almost any place on earth. I am proud of that. If others aren’t, so be it. You asked me what I thought was missing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
One of the silliest, potentially dangerous statements on here, If we are going for cultural purity, who decides the one true culture?
Do give over there is a difference between an abhorrence of multiculturalism which says all cultures are equal and a desire for cultural purity.
I very much want as a country to be thinking we should be saying "If you come here don't bring that part of your culture here it is neither acceptable nor wanted and it most definitely something we don't consider equally valid"
Examples would be the attitude to women or gay people that some cultures hold. There are many more
Cultures are not fixed in aspic. Many of those repulsive attitudes to women or gays would have been quite normal English culture when those buildings in the clip were shown.
Times and cultures move on. I live and work in one of the most multicultural cities in England. I like it and am comfortable with it, in all its raucous complexity.
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England. I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embracedmissing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
I think you and I have very different definitions of multiculturalism.
No, you just ignore the bits you don't like.
My definition of multiculturalism does not include allowing gang rape to occur. Yours clearly does. Thus, we must have different definitions.
Whether or not your definition of it allows it, it's happening and it's from an imported culture. You're like those people who say Mussolini wasn't so bad because the trains ran on time, or that the empire wasn't so bad because it did some good somewhere. Multiculturalism has been a disaster for our society women all over the country are being oppressed and having their rights curtailed. We should never have accepted that cultural value. Sex selective abortion is still rife in certain communities, we should never have allowed that cultural value. We have girls and women being murdered by their brothers and uncles for having the temerity to date whoever they want, we should not have important that cultural value either.
There's literally hundreds of issues that come with accepting multiculturalism, those who suffer the worst are those groups you claim to stand for on the left - gay people, women and children. They are who are getting abused and oppressed, but because you feel like you can't speak out about the oppressers it gets swept under the rug.
I think what you really want is to integrate the best cultural traditions (the best, not all, and certainly not those that conflict with our values) of incomers into the host nation. And for that host nation to move to being colour-blind. The new cultural traditions should enhance, and not displace, threaten or denigrate the existing culture, as that way social division lies.
So you get a more visually-mixed populace and enriched host nation culture but it is still a unique and distinct national culture, with a unifying set of values, and not a plethora of competing ones all of which have equal status.
That's not what happens in practice. As I said, you can't just ignore all of the really awful cultural imports because we don't like them. They are still here and we have to stamp them out, not just accept it because "oh that's just the way they live" or "we can't say anything about it because it's their culture and it's racist".
This is a really fascinating insight into how we are seen inside the Trump administration. It is dripping with nostalgia, laden with the past. It will resonate with many here, too. https://twitter.com/usambuk/status/1253229648546324480?s=21
Yes, England is an old country with a lot of history and heritage. America doesn't have that. And a lot the rest of world also value that here too - it's why tourists come here in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
Not really, but it's clearly well-meaning and nice of him to make the effort - I wouldn't criticise him for that myself. The fact that we have lots of attractive landscape and historic buildings is one of our many strengths, though we don't want to be seen as a historical theme park and have more to offer than that. I'm afraid, though, that SO is right that it's how we're seen in the US, and not just by the administration.
Most people have a mental sketch of other countries which they can't be bothered to nuance, like the idea that the US is New York+Hollywood+rednecks. or Russia is Moscow+peasants. Britain's USP for many tourists is that we have loads of visual history - that's why London is such a draw and you don't see many foreign tourists wandering round the Highlands.
Indeed, most foreign tourists who come to the UK visit central London, maybe Oxford, Canterbury, Bath, Stratford upon Avon and Blenheim palace and Edinburgh on ciach tours and that is about it
Innovation is rarely what tourists think of, or are interested in.
Who goes to Silicon Valley for a tour round 1 Infinite Loop? Who goes to a Foxconn plant, in China?
Why does anyone think having a large sector dependent on foreign tourists is an especially attractive thing?
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England. I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embracedmissing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
I think you and I have very different definitions of multiculturalism.
No, you just ignore the bits you don't like.
My definition of multiculturalism does not include allowing gang rape to occur. Yours clearly does. Thus, we must have different definitions.
Whether or not your definition of it allows it, it's happening and it's from an imported culture. You're like those people who say Mussolini wasn't so bad because the trains ran on time, or that the empire wasn't so bad because it did some good somewhere. Multiculturalism has been a disaster for our society women all over the country are being oppressed and having their rights curtailed. We should never have accepted that cultural value. Sex selective abortion is still rife in certain communities, we should never have allowed that cultural value. We have girls and women being murdered by their brothers and uncles for having the temerity to date whoever they want, we should not have important that cultural value either.
There's literally hundreds of issues that come with accepting multiculturalism, those who suffer the worst are those groups you claim to stand for on the left - gay people, women and children. They are who are getting abused and oppressed, but because you feel like you can't speak out about the oppressers it gets swept under the rug.
The real problem is multiculturalism vs Multiculturalism.
What I mean by this is that the lower case version is the toleration and acceptance of multiple cultures, with a common theme of shared values. This is what people, in general, in the UK accept.
The capitalised version is the one with the grievance matrix, the cultural cringe etc. This means differing standards applied to different groups. This ultimately leads to Rotheram et al - if you have differential standards in law enforcement, the bad people will fill the space.
The garbage that is then pulled is to say that if you don't like Multiculturalism, you are against multiculturalism and are a BNP member.
I think that is very astute and very important. I am entirely opposed to a world view that dicatates we accept every aspect of every culture as being of equal worth. Clearly that is not the case. There are certain core values that are non-negotiable. But that does not preclude the acceptance and celebraiton of difference. And that, for me, is what multiculturalism is.
I have just been rewatching the Novaro Media election coverage, to cheer myself up (given the unintentional humour of their unselfaware pomposity).
I have just noticed that John McDonnell, in his interview with Andrew Neil, said of his and Corbyn’s impending resignations, ‘we will always make decisions in the best interests of our party.’
Leaving aside the fact that their judgement was perhaps not all it might have been, surely anyone aspiring to government should always make decisions in the best interests of the country?
Not that we actually had one of those on offer in 2019, of course, but it did just sum up for me the kind of narrow and small-minded selfishness that characterised Corbynism and goes a long way towards explaining its bizarre policy offering and casual racism.
That defines exactly what is wrong with the UK, both Tories and Labour are in it for themselves, they care not a jot for the country.
If you think any other party never mixes up what is good for them with what is good for the country you are in for a very big surprise.
They all think their plans are best for the country, and in time that morphs into assuming defending the party's interests is the same as the country's interests. It us rare to acknowledge that however.
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So the Swedish death rate per million is what, 5, 6 times worse than their neighbours? That is going to take some explaining.....
The official Swedish explanation of what they are doing is incoherent (we are doing fine without lockdown, here is a list of all the lockdown measures we have taken) but is basically "check back in a year to see who was right".
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
Yesterday the number of deaths in the US caused by the virus exceeded 50K. By Monday it will exceed 60k. The US response has vividly demonstrated the ridiculous inefficiency and inefficacy of US medicine with the best treatment on the planet for the favoured minority and complete neglect of the majority.
Trump spent most of his first 2 years trying to deconstruct Obamacare which was a modest sticking plaster on this gaping sore. I suspect that Biden will adopt a lot of Bernie's policy on health and that it will resonate very loudly in the current carnage. All Americans have an interest in the health of their fellow citizens. Surely even Republicans can now see that.
Yet to be fair the UK, France, Spain and Italy all have higher death rates per head than the US still
Whilst that is currently true many of the outbreaks in the US are still early of the curve with death a lagging indicator. There is a frightening quantity of death in the existing cases and yesterday the US had over 30K new cases. Unless we get a vaccine by November the US death toll may will be over 250k.
The US has a higher testing rate than we do and France does however
So? As I keep pointing out testing in itself achieves virtually nothing. It needs to be combined with a plan of action in relation to the results to make a difference.
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England. I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embracedmissing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
I think you and I have very different definitions of multiculturalism.
No, you just ignore the bits you don't like.
My definition of multiculturalism does not include allowing gang rape to occur. Yours clearly does. Thus, we must have different definitions.
Whether or not your definition of it allows it, it's happening and it's from an imported culture. You're like those people who say Mussolini wasn't so bad because the trains ran on time, or that the empire wasn't so bad because it did some good somewhere. Multiculturalism has been a disaster for our society women all over the country are being oppressed and having their rights curtailed. We should never have accepted that cultural value. Sex selective abortion is still rife in certain communities, we should never have allowed that cultural value. We have girls and women being murdered by their brothers and uncles for having the temerity to date whoever they want, we should not have important that cultural value either.
There's literally hundreds of issues that come with accepting multiculturalism, those who suffer the worst are those groups you claim to stand for on the left - gay people, women and children. They are who are getting abused and oppressed, but because you feel like you can't speak out about the oppressers it gets swept under the rug.
I think what you really want is to integrate the best cultural traditions (the best, not all, and certainly not those that conflict with our values) of incomers into the host nation. And for that host nation to move to being colour-blind. The new cultural traditions should enhance, and not displace, threaten or denigrate the existing culture, as that way social division lies.
So you get a more visually-mixed populace and enriched host nation culture but it is still a unique and distinct national culture, with a unifying set of values, and not a plethora of competing ones all of which have equal status.
That's not what happens in practice. As I said, you can't just ignore all of the really awful cultural imports because we don't like them. They are still here and we have to stamp them out, not just accept it because "oh that's just the way they live" or "we can't say anything about it because it's their culture and it's racist".
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
There is no ludditism here.
I am at the forefront of new tech in my industry, including leading on nuclear fusion for my firm.
Either you’ve moved on from Crossrail and I didn’t notice, or now we know why it cost so much.
To understand Britain you have to get into the mindset of the people who built the cathedrals, fought for rights, explored the world, designed the spitfire, setup the NHS. They were not driven by conservatism or nostalgia.
No, with respect you don't. I'm the reason Crossrail didn't cost *even more* or take even longer. When I was there I helped take Crossrail from still digging tunnels in 2015 to being fully energised and under full dynamic testing in 2018. It's just it ran out of road. It ran out of road because we simply challenged the supply chain and industry to deliver on a scale and size of design, construction, and assurance activity beyond their capacity to deliver in the time available. There was no flaw in design or delivery strategy (my bit) unlike Brandenberg airport, which had a problem they simply couldn't solve. It's just late. Had I not written the right strategies, those problems would still be at large. The first station was handed over last week (Custom House) and that's 2 years 5 months late - and it was exactly to my strategy and process. If I had to guess an opening date, it would be Autumn/Winter 2021 (Covid aside) which is three years late, but it will still be value to the taxpayer. Eight years from start to finish was just an impossible challenge.
I do get a bit defensive and tire of telling people this. They think if a project was a success (Olympics) then for anyone involved in it butter wouldn't melt in their mouth. In truth, there were a load of passengers on that one who hindered it and are now milking it for all its worth. Crossrail was all sweetness and light until 2 years ago and now everyone thinks everyone and anyone who was involved were and are shite.
On Crossrail, I've never met so many exceptional people and the old leadership team was far better than the new. I left due to differences with the new leadership team and CEO, particularly because he didn't take on board my suggestion for a highly structured approach to tracking and doing T-minus countdowns of readiness for trial running, which is one of the reasons it's still slipping.
They were from a clutch of machine tool companies -- making the machines that help Taiwan's industrial wheels turn. And what they were about to accomplish would reinforce their often underappreciated role in the island's economy.
We had a machine tool industry once, but the arts and humanities graduates who run things didn't like it.
Yesterday the number of deaths in the US caused by the virus exceeded 50K. By Monday it will exceed 60k. The US response has vividly demonstrated the ridiculous inefficiency and inefficacy of US medicine with the best treatment on the planet for the favoured minority and complete neglect of the majority.
Trump spent most of his first 2 years trying to deconstruct Obamacare which was a modest sticking plaster on this gaping sore. I suspect that Biden will adopt a lot of Bernie's policy on health and that it will resonate very loudly in the current carnage. All Americans have an interest in the health of their fellow citizens. Surely even Republicans can now see that.
Yet to be fair the UK, France, Spain and Italy all have higher death rates per head than the US still
Whilst that is currently true many of the outbreaks in the US are still early of the curve with death a lagging indicator. There is a frightening quantity of death in the existing cases and yesterday the US had over 30K new cases. Unless we get a vaccine by November the US death toll may will be over 250k.
The US has a higher testing rate than we do and France does however
So? As I keep pointing out testing in itself achieves virtually nothing. It needs to be combined with a plan of action in relation to the results to make a difference.
I agree entirely. Testing number fetishism was another confected media narrative.
The new one is 'when will we release the lockdown'. Luckily, for a government with no good options, most people aren't listening to the media any more, and those who are in the main distrust it.
This is a really fascinating insight into how we are seen inside the Trump administration. It is dripping with nostalgia, laden with the past. It will resonate with many here, too. https://twitter.com/usambuk/status/1253229648546324480?s=21
Yes, England is an old country with a lot of history and heritage. America doesn't have that. And a lot the rest of world also value that here too - it's why tourists come here in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
Not really, but it's clearly well-meaning and nice of him to make the effort - I wouldn't criticise him for that myself. The fact that we have lots of attractive landscape and historic buildings is one of our many strengths, though we don't want to be seen as a historical theme park and have more to offer than that. I'm afraid, though, that SO is right that it's how we're seen in the US, and not just by the administration.
Most people have a mental sketch of other countries which they can't be bothered to nuance, like the idea that the US is New York+Hollywood+rednecks. or Russia is Moscow+peasants. Britain's USP for many tourists is that we have loads of visual history - that's why London is such a draw and you don't see many foreign tourists wandering round the Highlands.
Indeed, most foreign tourists who come to the UK visit central London, maybe Oxford, Canterbury, Bath, Stratford upon Avon and Blenheim palace and Edinburgh on ciach tours and that is about it
Innovation is rarely what tourists think of, or are interested in.
Who goes to Silicon Valley for a tour round 1 Infinite Loop? Who goes to a Foxconn plant, in China?
Why does anyone think having a large sector dependent on foreign tourists is an especially attractive thing?
Tourism not looking an attractive part of the economy anywhere in the world this year!
Dr. Foxy, be interesting to see how it recovers. Domestic tourism would seem one relatively strong point, but maybe smaller/more isolated tourism could benefit as big cities are shied away from?
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England. I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embracedmissing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
I think you and I have very different definitions of multiculturalism.
No, you just ignore the bits you don't like.
My definition of multiculturalism does not include allowing gang rape to occur. Yours clearly does. Thus, we must have different definitions.
Whether or not your definition of it allows it, it's happening and it's from an imported culture. You're like those people who say Mussolini wasn't so bad because the trains ran on time, or that the empire wasn't so bad because it did some good somewhere. Multiculturalism has been a disaster for our society women all over the country are being oppressed and having their rights curtailed. We should never have accepted that cultural value. Sex selective abortion is still rife in certain communities, we should never have allowed that cultural value. We have girls and women being murdered by their brothers and uncles for having the temerity to date whoever they want, we should not have important that cultural value either.
There's literally hundreds of issues that come with accepting multiculturalism, those who suffer the worst are those groups you claim to stand for on the left - gay people, women and children. They are who are getting abused and oppressed, but because you feel like you can't speak out about the oppressers it gets swept under the rug.
I think what you really want is to integrate the best cultural traditions (the best, not all, and certainly not those that conflict with our values) of incomers into the host nation. And for that host nation to move to being colour-blind. The new cultural traditions should enhance, and not displace, threaten or denigrate the existing culture, as that way social division lies.
So you get a more visually-mixed populace and enriched host nation culture but it is still a unique and distinct national culture, with a unifying set of values, and not a plethora of competing ones all of which have equal status.
That's not what happens in practice. As I said, you can't just ignore all of the really awful cultural imports because we don't like them. They are still here and we have to stamp them out, not just accept it because "oh that's just the way they live" or "we can't say anything about it because it's their culture and it's racist".
I don't see anyone on here suggesting otherwise.
No one here, perhaps.
But in the outside world - consider the recent school protests. How much effort was required to get some protection for the schools and some backing for the staff?
Compare it with, for example, anti-abortion protests at UK clinics (which do happen) being trodden on. The day they happen.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England. I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embracedmissing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
I think you and I have very different definitions of multiculturalism.
No, you just ignore the bits you don't like.
My definition of multiculturalism does not include allowing gang rape to occur. Yours clearly does. Thus, we must have different definitions.
Whether or not your definition of it allows it, it's happening and it's from an imported culture. You're like those people who say Mussolini wasn't so bad because the trains ran on time, or that the empire wasn't so bad because it did some good somewhere. Multiculturalism has been a disaster for our society women all over the country are being oppressed and having their rights curtailed. We should never have accepted that cultural value. Sex selective abortion is still rife in certain communities, we should never have allowed that cultural value. We have girls and women being murdered by their brothers and uncles for having the temerity to date whoever they want, we should not have important that cultural value either.
There's literally hundreds of issues that come with accepting multiculturalism, those who suffer the worst are those groups you claim to stand for on the left - gay people, women and children. They are who are getting abused and oppressed, but because you feel like you can't speak out about the oppressers it gets swept under the rug.
I think what you really want is to integrate the best cultural traditions (the best, not all, and certainly not those that conflict with our values) of incomers into the host nation. And for that host nation to move to being colour-blind. The new cultural traditions should enhance, and not displace, threaten or denigrate the existing culture, as that way social division lies.
So you get a more visually-mixed populace and enriched host nation culture but it is still a unique and distinct national culture, with a unifying set of values, and not a plethora of competing ones all of which have equal status.
That's not what happens in practice. As I said, you can't just ignore all of the really awful cultural imports because we don't like them. They are still here and we have to stamp them out, not just accept it because "oh that's just the way they live" or "we can't say anything about it because it's their culture and it's racist".
I don't see anyone on here suggesting otherwise.
Literally the whole country that refuses to criticise these outdated practices for fear of being seen as racist. Look at that idiot Labour just put in charge of community something or other she literally said the girls from Rotherham should have kept their mouths shut to help community cohesion. Looks at how Sarah Champion was destroyed by her own party (your party) for giving these girls a voice.
Whether you like it or not, this is what multiculturalism results in. Better not to have it. I'd rather have late trains than live under Mussolini.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Is it more dangerous than letting Covid kill someone?
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So the Swedish death rate per million is what, 5, 6 times worse than their neighbours? That is going to take some explaining.....
No its not. Its 5, 6 times worse than some cherrypicked neighbours but compare to other neighbours like the Netherlands or Belgium and a different picture emerges. Sweden is physically closer to the Netherlands (not on the graph) than it is to the tiny island of Iceland (which is on the graph).
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
We are what now? What are you on about?
Certainly we have some negative focus on nostalgia, though I'd argue more from left and right wing idiots nostalgic about politics of the 70s and 80s than the imperial nostalgia types, who are a punchline precisely because they are pretty rare. But theres plenty who think theres nothing to reflect positively on, so plenty without nostalgia.
But killing ourselves with history? We the public generally dont know enough about our own history to kill ourselves with it.
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
There is no ludditism here.
I am at the forefront of new tech in my industry, including leading on nuclear fusion for my firm.
Either you’ve moved on from Crossrail and I didn’t notice, or now we know why it cost so much.
To understand Britain you have to get into the mindset of the people who built the cathedrals, fought for rights, explored the world, designed the spitfire, setup the NHS. They were not driven by conservatism or nostalgia.
No, with respect you don't. I'm the reason Crossrail didn't cost *even more* or take even longer. When I was there I helped take Crossrail from still digging tunnels in 2015 to being fully energised and under full dynamic testing in 2018. It's just it ran out of road. It ran out of road because we simply challenged the supply chain and industry to deliver on a scale and size of design, construction, and assurance activity beyond their capacity to deliver in the time available. There was no flaw in design or delivery strategy (my bit) unlike Brandenberg airport, which had a problem they simply couldn't solve. It's just late. Had I not written the right strategies, those problems would still be at large. The first station was handed over last week (Custom House) and that's 2 years 5 months late - and it was exactly to my strategy and process. If I had to guess an opening date, it would be Autumn/Winter 2021 (Covid aside) which is three years late, but it will still be value to the taxpayer. Eight years from start to finish was just an impossible challenge.
I do get a bit defensive and tire of telling people this. They think if a project was a success (Olympics) then for anyone involved in it butter wouldn't melt in their mouth. In truth, there were a load of passengers on that one who hindered it and are now milking it for all its worth. Crossrail was all sweetness and light until 2 years ago and now everyone thinks everyone and anyone who was involved were and are shite.
On Crossrail, I've never met so many exceptional people and the old leadership team was far better than the new. I left due to differences with the new leadership team and CEO, particularly because he didn't take on board my suggestion for a highly structured approach to tracking and doing T-minus countdowns of readiness for trial running, which is one of the reasons it's still slipping.
It was a joke. If crossrail were developing nuclear fusion that would be scope creep.
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
Let me let you into a little secret: no-one cares about multiculturalism. It's an obsession of sociologists and politicians but every major Western nation has it and it's totally indistinctive.
I saw clips of beautiful scenery, towns, villages, coastline and fishing villages. I also saw modern architecture in the Shard.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England.
I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embraced and managed multiculturalism better than almost any place on earth. I am proud of that. If others aren’t, so be it. You asked me what I thought was missing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
One of the silliest, potentially dangerous statements on here, If we are going for cultural purity, who decides the one true culture?
Do give over there is a difference between an abhorrence of multiculturalism which says all cultures are equal and a desire for cultural purity.
I very much want as a country to be thinking we should be saying "If you come here don't bring that part of your culture here it is neither acceptable nor wanted and it most definitely something we don't consider equally valid"
Examples would be the attitude to women or gay people that some cultures hold. There are many more
Cultures are not fixed in aspic. Many of those repulsive attitudes to women or gays would have been quite normal English culture when those buildings in the clip were shown.
Times and cultures move on. I live and work in one of the most multicultural cities in England. I like it and am comfortable with it, in all its raucous complexity.
Children and young people on the margins of society have been sexually abused, raped and destroyed since time immemorial. The authorities will use any excuse not to believe them and not to get involved in trying to help them. With the rape gangs it was culture. They could not be arsed to get involved, so they found a reason not to. Shamefully, parts of the left did aid and abet this, and that is something we cannot deny or run away from.
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
There is no ludditism here.
I am at the forefront of new tech in my industry, including leading on nuclear fusion for my firm.
Either you’ve moved on from Crossrail and I didn’t notice, or now we know why it cost so much.
To understand Britain you have to get into the mindset of the people who built the cathedrals, fought for rights, explored the world, designed the spitfire, setup the NHS. They were not driven by conservatism or nostalgia.
No, with respect you don't. I'm the reason Crossrail didn't cost *even more* or take even longer. When I was there I helped take Crossrail from still digging tunnels in 2015 to being fully energised and under full dynamic testing in 2018. It's just it ran out of road. It ran out of road because we simply challenged the supply chain and industry to deliver on a scale and size of design, construction, and assurance activity beyond their capacity to deliver in the time available. There was no flaw in design or delivery strategy (my bit) unlike Brandenberg airport, which had a problem they simply couldn't solve. It's just late. Had I not written the right strategies, those problems would still be at large. The first station was handed over last week (Custom House) and that's 2 years 5 months late - and it was exactly to my strategy and process. If I had to guess an opening date, it would be Autumn/Winter 2021 (Covid aside) which is three years late, but it will still be value to the taxpayer. Eight years from start to finish was just an impossible challenge.
I do get a bit defensive and tire of telling people this. They think if a project was a success (Olympics) then for anyone involved in it butter wouldn't melt in their mouth. In truth, there were a load of passengers on that one who hindered it and are now milking it for all its worth. Crossrail was all sweetness and light until 2 years ago and now everyone thinks everyone and anyone who was involved were and are shite.
On Crossrail, I've never met so many exceptional people and the old leadership team was far better than the new. I left due to differences with the new leadership team and CEO, particularly because he didn't take on board my suggestion for a highly structured approach to tracking and doing T-minus countdowns of readiness for trial running, which is one of the reasons it's still slipping.
Of course there will be good people working on failing projects and bad people on successful ones. But a strategy or design that is in practice incapable of delivery to the specified parameters doesn't sound good.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
So with Trump there's always a "low cunning" explanation and a "confused old man has no idea what's going on" explanation, and you can never be entirely sure which one is right. The low cunning explanation is that there are millions of voters who believe in lunatic medical pseudo-science, and they care much more about this issue than the voters who believe in normal medicine, most of whom will just roll their eyes and move onto his next distraction.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
Actually, few things are more illustrative of England's long history than the Luddites, and related social movements such as the Swing rioters, Chartists , Tolpuddle Martyrs etc.
In many countries such social changes and tensions led to civil war, revolution and slaughter. With rare exceptions such as Peterloo, that never happened.
Indeed the Luddites presage many modern tensions, in the impoverishment of skilled artisans by a globalised system of industrial manufacturing.
I think that the mythologising of Peterloo as a "Massacre" is an interesting act of Political PR in these things.. That it is called a "Massacre" is very revealing of the tiny scale of these things here.
18 killed at Peterloo. Several hundred injured.
Compare for example, with the 23 killed, and 800 injured at the Manchester Arena Bombing 2 years ago.
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So the Swedish death rate per million is what, 5, 6 times worse than their neighbours? That is going to take some explaining.....
No its not. Its 5, 6 times worse than some cherrypicked neighbours but compare to other neighbours like the Netherlands or Belgium and a different picture emerges. Sweden is physically closer to the Netherlands (not on the graph) than it is to the tiny island of Iceland (which is on the graph).
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Is it more dangerous than letting Covid kill someone?
I'd bow down to doctors like Foxy in that one but I suspect drinking bleach is more dangerous than the risk of Covid to the average person.
Actually, few things are more illustrative of England's long history than the Luddites, and related social movements such as the Swing rioters, Chartists , Tolpuddle Martyrs etc.
Nobody is suggesting that our history should avoid the embarrassing and stupid bits.
Horrible histories taught us that the embarrassing and stupid bits are the most fun. Albeit behind the violent bits.
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
We are what now? What are you on about?
Certainly we have some negative focus on nostalgia, though I'd argue more from left and right wing idiots nostalgic about politics of the 70s and 80s than the imperial nostalgia types, who are a punchline precisely because they are pretty rare. But theres plenty who think theres nothing to reflect positively on, so plenty without nostalgia.
But killing ourselves with history? We the public generally dont know enough about our own history to kill ourselves with it.
The ww2 our finest hour mythology, whilst important, has cast a shadow over how we are governed and where we want to go as a country. It limits us.
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England. I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embracedmissing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
I think you and I have very different definitions of multiculturalism.
No, you just ignore the bits you don't like.
My definition of multiculturalism does not include allowing gang rape to occur. Yours clearly does. Thus, we must have different definitions.
Whether or not your definition of it allows it, it's happening and it's from an imported culture. You're like those people who say Mussolini wasn't so bad because the trains ran on time, or that the empire wasn't so bad because it did some good somewhere. Multiculturalism has been a disaster for our society women all over the country are being oppressed and having their rights curtailed. We should never have accepted that cultural value. Sex selective abortion is still rife in certain communities, we should never have allowed that cultural value. We have girls and women being murdered by their brothers and uncles for having the temerity to date whoever they want, we should not have important that cultural value either.
There's literally hundreds of issues that come with accepting multiculturalism, those who suffer the worst are those groups you claim to stand for on the left - gay people, women and children. They are who are getting abused and oppressed, but because you feel like you can't speak out about the oppressers it gets swept under the rug.
I think what you really want is to integrate the best cultural traditions (the best, not all, and certainly not those that conflict with our values) of incomers into the host nation. And for that host nation to move to being colour-blind. The new cultural traditions should enhance, and not displace, threaten or denigrate the existing culture, as that way social division lies.
So you get a more visually-mixed populace and enriched host nation culture but it is still a unique and distinct national culture, with a unifying set of values, and not a plethora of competing ones all of which have equal status.
That's not what happens in practice. As I said, you can't just ignore all of the really awful cultural imports because we don't like them. They are still here and we have to stamp them out, not just accept it because "oh that's just the way they live" or "we can't say anything about it because it's their culture and it's racist".
Your argument is predicated on the assumption that, specifically, south Asian cultures incorporate gang rape as a part of their make up, and that all people from south Asia (all, not some, because it is a cultural trait) have a predilection for gang rape. And that gang rape figures for south Asia are significantly above those for elsewhere (I haven't looked).
Now, I am no south Asian expert but at first glance this seems unlikely. Much more likely is that a self-selecting associative group of ex-pat south Asian gang rapers decided to practice their proclivities in their current environment, ie the UK.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Thanks for that evidence laden insight.
You're welcome. There's a reason why a bottle of bleach has prominent warnings on the bottle saying it should not be ingested.
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
Let me let you into a little secret: no-one cares about multiculturalism. It's an obsession of sociologists and politicians but every major Western nation has it and it's totally indistinctive.
I saw clips of beautiful scenery, towns, villages, coastline and fishing villages. I also saw modern architecture in the Shard.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England.
I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embraced and managed multiculturalism better than almost any place on earth. I am proud of that. If others aren’t, so be it. You asked me what I thought was missing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
One of the silliest, potentially dangerous statements on here, If we are going for cultural purity, who decides the one true culture?
Do give over there is a difference between an abhorrence of multiculturalism which says all cultures are equal and a desire for cultural purity.
I very much want as a country to be thinking we should be saying "If you come here don't bring that part of your culture here it is neither acceptable nor wanted and it most definitely something we don't consider equally valid"
Examples would be the attitude to women or gay people that some cultures hold. There are many more
Cultures are not fixed in aspic. Many of those repulsive attitudes to women or gays would have been quite normal English culture when those buildings in the clip were shown.
Times and cultures move on. I live and work in one of the most multicultural cities in England. I like it and am comfortable with it, in all its raucous complexity.
In my view the problem with multiculturalism has been a certain lack of confidence in promoting our own core values and a major reason for that, as you point out, is that many of these core values are much more recent and less deeply rooted than we like to admit.
So, we support equality in relation to sexual orientation but gay marriage remains controversial, gay adoption even more so and gay footballers remarkably invisible. We support equality for women but 50 years after the Equal Pay Act we have a significant pay gap, derisory and token representation of women on the boards of FTSE companies and substantially less than 50% female membership of the Commons.
We are aware of these deficiencies and it makes us less confident than we should be in addressing even more serious failings in alternative cultures that have taken root here.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
Yesterday the number of deaths in the US caused by the virus exceeded 50K. By Monday it will exceed 60k. The US response has vividly demonstrated the ridiculous inefficiency and inefficacy of US medicine with the best treatment on the planet for the favoured minority and complete neglect of the majority.
Trump spent most of his first 2 years trying to deconstruct Obamacare which was a modest sticking plaster on this gaping sore. I suspect that Biden will adopt a lot of Bernie's policy on health and that it will resonate very loudly in the current carnage. All Americans have an interest in the health of their fellow citizens. Surely even Republicans can now see that.
Yet to be fair the UK, France, Spain and Italy all have higher death rates per head than the US still
Whilst that is currently true many of the outbreaks in the US are still early of the curve with death a lagging indicator. There is a frightening quantity of death in the existing cases and yesterday the US had over 30K new cases. Unless we get a vaccine by November the US death toll may will be over 250k.
The US has a higher testing rate than we do and France does however
So? As I keep pointing out testing in itself achieves virtually nothing. It needs to be combined with a plan of action in relation to the results to make a difference.
Without mass testing and tracing there is little chance of getting out of lockdown before a vaccince is found
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
So with Trump there's always a "low cunning" explanation and a "confused old man has no idea what's going on" explanation, and you can never be entirely sure which one is right. The low cunning explanation is that there are millions of voters who believe in lunatic medical pseudo-science, and they care much more about this issue than the voters who believe in normal medicine, most of whom will just roll their eyes and move onto his next distraction.
But they'll all be dead from the bleach injections.
They were from a clutch of machine tool companies -- making the machines that help Taiwan's industrial wheels turn. And what they were about to accomplish would reinforce their often underappreciated role in the island's economy.
We had a machine tool industry once, but the arts and humanities graduates who run things didn't like it.
This is a really fascinating insight into how we are seen inside the Trump administration. It is dripping with nostalgia, laden with the past. It will resonate with many here, too. https://twitter.com/usambuk/status/1253229648546324480?s=21
Yes, England is an old country with a lot of history and heritage. America doesn't have that. And a lot the rest of world also value that here too - it's why tourists come here in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
Not really, but it's clearly well-meaning and nice of him to make the effort - I wouldn't criticise him for that myself. The fact that we have lots of attractive landscape and historic buildings is one of our many strengths, though we don't want to be seen as a historical theme park and have more to offer than that. I'm afraid, though, that SO is right that it's how we're seen in the US, and not just by the administration.
Most people have a mental sketch of other countries which they can't be bothered to nuance, like the idea that the US is New York+Hollywood+rednecks. or Russia is Moscow+peasants. Britain's USP for many tourists is that we have loads of visual history - that's why London is such a draw and you don't see many foreign tourists wandering round the Highlands.
Indeed, most foreign tourists who come to the UK visit central London, maybe Oxford, Canterbury, Bath, Stratford upon Avon and Blenheim palace and Edinburgh on ciach tours and that is about it
Innovation is rarely what tourists think of, or are interested in.
Who goes to Silicon Valley for a tour round 1 Infinite Loop? Who goes to a Foxconn plant, in China?
Why does anyone think having a large sector dependent on foreign tourists is an especially attractive thing?
I suspect we are about to learn a big lesson about the disadvantages. Sadly.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
I doubt many Americans know or care that the WWW was invented by a Brit in Switzerland.
Yesterday the number of deaths in the US caused by the virus exceeded 50K. By Monday it will exceed 60k. The US response has vividly demonstrated the ridiculous inefficiency and inefficacy of US medicine with the best treatment on the planet for the favoured minority and complete neglect of the majority.
Trump spent most of his first 2 years trying to deconstruct Obamacare which was a modest sticking plaster on this gaping sore. I suspect that Biden will adopt a lot of Bernie's policy on health and that it will resonate very loudly in the current carnage. All Americans have an interest in the health of their fellow citizens. Surely even Republicans can now see that.
Yet to be fair the UK, France, Spain and Italy all have higher death rates per head than the US still
Whilst that is currently true many of the outbreaks in the US are still early of the curve with death a lagging indicator. There is a frightening quantity of death in the existing cases and yesterday the US had over 30K new cases. Unless we get a vaccine by November the US death toll may will be over 250k.
The US has a higher testing rate than we do and France does however
So? As I keep pointing out testing in itself achieves virtually nothing. It needs to be combined with a plan of action in relation to the results to make a difference.
I agree entirely. Testing number fetishism was another confected media narrative.
The new one is 'when will we release the lockdown'. Luckily, for a government with no good options, most people aren't listening to the media any more, and those who are in the main distrust it.
How are you doing with the government being leaderless? All good?
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Parts of America sell themselves as having stopped in the 1880s
Yes, England is an old country with a lothere in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
You've spoken before of your love for England, with examples.
So what's missing for you?
Our cities, our people, our invention, our entrepreneurialism, our multiculturalism, for starters. There is a whole lot more to us than our past.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England. I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I think England has embracedmissing.
It hasn't. Rape gangs from a certain ethnic background were and still are able to operate with impunity because police were afraid of being seen to upset them or being seen as racist. Multiculturalism is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
I think you and I have very different definitions of multiculturalism.
No, you just ignore the bits you don't like.
My definition of multiculturalism does not include allowing gang rape to occur. Yours clearly does. Thus, we must have different definitions.
Whether or not your definition of it allows it, it's happening and it's from an imported culture. You're like those people who say Mussolini wasn't so bad because the trains ran on time, or that the empire wasn't so bad because it did some good somewhere. Multiculturalism has been a disaster for our society women all over the country are being oppressed and having their rights curtailed. We should never have accepted that cultural value. Sex selective abortion is still rife in certain communities, we should never have allowed that cultural value. We have girls and women being murdered by their brothers and uncles for having the temerity to date whoever they want, we should not have important that cultural value either.
There's literally hundreds of issues that come with accepting multiculturalism, those who suffer the worst are those groups you claim to stand for on the left - gay people, women and children. They are who are getting abused and oppressed, but because you feel like you can't speak out about the oppressers it gets swept under the rug.
I think what you really want is to integrate the best cultural traditions (the best, not all, and certainly not those that conflict with our values) of incomers into the host nation. And for that host nation to move to being colour-blind. The new cultural traditions should enhance, and not displace, threaten or denigrate the existing culture, as that way social division lies.
So you get a more visually-mixed populace and enriched host nation culture but it is still a unique and distinct national culture, with a unifying set of values, and not a plethora of competing ones all of which have equal status.
That's not what happens in practice. As I said, you can't just ignore all of the really awful cultural imports because we don't like them. They are still here and we have to stamp them out, not just accept it because "oh that's just the way they live" or "we can't say anything about it because it's their culture and it's racist".
I don't see anyone on here suggesting otherwise.
Literally the whole country that refuses to criticise these outdated practices for fear of being seen as racist. Look at that idiot Labour just put in charge of community something or other she literally said the girls from Rotherham should have kept their mouths shut to help community cohesion. Looks at how Sarah Champion was destroyed by her own party (your party) for giving these girls a voice.
Whether you like it or not, this is what multiculturalism results in. Better not to have it. I'd rather have late trains than live under Mussolini.
I am afraid that I just do not believe that rape gangs are the inevitable consequence of recognsiing and celebrating cultural diversity, which is what I regard as multiculturalism.
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So Sweden has reduced it's travel somewhat less than half as effectively as the rest of us, and is performing worse than its most comparable immediate neighbours both on deaths and deaths per million.
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So the Swedish death rate per million is what, 5, 6 times worse than their neighbours? That is going to take some explaining.....
No its not. Its 5, 6 times worse than some cherrypicked neighbours but compare to other neighbours like the Netherlands or Belgium and a different picture emerges. Sweden is physically closer to the Netherlands (not on the graph) than it is to the tiny island of Iceland (which is on the graph).
Cherry picked as in the 3 countries it borders?
I see six nations on the graph and as I said Iceland (included) does not physically border Sweden and the Netherlands (not included) is physically closer to Sweden than Iceland is.
Can you explain please why you'd include Iceland as a neighbour but not the Netherlands besides cherrypicking? Iceland and Sweden may be Scandinavian but the Netherlands is more of a neighbour to Sweden than Iceland is.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Americans are quite keen on their past too if you have ever visited New England, a civil war battleground or Charleston and DC.
However in terms of superpower status it is true that the UK was at its peak in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
There is no ludditism here.
I am at the forefront of new tech in my industry, including leading on nuclear fusion for my firm.
Either you’ve moved on from Crossrail and I didn’t notice, or now we know why it cost so much.
To understand Britain you have to get into the mindset of the people who built the cathedrals, fought for rights, explored the world, designed the spitfire, setup the NHS. They were not driven by conservatism or nostalgia.
No, with respect you don't. I'm the reason Crossrail didn't cost *even more* or take even longer. When I was there I helped take Crossrail from still digging tunnels in 2015 to being fully energised and under full dynamic testing in 2018. It's just it ran out of road. It ran out of road because we simply challenged the supply chain and industry to deliver on a scale and size of design, construction, and assurance activity beyond their capacity to deliver in the time available. There was no flaw in design or delivery strategy (my bit) unlike Brandenberg airport, which had a problem they simply couldn't solve. It's just late. Had I not written the right strategies, those problems would still be at large. The first station was handed over last week (Custom House) and that's 2 years 5 months late - and it was exactly to my strategy and process. If I had to guess an opening date, it would be Autumn/Winter 2021 (Covid aside) which is three years late, but it will still be value to the taxpayer. Eight years from start to finish was just an impossible challenge.
I do get a bit defensive and tire of telling people this. They think if a project was a success (Olympics) then for anyone involved in it butter wouldn't melt in their mouth. In truth, there were a load of passengers on that one who hindered it and are now milking it for all its worth. Crossrail was all sweetness and light until 2 years ago and now everyone thinks everyone and anyone who was involved were and are shite.
On Crossrail, I've never met so many exceptional people and the old leadership team was far better than the new. I left due to differences with the new leadership team and CEO, particularly because he didn't take on board my suggestion for a highly structured approach to tracking and doing T-minus countdowns of readiness for trial running, which is one of the reasons it's still slipping.
Of course there will be good people working on failing projects and bad people on successful ones. But a strategy or design that is in practice incapable of delivery to the specified parameters doesn't sound good.
There was no flaw in the strategy or design. The supply chain simply didn't have the capacity (resources or skills) to deliver in the time available.
That's a planning (deadline) failure at the highest level with far too much optimism bias.
It has delivered to the specified parameters. It's just late.
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So the Swedish death rate per million is what, 5, 6 times worse than their neighbours? That is going to take some explaining.....
The argument from the Swedish guy on last night's Newsnight piece is that you wont be able to judge until the end, and that his expectation is that the second wave in the UK will be worse than the second wave in Sweden. It included the claim that infection rate in Stockholm may already be at 25%
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
There is no ludditism here.
I am at the forefront of new tech in my industry, including leading on nuclear fusion for my firm.
Either you’ve moved on from Crossrail and I didn’t notice, or now we know why it cost so much.
To understand Britain you have to get into the mindset of the people who built the cathedrals, fought for rights, explored the world, designed the spitfire, setup the NHS. They were not driven by conservatism or nostalgia.
No, with respect you don't. I'm the reason Crossrail didn't cost *even more* or take even longer. When I was there I helped take Crossrail from still digging tunnels in 2015 to being fully energised and under full dynamic testing in 2018. It's just it ran out of road. It ran out of road because we simply challenged the supply chain and industry to deliver on a scale and size of design, construction, and assurance activity beyond their capacity to deliver in the time available. There was no flaw in design or delivery strategy (my bit) unlike Brandenberg airport, which had a problem they simply couldn't solve. It's just late. Had I not written the right strategies, those problems would still be at large. The first station was handed over last week (Custom House) and that's 2 years 5 months late - and it was exactly to my strategy and process. If I had to guess an opening date, it would be Autumn/Winter 2021 (Covid aside) which is three years late, but it will still be value to the taxpayer. Eight years from start to finish was just an impossible challenge.
I do get a bit defensive and tire of telling people this. They think if a project was a success (Olympics) then for anyone involved in it butter wouldn't melt in their mouth. In truth, there were a load of passengers on that one who hindered it and are now milking it for all its worth. Crossrail was all sweetness and light until 2 years ago and now everyone thinks everyone and anyone who was involved were and are shite.
On Crossrail, I've never met so many exceptional people and the old leadership team was far better than the new. I left due to differences with the new leadership team and CEO, particularly because he didn't take on board my suggestion for a highly structured approach to tracking and doing T-minus countdowns of readiness for trial running, which is one of the reasons it's still slipping.
Of course there will be good people working on failing projects and bad people on successful ones. But a strategy or design that is in practice incapable of delivery to the specified parameters doesn't sound good.
The original plan was actually impossible IIRC.
Probably drawn up by people who believed in the "Turnips = Panzers"* theory of economics.
*In histories of WWII production, there is often a belief expressed that resources could be shifted seamlessly between one part of the economy and another. The turnips vs Panzers one is a satirisation of this debate - that you could simply exchange turnip production for tanks.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
All tourism based on nature relies on new things. The spring cherry blossom in Tokyo, the sea life off the great barrier reef, the fresh snow in the alps. All new.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Is it more dangerous than letting Covid kill someone?
I'd bow down to doctors like Foxy in that one but I suspect drinking bleach is more dangerous than the risk of Covid to the average person.
You are throwing around the word 'dumb', you could at least read both my post and Trump's comments. There was no mention of 'drinking'.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Americans are quite keen on their past too if you have ever visited New England, a civil war battleground or Charleston and DC.
However in terms of superpower status it is true that the UK was at its peak in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
There is no ludditism here.
I am at the forefront of new tech in my industry, including leading on nuclear fusion for my firm.
Either you’ve moved on from Crossrail and I didn’t notice, or now we know why it cost so much.
To understand Britain you have to get into the mindset of the people who built the cathedrals, fought for rights, explored the world, designed the spitfire, setup the NHS. They were not driven by conservatism or nostalgia.
No, with respect you don't. I'm the reason Crossrail didn't cost *even more* or take even longer. When I was there I helped take Crossrail from still digging tunnels in 2015 to being fully energised and under full dynamic testing in 2018. It's just it ran out of road. It ran out of road because we simply challenged the supply chain and industry to deliver on a scale and size of design, construction, and assurance activity beyond their capacity to deliver in the time available. There was no flaw in design or delivery strategy (my bit) unlike Brandenberg airport, which had a problem they simply couldn't solve. It's just late. Had I not written the right strategies, those problems would still be at large. The first station was handed over last week (Custom House) and that's 2 years 5 months late - and it was exactly to my strategy and process. If I had to guess an opening date, it would be Autumn/Winter 2021 (Covid aside) which is three years late, but it will still be value to the taxpayer. Eight years from start to finish was just an impossible challenge.
I do get a bit defensive and tire of telling people this. They think if a project was a success (Olympics) then for anyone involved in it butter wouldn't melt in their mouth. In truth, there were a load of passengers on that one who hindered it and are now milking it for all its worth. Crossrail was all sweetness and light until 2 years ago and now everyone thinks everyone and anyone who was involved were and are shite.
On Crossrail, I've never met so many exceptional people and the old leadership team was far better than the new. I left due to differences with the new leadership team and CEO, particularly because he didn't take on board my suggestion for a highly structured approach to tracking and doing T-minus countdowns of readiness for trial running, which is one of the reasons it's still slipping.
It was a joke. If crossrail were developing nuclear fusion that would be scope creep.
I'm a bit sensitive to these "jokes". I get them all the time.
I worked my arse off on Crossrail, and stuck with it when others bailed out because they saw which way the wind was blowing. I decided to stay behind and continue to help and fix it, even at the risk to my reputation, because I thought it was the right thing to do.
I've got precisely no thanks for it, and it has damaged my reputation.
Still don't regret it though. It was the right thing to do.
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So the Swedish death rate per million is what, 5, 6 times worse than their neighbours? That is going to take some explaining.....
The argument from the Swedish guy on last night's Newsnight piece is that you wont be able to judge until the end, and that his expectation is that the second wave in the UK will be worse than the second wave in Sweden. It included the claim that infection rate in Stockholm may already be at 25%
Come back in a year, he told another interviewer on the figures.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
I doubt many Americans know or care that the WWW was invented by a Brit in Switzerland.
Didn't an American commentator at the Olympics opening make that very comment. Something was said about Tim B-L, one of those in the studio said 'Who that' and she (IIRC) replied "Some Brit no-one else has ever heard of!'. This from a country where the World Baseball Series is only competed in by US teams!
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Americans are quite keen on their past too if you have ever visited New England, a civil war battleground or Charleston and DC.
However in terms of superpower status it is true that the UK was at its peak in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries
And now we are kept nicely in our box.
To an extent but Australia and Israel are closer allies for the US than we are
Good morning. Despite the limitations to the testing, I think the critical additional measure is the requirement to isolate in a secure place away from your household and family. South Korea has done something similar with success.
Yup, for people who haven't seen it Daniel Falush talks about it here - out of all the tricky problems the government is dealing with right now, you wouldn't have thought renting some of the many empty hotels and making them available for infectious people to stay in was particularly difficult.
It seems an obvious step but I wonder whether - like with the masks encouraging people to feel safe and ignore all the other physical distancing/hygiene advice - they are worried about the social behaviour consequentials.
If the British public knew that a positive Covid-19 test would see them quarantined for two weeks, even more socially isolated than they are now, they might suddenly become a lot less interested in being tested for the virus.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
All tourism based on nature relies on new things. The spring cherry blossom in Tokyo, the sea life off the great barrier reef, the fresh snow in the alps. All new.
You are aware that the cherry blossom thing is an extremely ancient piece of Japanese culture - and there are some parts of that tradition which Japanese progressives see as nutcase reactionary?
The Great Barrier reef has been there a little while, I believe
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So the Swedish death rate per million is what, 5, 6 times worse than their neighbours? That is going to take some explaining.....
The argument from the Swedish guy on last night's Newsnight piece is that you wont be able to judge until the end, and that his expectation is that the second wave in the UK will be worse than the second wave in Sweden. It included the claim that infection rate in Stockholm may already be at 25%
Correct argument to also apply to UK, Spain, France, Netherlands, Germany etc.
Which is why all the conversations and comparisons about now, as if it can mean something overall, are for fools, and that subcategory of fools known as journsalists.
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
There is no ludditism here.
I am at the forefront of new tech in my industry, including leading on nuclear fusion for my firm.
Still fifty years off ? (Despite the snark, for which apologies, I'd be interested in your answer.)
So difficult to say. But it looks promising. The spherical tokamaks at Culham look very interesting.
Maybe this is self-interest but I think it's now advanced enough to take its programme management off the academics and scientists (who will take 50 years, and some) and hand over to engineers/project and programme management professionals.
That's interesting; thanks. I hadn't read up on anything to do with fusion in the last decade.
It still sounds a messy business, compared to (say) solar power, but a successful system would have obvious advantages.
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
There is no ludditism here.
I am at the forefront of new tech in my industry, including leading on nuclear fusion for my firm.
Either you’ve moved on from Crossrail and I didn’t notice, or now we know why it cost so much.
To understand Britain you have to get into the mindset of the people who built the cathedrals, fought for rights, explored the world, designed the spitfire, setup the NHS. They were not driven by conservatism or nostalgia.
No, with respect you don't. I'm the reason Crossrail didn't cost *even more* or take even longer. When I was there I helped take Crossrail from still digging tunnels in 2015 to being fully energised and under full dynamic testing in 2018. It's just it ran out of road. It ran out of road because we simply challenged the supply chain and industry to deliver on a scale and size of design, construction, and assurance activity beyond their capacity to deliver in the time available. There was no flaw in design or delivery strategy (my bit) unlike Brandenberg airport, which had a problem they simply couldn't solve. It's just late. Had I not written the right strategies, those problems would still be at large. The first station was handed over last week (Custom House) and that's 2 years 5 months late - and it was exactly to my strategy and process. If I had to guess an opening date, it would be Autumn/Winter 2021 (Covid aside) which is three years late, but it will still be value to the taxpayer. Eight years from start to finish was just an impossible challenge.
I do get a bit defensive and tire of telling people this. They think if a project was a success (Olympics) then for anyone involved in it butter wouldn't melt in their mouth. In truth, there were a load of passengers on that one who hindered it and are now milking it for all its worth. Crossrail was all sweetness and light until 2 years ago and now everyone thinks everyone and anyone who was involved were and are shite.
On Crossrail, I've never met so many exceptional people and the old leadership team was far better than the new. I left due to differences with the new leadership team and CEO, particularly because he didn't take on board my suggestion for a highly structured approach to tracking and doing T-minus countdowns of readiness for trial running, which is one of the reasons it's still slipping.
It was a joke. If crossrail were developing nuclear fusion that would be scope creep.
I'm a bit sensitive to these "jokes". I get them all the time.
I worked my arse off on Crossrail, and stuck with it when others bailed out because they saw which way the wind was blowing. I decided to stay behind and continue to help and fix it, even at the risk to my reputation, because I thought it was the right thing to do.
I've got precisely no thanks for it, and it has damaged my reputation.
Still don't regret it though. It was the right thing to do.
Sorry to pick on a raw nerve. Being also in the business of engineering real things, I appreciate that reality bites and things take longer than planned.
That said...
The idea of nuclear fusion powered commuter trains running out of Reading made we chuckle. Who needs maglev when you have fusion trains!
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
Actually, few things are more illustrative of England's long history than the Luddites, and related social movements such as the Swing rioters, Chartists , Tolpuddle Martyrs etc.
In many countries such social changes and tensions led to civil war, revolution and slaughter. With rare exceptions such as Peterloo, that never happened.
Indeed the Luddites presage many modern tensions, in the impoverishment of skilled artisans by a globalised system of industrial manufacturing.
Interestingly, most of the reform movements such as the Chartists presented themselves as partly conservative - the Magna Carta (mythological version) etc... Electoral reform was framed as returning electoral rights that had been eroded by the innovation of rotten buroughs.
The phrase "Things must change, so they can stay the same" comes to mind.
That was the genius of "take back control". It appealed to a mythological past that we would like to be true even if it wasn't.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Is it more dangerous than letting Covid kill someone?
I'd bow down to doctors like Foxy in that one but I suspect drinking bleach is more dangerous than the risk of Covid to the average person.
You are throwing around the word 'dumb', you could at least read both my post and Trump's comments. There was no mention of 'drinking'.
They managed to go from an 80 percent death rate to a 48 percent death rate - and they were only using subjects who were considered hopeless cases.
You are really trying to defend his comments? He came across as he was either thick, drunk or suffering from dementia. We know he doesn't drink so he doesn't have the Yeltsin excuse. He comes out with some really dumb statements, but it is unlikely that he is thick. How anyone could support excuse or vote for this buffoon astounds me.
Yesterday the number of deaths in the US caused by the virus exceeded 50K. By Monday it will exceed 60k. The US response has vividly demonstrated the ridiculous inefficiency and inefficacy of US medicine with the best treatment on the planet for the favoured minority and complete neglect of the majority.
Trump spent most of his first 2 years trying to deconstruct Obamacare which was a modest sticking plaster on this gaping sore. I suspect that Biden will adopt a lot of Bernie's policy on health and that it will resonate very loudly in the current carnage. All Americans have an interest in the health of their fellow citizens. Surely even Republicans can now see that.
Yet to be fair the UK, France, Spain and Italy all have higher death rates per head than the US still
Whilst that is currently true many of the outbreaks in the US are still early of the curve with death a lagging indicator. There is a frightening quantity of death in the existing cases and yesterday the US had over 30K new cases. Unless we get a vaccine by November the US death toll may will be over 250k.
The US has a higher testing rate than we do and France does however
So? As I keep pointing out testing in itself achieves virtually nothing. It needs to be combined with a plan of action in relation to the results to make a difference.
Without mass testing and tracing there is little chance of getting out of lockdown before a vaccince is found
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
All tourism based on nature relies on new things. The spring cherry blossom in Tokyo, the sea life off the great barrier reef, the fresh snow in the alps. All new.
You are aware that the cherry blossom thing is an extremely ancient piece of Japanese culture - and there are some parts of that tradition which Japanese progressives see as nutcase reactionary?
The Great Barrier reef has been there a little while, I believe
As have the Alps.
I don’t think people rock up in the spring just to see the alps driven by some historical curiosity, it’s the fresh snow that lies on them.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Americans are quite keen on their past too if you have ever visited New England, a civil war battleground or Charleston and DC.
However in terms of superpower status it is true that the UK was at its peak in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries
And now we are kept nicely in our box.
To an extent but Australia and Israel are closer allies for the US than we are
Who care about Australia or Israel. We’re talking about England and how see ourselves. We are more than the chocolate box.
@Luckyguy1983.... I am referring back to a conversation of the morning of 23/4. I think you were (unlike you) quite rude in response to a post of mine and did not come back when I responded politely. I would like to raise it again because I was taken aback by your response. Without going into details I suggested something which you obviously seemed to think was completely idiotic to do with the devolution of small states within a larger organization when discussing Scotland and the EU.
Now I don't expect people to necessarily agree with me on stuff (would be weird), but to treat me like an idiot when I suggest something that plainly exists (whether you agree with it or not) for 1/3rd of the states in the EU (smaller or equal in population to Scotland) and which is the bedrock of the USA system of devolved government with States of significantly different sizes, is odd. In both cases they are successful economic superstates with significant devolution to their constituent bodies, even the small ones.
People may not agree with these structures and they may well be correct to disagree, but to suggest I am a complete idiot for even suggesting such a bizarre idea when clearly a billion people live in these scenarios and when these are the two most successful democratic economies on the planet is a bit insulting to put it mildly.
Yes, England is an old country with a lot of history and heritage. America doesn't have that. And a lot the rest of world also value that here too - it's why tourists come here in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
Some people live in the past (nostalgia). Some live in the present (mindfulness or simple survival). Some live in the future (planning and anticipation).
So it is with countries. UK in the past. Africa in the present. China in the future.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Is it more dangerous than letting Covid kill someone?
I'd bow down to doctors like Foxy in that one but I suspect drinking bleach is more dangerous than the risk of Covid to the average person.
You are throwing around the word 'dumb', you could at least read both my post and Trump's comments. There was no mention of 'drinking'.
They managed to go from an 80 percent death rate to a 48 percent death rate - and they were only using subjects who were considered hopeless cases.
You are really trying to defend his comments? He came across as he was either thick, drunk or suffering from dementia. We know he doesn't drink so he doesn't have the Yeltsin excuse. He comes out with some really dumb statements, but it is unlikely that he is thick. How anyone could support excuse or vote for this buffoon astounds me.
I don't know what motivated his comments, and I haven't watched them - I hate cringey moments.
However, it must be said that injecting a disinfectant, in this case hydrogen peroxide, has been written up in the Lancet and actually shown remarkable results for a similar condition!
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So the Swedish death rate per million is what, 5, 6 times worse than their neighbours? That is going to take some explaining.....
No its not. Its 5, 6 times worse than some cherrypicked neighbours but compare to other neighbours like the Netherlands or Belgium and a different picture emerges. Sweden is physically closer to the Netherlands (not on the graph) than it is to the tiny island of Iceland (which is on the graph).
Cherry picked as in the 3 countries it borders?
I see six nations on the graph and as I said Iceland (included) does not physically border Sweden and the Netherlands (not included) is physically closer to Sweden than Iceland is.
Can you explain please why you'd include Iceland as a neighbour but not the Netherlands besides cherrypicking? Iceland and Sweden may be Scandinavian but the Netherlands is more of a neighbour to Sweden than Iceland is.
Isn't that about a 10% sample of the countries the Gnats have compared Scotland to for what their future is going to be like, when they escape and return to status quo 1700 or 1300?
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Is it more dangerous than letting Covid kill someone?
I'd bow down to doctors like Foxy in that one but I suspect drinking bleach is more dangerous than the risk of Covid to the average person.
You are throwing around the word 'dumb', you could at least read both my post and Trump's comments. There was no mention of 'drinking'.
The original Oliver et al 1920 study from The Lancet is scanned here: tp://www.foodgrade-hydrogenperoxide.com/id42.html
They managed to go from an 80 percent death rate to a 48 percent death rate - and they were only using subjects who were considered hopeless cases.
It might be worth mentioning to you that medicine has advanced quite a lot since 1920 and so has peer reviewed science publication. I guess your knowledge of science is probably similar to Trump's. You are clutching at straws to defend the most inappropriate individual to hold high office in the history of western representative democracy.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
All tourism based on nature relies on new things. The spring cherry blossom in Tokyo, the sea life off the great barrier reef, the fresh snow in the alps. All new.
You are aware that the cherry blossom thing is an extremely ancient piece of Japanese culture - and there are some parts of that tradition which Japanese progressives see as nutcase reactionary?
The Great Barrier reef has been there a little while, I believe
As have the Alps.
I don’t think people rock up in the spring just to see the alps driven by some historical curiosity, it’s the fresh snow that lies on them.
But I rather doubt they rock up to see the fresh snow by itself. It's the slightly old setting that is the draw.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
All tourism based on nature relies on new things. The spring cherry blossom in Tokyo, the sea life off the great barrier reef, the fresh snow in the alps. All new.
You are aware that the cherry blossom thing is an extremely ancient piece of Japanese culture - and there are some parts of that tradition which Japanese progressives see as nutcase reactionary?
The Great Barrier reef has been there a little while, I believe
As have the Alps.
Tourist destinations like the Alps and Northern Italy were discovered by British Grand Tourists in the late 19th Century. Do we have any evidence they were there before?
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
Actually, few things are more illustrative of England's long history than the Luddites, and related social movements such as the Swing rioters, Chartists , Tolpuddle Martyrs etc.
In many countries such social changes and tensions led to civil war, revolution and slaughter. With rare exceptions such as Peterloo, that never happened.
Indeed the Luddites presage many modern tensions, in the impoverishment of skilled artisans by a globalised system of industrial manufacturing.
Interestingly, most of the reform movements such as the Chartists presented themselves as partly conservative - the Magna Carta (mythological version) etc... Electoral reform was framed as returning electoral rights that had been eroded by the innovation of rotten buroughs.
The phrase "Things must change, so they can stay the same" comes to mind.
That was the genius of "take back control". It appealed to a mythological past that we would like to be true even if it wasn't.
Most national myth are like that. German efficiency, for example.
EiT - what is actually going on in Japan? There’s the fact they declared a “national emergency”. The very low levels of testing. “Reports” that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick patients. Lack of PPE. And yet the numbers of recorded COVID deaths continue to bump along at pretty low levels.
Misreporting, or misrecording (or stricter definitions for recording)? Or a bit of both?
OK, here goes. The story is too complicated for Western media, so they're mostly writing cultural fluff and bollocks. Here goes:
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected. Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them. Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US. Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Thanks for the analysis, insightful and different to the headlines we're getting over here.
Just looking at mobility in Sweden and there are some startling falls there - Stockholm over 40% down for transit stations and workplaces, retail 27% down, parks and residential up. There may be no lockdown in Sweden, but people are still taking steps that will be reducing infection.
So the Swedish death rate per million is what, 5, 6 times worse than their neighbours? That is going to take some explaining.....
The argument from the Swedish guy on last night's Newsnight piece is that you wont be able to judge until the end, and that his expectation is that the second wave in the UK will be worse than the second wave in Sweden. It included the claim that infection rate in Stockholm may already be at 25%
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
All tourism based on nature relies on new things. The spring cherry blossom in Tokyo, the sea life off the great barrier reef, the fresh snow in the alps. All new.
You are aware that the cherry blossom thing is an extremely ancient piece of Japanese culture - and there are some parts of that tradition which Japanese progressives see as nutcase reactionary?
The Great Barrier reef has been there a little while, I believe
As have the Alps.
Lots of tourists like going to theme parks, or resorts and nightclubs, etc.
Indeed I remember one scorching 40 degree day in Malta, when I had pencilled in exploring the interesting neolithic ruins, that Mrs Foxy and Fox Jr voted to stay by the pool drinking sodas. Some people have no idea of a good time...
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
All tourism based on nature relies on new things. The spring cherry blossom in Tokyo, the sea life off the great barrier reef, the fresh snow in the alps. All new.
You are aware that the cherry blossom thing is an extremely ancient piece of Japanese culture - and there are some parts of that tradition which Japanese progressives see as nutcase reactionary?
The Great Barrier reef has been there a little while, I believe
As have the Alps.
I don’t think people rock up in the spring just to see the alps driven by some historical curiosity, it’s the fresh snow that lies on them.
But I rather doubt they rock up to see the fresh snow by itself. It's the slightly old setting that is the draw.
Weird argument. The original notion that tourism is exclusively based on history is demonstrably false. Sport, nature, food, climate and myriad other things drive tourism, All academic these days. Right now, tourism is a trip to the bathroom.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
All tourism based on nature relies on new things. The spring cherry blossom in Tokyo, the sea life off the great barrier reef, the fresh snow in the alps. All new.
You are aware that the cherry blossom thing is an extremely ancient piece of Japanese culture - and there are some parts of that tradition which Japanese progressives see as nutcase reactionary?
The Great Barrier reef has been there a little while, I believe
As have the Alps.
I don’t think people rock up in the spring just to see the alps driven by some historical curiosity, it’s the fresh snow that lies on them.
One thing that struck me travelling around the US last year is how much our dramatic European mountain scenery rests on the relative absence of trees. Most mountain ranges in the US (east of the rockies, at least) are almost completely tree covered. Attractive, but not nearly as dramatic, and tending to make every hill look the same. And that's if you can see them in the first place, as whether walking or driving, most of the time you are inside a wood.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Is it more dangerous than letting Covid kill someone?
I'd bow down to doctors like Foxy in that one but I suspect drinking bleach is more dangerous than the risk of Covid to the average person.
You are throwing around the word 'dumb', you could at least read both my post and Trump's comments. There was no mention of 'drinking'.
The original Oliver et al 1920 study from The Lancet is scanned here: tp://www.foodgrade-hydrogenperoxide.com/id42.html
They managed to go from an 80 percent death rate to a 48 percent death rate - and they were only using subjects who were considered hopeless cases.
It might be worth mentioning to you that medicine has advanced quite a lot since 1920 and so has peer reviewed science publication. I guess your knowledge of science is probably similar to Trump's. You are clutching at straws to defend the most inappropriate individual to hold high office in the history of western representative democracy.
Of course it has, but the research in question has never been contradicted. The rise of antibiotics meant research into hydrogen peroxide all but ceased. Which is fine, only in the current situation, with a rapidly spreading pandemic, a simpler 'all purpose' pathogen killer is actually what you need, because research into a silver bullet doesn't fit the time lines we are dealing with. Hence comments about 'injecting disinfectant', whichever mental recesses they come from, are interesting.
This is a really fascinating insight into how we are seen inside the Trump administration. It is dripping with nostalgia, laden with the past. It will resonate with many here, too. https://twitter.com/usambuk/status/1253229648546324480?s=21
Yes, England is an old country with a lot of history and heritage. America doesn't have that. And a lot the rest of world also value that here too - it's why tourists come here in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
Not really, but it's clearly well-meaning and nice of him to make the effort - I wouldn't criticise him for that myself. The fact that we have lots of attractive landscape and historic buildings is one of our many strengths, though we don't want to be seen as a historical theme park and have more to offer than that. I'm afraid, though, that SO is right that it's how we're seen in the US, and not just by the administration.
Most people have a mental sketch of other countries which they can't be bothered to nuance, like the idea that the US is New York+Hollywood+rednecks. or Russia is Moscow+peasants. Britain's USP for many tourists is that we have loads of visual history - that's why London is such a draw and you don't see many foreign tourists wandering round the Highlands.
"that's why London is such a draw and you don't see many foreign tourists wandering round the Highlands"
You'd be surprised, Nick. During Summer the roads up here are crawling with European registered cars, esp German and Scandinavian. Also a surprising number of people from the Far East - who are not very adept with single track roads and reversing into passing places!
Yes, England is an old country with a lot of history and heritage. America doesn't have that. And a lot the rest of world also value that here too - it's why tourists come here in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
Some people live in the past (nostalgia). Some live in the present (mindfulness or simple survival). Some live in the future (planning and anticipation).
So it is with countries. UK in the past. Africa in the present. China in the future.
To be frank, I think this is an accusation that the small-ell left often make against Britain. It is the trope behind the 'its all about passports' and 'you can't stop talking about the empire'. The past is simply another stick that the left use to beat the country with. And interestingly, the only successful Labour leaders recognise this - Blair was a perfect example.
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
Actually, few things are more illustrative of England's long history than the Luddites, and related social movements such as the Swing rioters, Chartists , Tolpuddle Martyrs etc.
In many countries such social changes and tensions led to civil war, revolution and slaughter. With rare exceptions such as Peterloo, that never happened.
Indeed the Luddites presage many modern tensions, in the impoverishment of skilled artisans by a globalised system of industrial manufacturing.
It is noteworthy that England generally avoided civil wars and revolutions. Obviously "the" civil war is an exception.
You are highlighting the most radical there though. Much more was achieved by gentle and progressive reform over a period of time.
Even the Civil War wasn't >that< bad. Compare, for example, with the Thirty Years' War...
I think as so often with the history of the British isles, the effects of the Civil War/Wars of the Three Kingdoms were limited by geographical isolation. A cursory look at the death rates over a shorter period (it's estimated that England suffered a 3.7% loss of population and Scotland a loss of 6%, while Ireland suffered a loss of 41% of its population) puts it at least in the same league as the 30 Years war I'd say.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
I doubt many Americans know or care that the WWW was invented by a Brit in Switzerland.
On the contrary, there are many many Americans that know that. There are lots of intelligent people in the states as it has a large population.
The fact that average Americans are not that bright or world aware, doe not mean that the number of bright and world aware Americans is low.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
So with Trump there's always a "low cunning" explanation and a "confused old man has no idea what's going on" explanation, and you can never be entirely sure which one is right. The low cunning explanation is that there are millions of voters who believe in lunatic medical pseudo-science, and they care much more about this issue than the voters who believe in normal medicine, most of whom will just roll their eyes and move onto his next distraction.
There's also the low cunning where he throws out these wild speculative claims, gets people to condemn him eg "hydroxychloroquine is a game-changer" . Then either:
- it turns out hydroxychloroquine does nothing or more harm than good. In which case trump flat out lies and claims he always knew it wouldn't work /or claims he just said it was worth checking out. Most of his supporters will buy that (given the crap they've already swallowed)
- it turns out that it is at least a marginally helpful treatment in a few cases if given at the right time. Trump claims he is a genius who knows more than all the so-called experts who are all part of a massive conspiracy to try and discredit him.
Britain is killing itself with nostalgia and history. It is important to note we wouldn’t have any history to speak of if we had taken that view in the past. We must not let the Luddites win. Britain is more than a museum.
Actually, few things are more illustrative of England's long history than the Luddites, and related social movements such as the Swing rioters, Chartists , Tolpuddle Martyrs etc.
In many countries such social changes and tensions led to civil war, revolution and slaughter. With rare exceptions such as Peterloo, that never happened.
Indeed the Luddites presage many modern tensions, in the impoverishment of skilled artisans by a globalised system of industrial manufacturing.
Interestingly, most of the reform movements such as the Chartists presented themselves as partly conservative - the Magna Carta (mythological version) etc... Electoral reform was framed as returning electoral rights that had been eroded by the innovation of rotten buroughs.
The phrase "Things must change, so they can stay the same" comes to mind.
That was the genius of "take back control". It appealed to a mythological past that we would like to be true even if it wasn't.
Most national myth are like that. German efficiency, for example.
The Americans like to promote this chocolate box version of England, it fits in with their world view. We’re part of the past. We really should not fall for it.
Yes, that is very much an American view of England, A land that stopped in 1776, when the New World began.
Its slightly more than that, since WW2 the Americans have had a deliberate policy to craft and keep us in this chocolate box.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
And then we pesky Brits refuse to play ball - and come up with things like the World Wide Web..... How very parochial of us that was.
In which country, in the entire world, is the primary tourism based around new things? Where there is old stuff (or fake old stuff), there the tourists go.
All tourism based on nature relies on new things. The spring cherry blossom in Tokyo, the sea life off the great barrier reef, the fresh snow in the alps. All new.
You are aware that the cherry blossom thing is an extremely ancient piece of Japanese culture - and there are some parts of that tradition which Japanese progressives see as nutcase reactionary?
The Great Barrier reef has been there a little while, I believe
As have the Alps.
Lots of tourists like going to theme parks, or resorts and nightclubs, etc.
Indeed I remember one scorching 40 degree day in Malta, when I had pencilled in exploring the interesting neolithic ruins, that Mrs Foxy and Fox Jr voted to stay by the pool drinking sodas. Some people have no idea of a good time...
True - the point I was trying to make was that tourism is never about the technological or social cutting edge of a society.
The nightclubs and resorts type of tourism is essentially trying to ignore the host country - just borrow the weather, as it were.
I have just been rewatching the Novaro Media election coverage, to cheer myself up (given the unintentional humour of their unselfaware pomposity).
I have just noticed that John McDonnell, in his interview with Andrew Neil, said of his and Corbyn’s impending resignations, ‘we will always make decisions in the best interests of our party.’
Leaving aside the fact that their judgement was perhaps not all it might have been, surely anyone aspiring to government should always make decisions in the best interests of the country?
Not that we actually had one of those on offer in 2019, of course, but it did just sum up for me the kind of narrow and small-minded selfishness that characterised Corbynism and goes a long way towards explaining its bizarre policy offering and casual racism.
That defines exactly what is wrong with the UK, both Tories and Labour are in it for themselves, they care not a jot for the country.
If you think any other party never mixes up what is good for them with what is good for the country you are in for a very big surprise.
They all think their plans are best for the country, and in time that morphs into assuming defending the party's interests is the same as the country's interests. It us rare to acknowledge that however.
Givenonly Tories or Labour are ever going to govern the UK , my answer was qualified. When we get independence I will have same thinking around any Scottish party likely to govern Scotland. They do not take long to get self absorbed and only interested in their own selves / pockets.
Yes, England is an old country with a lot of history and heritage. America doesn't have that. And a lot the rest of world also value that here too - it's why tourists come here in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
Some people live in the past (nostalgia). Some live in the present (mindfulness or simple survival). Some live in the future (planning and anticipation).
So it is with countries. UK in the past. Africa in the present. China in the future.
They were from a clutch of machine tool companies -- making the machines that help Taiwan's industrial wheels turn. And what they were about to accomplish would reinforce their often underappreciated role in the island's economy.
We had a machine tool industry once, but the arts and humanities graduates who run things didn't like it.
My father was a toolmaker (like Kier's). Every single company he worked for went bankrupt (not his fault). He finally ended up working for Rolls Royce. I remember how pleased he was to finally be working for a company that wouldn't go bankrupt.
Yes, England is an old country with a lot of history and heritage. America doesn't have that. And a lot the rest of world also value that here too - it's why tourists come here in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
I see a lot more in England than that. But I do think nostalgia is deeply ingrained in the English psyche.
Some people live in the past (nostalgia). Some live in the present (mindfulness or simple survival). Some live in the future (planning and anticipation).
So it is with countries. UK in the past. Africa in the present. China in the future.
To be frank, I think this is an accusation that the small-ell left often make against Britain. It is the trope behind the 'its all about passports' and 'you can't stop talking about the empire'. The past is simply another stick that the left use to beat the country with. And interestingly, the only successful Labour leaders recognise this - Blair was a perfect example.
I've don't see it play out in reality.
And my degree is in history....
I would agree that the past is a useful thing - without understanding the past, you can't understand why we are where we are. Dismissing the past is also a good way to meet old friends - previous mistakes, that is.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Is it more dangerous than letting Covid kill someone?
I'd bow down to doctors like Foxy in that one but I suspect drinking bleach is more dangerous than the risk of Covid to the average person.
You are throwing around the word 'dumb', you could at least read both my post and Trump's comments. There was no mention of 'drinking'.
The original Oliver et al 1920 study from The Lancet is scanned here: tp://www.foodgrade-hydrogenperoxide.com/id42.html
They managed to go from an 80 percent death rate to a 48 percent death rate - and they were only using subjects who were considered hopeless cases.
It might be worth mentioning to you that medicine has advanced quite a lot since 1920 and so has peer reviewed science publication. I guess your knowledge of science is probably similar to Trump's. You are clutching at straws to defend the most inappropriate individual to hold high office in the history of western representative democracy.
Of course it has, but the research in question has never been contradicted. The rise of antibiotics meant research into hydrogen peroxide all but ceased. Which is fine, only in the current situation, with a rapidly spreading pandemic, a simpler 'all purpose' pathogen killer is actually what you need, because research into a silver bullet doesn't fit the time lines we are dealing with. Hence comments about 'injecting disinfectant', whichever mental recesses they come from, are interesting.
No it is a dumb distraction, and is stupid at so many levels. Either completely stupid (quite possible), or an attempt to appeal to the nutjobs and pseudoscience adherents that make up a large part of Trump's loyal fanbase. I hope it damages him. There are quite a few educated and intelligent people that voted for him last time because they hated Clinton. Let us hope they reconsider this time.
This is a really fascinating insight into how we are seen inside the Trump administration. It is dripping with nostalgia, laden with the past. It will resonate with many here, too. https://twitter.com/usambuk/status/1253229648546324480?s=21
Yes, England is an old country with a lot of history and heritage. America doesn't have that. And a lot the rest of world also value that here too - it's why tourists come here in their droves and we have so much soft power and cultural influence.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
Not really, but it's clearly well-meaning and nice of him to make the effort - I wouldn't criticise him for that myself. The fact that we have lots of attractive landscape and historic buildings is one of our many strengths, though we don't want to be seen as a historical theme park and have more to offer than that. I'm afraid, though, that SO is right that it's how we're seen in the US, and not just by the administration.
Most people have a mental sketch of other countries which they can't be bothered to nuance, like the idea that the US is New York+Hollywood+rednecks. or Russia is Moscow+peasants. Britain's USP for many tourists is that we have loads of visual history - that's why London is such a draw and you don't see many foreign tourists wandering round the Highlands.
"that's why London is such a draw and you don't see many foreign tourists wandering round the Highlands"
You'd be surprised, Nick. During Summer the roads up here are crawling with European registered cars, esp German and Scandinavian. Also a surprising number of people from the Far East - who are not very adept with single track roads and reversing into passing places!
Most on here inhabit the M25 ring and so have absolutely not a clue on anything about Scotland. They think we are all unemployed , drinking Buckfast and running about in kilts eating fried Mars Bars.
@Luckyguy1983.... I am referring back to a conversation of the morning of 23/4. I think you were (unlike you) quite rude in response to a post of mine and did not come back when I responded politely. I would like to raise it again because I was taken aback by your response. Without going into details I suggested something which you obviously seemed to think was completely idiotic to do with the devolution of small states within a larger organization when discussing Scotland and the EU.
Now I don't expect people to necessarily agree with me on stuff (would be weird), but to treat me like an idiot when I suggest something that plainly exists (whether you agree with it or not) for 1/3rd of the states in the EU (smaller or equal in population to Scotland) and which is the bedrock of the USA system of devolved government with States of significantly different sizes, is odd. In both cases they are successful economic superstates with significant devolution to their constituent bodies, even the small ones.
People may not agree with these structures and they may well be correct to disagree, but to suggest I am a complete idiot for even suggesting such a bizarre idea when clearly a billion people live in these scenarios and when these are the two most successful democratic economies on the planet is a bit insulting to put it mildly.
'In 1888, the first medical use of H2O2 was described by Love as efficacious in treating numerous diseases, including scarlet fever, diphtheria, nasal catarrh, acute coryza, whooping cough, asthma hay fever and tonsillitis (Love, 1888). Similarly, Oliver and collaborators reported that intravenous injection of H2O2 was efficacious in treating influenza pneumonia in the epidemic following World War I (Oliver et al., 1920). Despite its beneficial effects, in the 1940s medical interest in further research on H2O2 was slowed down by the emerging development of new prescription medicines.' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417441/
One nil to Trump?
No. Its a stupid, dangerous, dumb idea.
Is it more dangerous than letting Covid kill someone?
I'd bow down to doctors like Foxy in that one but I suspect drinking bleach is more dangerous than the risk of Covid to the average person.
You are throwing around the word 'dumb', you could at least read both my post and Trump's comments. There was no mention of 'drinking'.
The original Oliver et al 1920 study from The Lancet is scanned here: tp://www.foodgrade-hydrogenperoxide.com/id42.html
They managed to go from an 80 percent death rate to a 48 percent death rate - and they were only using subjects who were considered hopeless cases.
It might be worth mentioning to you that medicine has advanced quite a lot since 1920 and so has peer reviewed science publication. I guess your knowledge of science is probably similar to Trump's. You are clutching at straws to defend the most inappropriate individual to hold high office in the history of western representative democracy.
Of course it has, but the research in question has never been contradicted. The rise of antibiotics meant research into hydrogen peroxide all but ceased. Which is fine, only in the current situation, with a rapidly spreading pandemic, a simpler 'all purpose' pathogen killer is actually what you need, because research into a silver bullet doesn't fit the time lines we are dealing with. Hence comments about 'injecting disinfectant', whichever mental recesses they come from, are interesting.
No it is a dumb distraction, and is stupid at so many levels. Either completely stupid (quite possible), or an attempt to appeal to the nutjobs and pseudoscience adherents that make up a large part of Trump's loyal fanbase. I hope it damages him. There are quite a few educated and intelligent people that voted for him last time because they hated Clinton. Let us hope they reconsider this time.
Comments
Times and cultures move on. I live and work in one of the most multicultural cities in England. I like it and am comfortable with it, in all its raucous complexity.
They all think their plans are best for the country, and in time that morphs into assuming defending the party's interests is the same as the country's interests. It us rare to acknowledge that however.
I do get a bit defensive and tire of telling people this. They think if a project was a success (Olympics) then for anyone involved in it butter wouldn't melt in their mouth. In truth, there were a load of passengers on that one who hindered it and are now milking it for all its worth. Crossrail was all sweetness and light until 2 years ago and now everyone thinks everyone and anyone who was involved were and are shite.
On Crossrail, I've never met so many exceptional people and the old leadership team was far better than the new. I left due to differences with the new leadership team and CEO, particularly because he didn't take on board my suggestion for a highly structured approach to tracking and doing T-minus countdowns of readiness for trial running, which is one of the reasons it's still slipping.
The new one is 'when will we release the lockdown'. Luckily, for a government with no good options, most people aren't listening to the media any more, and those who are in the main distrust it.
But in the outside world - consider the recent school protests. How much effort was required to get some protection for the schools and some backing for the staff?
Compare it with, for example, anti-abortion protests at UK clinics (which do happen) being trodden on. The day they happen.
A useful source of political cover and a tourist destination. but never moving beyond that. Rarely independent and never a challenge.
Whether you like it or not, this is what multiculturalism results in. Better not to have it. I'd rather have late trains than live under Mussolini.
Certainly we have some negative focus on nostalgia, though I'd argue more from left and right wing idiots nostalgic about politics of the 70s and 80s than the imperial nostalgia types, who are a punchline precisely because they are pretty rare. But theres plenty who think theres nothing to reflect positively on, so plenty without nostalgia.
But killing ourselves with history? We the public generally dont know enough about our own history to kill ourselves with it.
18 killed at Peterloo. Several hundred injured.
Compare for example, with the 23 killed, and 800 injured at the Manchester Arena Bombing 2 years ago.
Look at the list of "massacres" in India for a comparison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India
Now, I am no south Asian expert but at first glance this seems unlikely. Much more likely is that a self-selecting associative group of ex-pat south Asian gang rapers decided to practice their proclivities in their current environment, ie the UK.
So, we support equality in relation to sexual orientation but gay marriage remains controversial, gay adoption even more so and gay footballers remarkably invisible. We support equality for women but 50 years after the Equal Pay Act we have a significant pay gap, derisory and token representation of women on the boards of FTSE companies and substantially less than 50% female membership of the Commons.
We are aware of these deficiencies and it makes us less confident than we should be in addressing even more serious failings in alternative cultures that have taken root here.
Hmmm.
Can you explain please why you'd include Iceland as a neighbour but not the Netherlands besides cherrypicking? Iceland and Sweden may be Scandinavian but the Netherlands is more of a neighbour to Sweden than Iceland is.
However in terms of superpower status it is true that the UK was at its peak in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries
That's a planning (deadline) failure at the highest level with far too much optimism bias.
It has delivered to the specified parameters. It's just late.
Probably drawn up by people who believed in the "Turnips = Panzers"* theory of economics.
*In histories of WWII production, there is often a belief expressed that resources could be shifted seamlessly between one part of the economy and another. The turnips vs Panzers one is a satirisation of this debate - that you could simply exchange turnip production for tanks.
The original Oliver et al 1920 study from The Lancet is scanned here: http://www.foodgrade-hydrogenperoxide.com/id42.html
They managed to go from an 80 percent death rate to a 48 percent death rate - and they were only using subjects who were considered hopeless cases.
I worked my arse off on Crossrail, and stuck with it when others bailed out because they saw which way the wind was blowing. I decided to stay behind and continue to help and fix it, even at the risk to my reputation, because I thought it was the right thing to do.
I've got precisely no thanks for it, and it has damaged my reputation.
Still don't regret it though. It was the right thing to do.
This from a country where the World Baseball Series is only competed in by US teams!
If the British public knew that a positive Covid-19 test would see them quarantined for two weeks, even more socially isolated than they are now, they might suddenly become a lot less interested in being tested for the virus.
The Great Barrier reef has been there a little while, I believe
As have the Alps.
Which is why all the conversations and comparisons about now, as if it can mean something overall, are for fools, and that subcategory of fools known as journsalists.
I hadn't read up on anything to do with fusion in the last decade.
It still sounds a messy business, compared to (say) solar power, but a successful system would have obvious advantages.
That said...
The idea of nuclear fusion powered commuter trains running out of Reading made we chuckle. Who needs maglev when you have fusion trains!
https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1253378737401405441?s=20
Now I don't expect people to necessarily agree with me on stuff (would be weird), but to treat me like an idiot when I suggest something that plainly exists (whether you agree with it or not) for 1/3rd of the states in the EU (smaller or equal in population to Scotland) and which is the bedrock of the USA system of devolved government with States of significantly different sizes, is odd. In both cases they are successful economic superstates with significant devolution to their constituent bodies, even the small ones.
People may not agree with these structures and they may well be correct to disagree, but to suggest I am a complete idiot for even suggesting such a bizarre idea when clearly a billion people live in these scenarios and when these are the two most successful democratic economies on the planet is a bit insulting to put it mildly.
Was there a misunderstanding?
Some live in the present (mindfulness or simple survival).
Some live in the future (planning and anticipation).
So it is with countries. UK in the past. Africa in the present. China in the future.
However, it must be said that injecting a disinfectant, in this case hydrogen peroxide, has been written up in the Lancet and actually shown remarkable results for a similar condition!
Indeed I remember one scorching 40 degree day in Malta, when I had pencilled in exploring the interesting neolithic ruins, that Mrs Foxy and Fox Jr voted to stay by the pool drinking sodas. Some people have no idea of a good time...
You'd be surprised, Nick. During Summer the roads up here are crawling with European registered cars, esp German and Scandinavian. Also a surprising number of people from the Far East - who are not very adept with single track roads and reversing into passing places!
I've don't see it play out in reality.
And my degree is in history....
The fact that average Americans are not that bright or world aware, doe not mean that the number of bright and world aware Americans is low.
- it turns out hydroxychloroquine does nothing or more harm than good. In which case trump flat out lies and claims he always knew it wouldn't work /or claims he just said it was worth checking out. Most of his supporters will buy that (given the crap they've already swallowed)
- it turns out that it is at least a marginally helpful treatment in a few cases if given at the right time. Trump claims he is a genius who knows more than all the so-called experts who are all part of a massive conspiracy to try and discredit him.
Like he said - what has he got to lose?
The nightclubs and resorts type of tourism is essentially trying to ignore the host country - just borrow the weather, as it were.