Tall Tom Cotton has been getting a lot of coverage: first it was stand up to China, now it's smash the rioter "terrorists". Should something happen to Trump...
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in warmer weather (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
There seems to be lots of evidence now that outdoor transmission is very weak / low risk.
Were it not, we'd have seen a spike by now because the rules were widely ignored down here during April.
Implies that pub beer gardens and similar outdoor hospitality should be allowed to open.
I agree with that, as it happens. It would probably also have considerable positive mental health implications and release a lot of the distress at the lockdown/restrictions.
Should be the next item on the agenda, before any smaller shops or other inside activity.
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in warmer weather (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
There seems to be lots of evidence now that outdoor transmission is very weak / low risk.
Were it not, we'd have seen a spike by now because the rules were widely ignored down here during April.
Implies that pub beer gardens and similar outdoor hospitality should be allowed to open.
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in warmer weather (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
There seems to be lots of evidence now that outdoor transmission is very weak / low risk.
Were it not, we'd have seen a spike by now because the rules were widely ignored down here during April.
Implies that pub beer gardens and similar outdoor hospitality should be allowed to open.
I agree with that, as it happens. It would probably also have considerable positive mental health implications and release a lot of the distress at the lockdown/restrictions.
Should be the next item on the agenda, before any smaller shops or other inside activity.
Quite right.
Prioritising opening Westfield, where people spend hours cooped up inside in air conditioned hell, over opening the vast beer garden in the Edinboro Castle, NW1 is madness in more ways than one.
Nigella Lawson shows here how you can be both a popular TV presenter of food programmes and be on the right side of history. Note the elegant wording of the Tweet. See how she makes important points in an intelligent, non-threatening way. Does she sound like a terrorist? Hardly. Is she a national treasure in the making? Very possibly.
I want to offer solidarity to all those grieving and fighting for a better world. I feel anything I say is puny, but it’s important that white people acknowledge systematic racism exists and are, however unintentionally, complicit in it #BlackLivesMatter#BlackLivesMatterUK
Nigella Lawson shows here how you can be both a popular TV presenter of food programmes and be on the right side of history. Note the elegant wording of the Tweet. See how she makes important points in an intelligent, non threatening way. Does she sound like a terrorist? Hardly. Is she a national treasure in the making? Very possibly.
I want to offer solidarity to all those grieving and fighting for a better world. I feel anything I say is puny, but it’s important that white people acknowledge systematic racism exists and are, however unintentionally, complicit in it #BlackLivesMatter#BlackLivesMatterUK
Nigella Lawson shows here how you can be both a popular TV presenter of food programmes and be on the right side of history. Note the elegant wording of the Tweet. See how she makes important points in an intelligent, non threatening way. Does she sound like a terrorist? Hardly. Is she a national treasure in the making? Very possibly.
I want to offer solidarity to all those grieving and fighting for a better world. I feel anything I say is puny, but it’s important that white people acknowledge systematic racism exists and are, however unintentionally, complicit in it #BlackLivesMatter#BlackLivesMatterUK
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in warmer weather (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
There seems to be lots of evidence now that outdoor transmission is very weak / low risk.
Were it not, we'd have seen a spike by now because the rules were widely ignored down here during April.
Implies that pub beer gardens and similar outdoor hospitality should be allowed to open.
You are wanting that pint of Stella, aren't you?
I don’t drink that crap!
Well it is a strong brew. Not everyone can handle it.
The Edinboro Castle, I see. Been there a few times. Quite a big outdoor area.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
If they time things right it may be possible to distract people by announcing the relaxation of the third lockdown.
Off topic: does anyone know where I would buy gravel like the following pic? I’ve been to 4 garden centres today and nobody has a clue. Probably caught COVID in the process.
Gravel is not always transported very far, though there are obvious exceptions - London etc. and the sort of poncy impoirted stuff one gets in garden centres in expensive plastic sacks.
If it's old gravel from an old drive a local origin is even more likely. The "gravel" on my house is distinctive stuff put down by the original builder in the 1960s and I think from the quarry in the hill I can see in the distance. You can find it on quite a few other house drives still in the street. Is that the case for you?
The other question is, is that real gravel in the sense of being very big sand, so to speak, from the usual riverine or fluvioglacial deposits, or is it artificially crushed rock? The stones look a bit waterworn.
If it seems to be common on local houses you could try emailing local university geol dept, or museum with a geological curator, if you have one around, or the British Geological Survey, and then try local gravel pits or qaurries!
The house was only built two years ago, so I figured it was some cheap crap that was readily available. Clearly not. They used it to fill in the gaps between the paving on the drive, but they did an awful job, so I’ve finally decided to do it properly!
@Selebian, you might be right, it might well be black basalt! Hopefully I can find somewhere local with it because I need to make sure the pieces are small enough to fill in the gaps...
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
If they time things right it may be possible to distract people by announcing the relaxation of the third lockdown.
"Go out and celebrate but then come back in and fill in some forms for the HMRC"
Yes. And her brother for that matter. I think Nigella is probably the smartest in the family and has felt she had to play it down due to her gender and looks. Also to help her "domestic goddess" brand. I sense that this is changing now as she turns 60 and that she may become something of a political force over the coming years. I hope so anyway.
Shame on those Italian doctors for letting the cat out of the bag by saying the virus's power had declined dramatically in Italy, when experts everywhere were looking forward to controlling lives of ordinarry folk for a lot longer.
Where we are now reminds me of that old kids party game where everybody is shown a series of obstacles they will have to negotiate blindfolded.
The obstacles are then removed and people are stepping over thin air to general hilarity.
Off topic: does anyone know where I would buy gravel like the following pic? I’ve been to 4 garden centres today and nobody has a clue. Probably caught COVID in the process.
Gravel is not always transported very far, though there are obvious exceptions - London etc. and the sort of poncy impoirted stuff one gets in garden centres in expensive plastic sacks.
If it's old gravel from an old drive a local origin is even more likely. The "gravel" on my house is distinctive stuff put down by the original builder in the 1960s and I think from the quarry in the hill I can see in the distance. You can find it on quite a few other house drives still in the street. Is that the case for you?
The other question is, is that real gravel in the sense of being very big sand, so to speak, from the usual riverine or fluvioglacial deposits, or is it artificially crushed rock? The stones look a bit waterworn.
If it seems to be common on local houses you could try emailing local university geol dept, or museum with a geological curator, if you have one around, or the British Geological Survey, and then try local gravel pits or qaurries!
The house was only built two years ago, so I figured it was some cheap crap that was readily available. Clearly not. They used it to fill in the gaps between the paving on the drive, but they did an awful job, so I’ve finally decided to do it properly!
@Selebian, you might be right, it might well be black basalt! Hopefully I can find somewhere local with it because I need to make sure the pieces are small enough to fill in the gaps...
Thank you both.
Did you only try garden centres? The local bulder's merchants would be more likely suppliers from what you say. Our local one has plenty of gravel types.
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in warmer weather (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
There seems to be lots of evidence now that outdoor transmission is very weak / low risk.
Were it not, we'd have seen a spike by now because the rules were widely ignored down here during April.
Implies that pub beer gardens and similar outdoor hospitality should be allowed to open.
I agree with that, as it happens. It would probably also have considerable positive mental health implications and release a lot of the distress at the lockdown/restrictions.
Should be the next item on the agenda, before any smaller shops or other inside activity.
yes, agree.
take that video from earlier with the drinkers on the heath. much less likely to get to that stage in a beer garden (imo).
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
'...toed them up..' is that another deviant Tory practice ?
It is noticeable how often scientific mavericks are speaking outside their area of expertise. The one pronouncing on immunological "dark matter" is a neurologist who specialises in image analysis.
Well it wouldn't be surprising to find some people are less susceptible than others, for one reason or another. But his claim that Germans have more immunity than other people would need a bit of evidence. It seems unlikely to me to be the main reason for fewer deaths in Germany (other countries with lower death rates are available!) than the UK.
I think Radio 4 More or Less had a look at this last week and came to the conclusion that plenty of early testing and relatively early lockdown were enough to explain the difference, which has been the obvious logical explanation all along.
Not sure about that. His evidence is in the figures and modelling the known factors. At the very least it's a hypothesis ("there could be an unknown factor here") which can't be refuted simply by saying 'I can't think what that factor might be'.
Maybe the More or Less analysis is correct, or maybe Karl Friston is right. I don't know, but I incline to the view that Friston might be right. Germany (and also Austria) are such massive outliers, despite very close links with Northern Italy, that it doesn't seem very plausible that purely by better testing they'd have found enough asymptomatic cases very early on (before Italy even knew it had a problem) to account for all the differences.
Well, I have no idea what is in his model, but as noted above he is not a specialist. Germany is not really an outlier, plenty of other European countries have half the death rate of Germany.
I don't think that significantly more people in Germany (compared to the UK) are impervious to Covid, and I'm also not buying that significantly more people in Germany are geographically isolated.
Identifying a far higher percentage of those infected early on, and introducing lockdown measures relatively earlier seem far more likely to explain most of the difference, even if one guy has made a mathematical model that doesn't agree.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
That last sentence is probably right. After all we have the biggest incompetent as PM in my entire lifetime, and probably the last couple of centuries. The likelihood is that there will be much bigger stories of arrogance and incompetence while we have "Boris and Dom" at the helm.
The fact that no one has been able to lay a glove on them as they scaled the heights of political power in this country must be an endless source of cognitive dissonance for you...
I guess as a leaver, you must have had to look up what cognitive dissonance was on Google. Corbyn didn't lay a glove on him, because Corbyn was shite. Johnson is just slightly less shite than Corbyn. The reason why Johnson and Cummybiscuit get on so well is because both of them are bullshitters. You are simply part of that group of people that are fooled all of the time, and they really love you for it.
Cummings is a wannabe rather than a bullshitter. He worships scientists but it is all tertiary stuff: he reads and admires the popular accounts of what they are up to, not the primary research or secondary reviews. Still, it's a start. He's not a leader, not a politician and not a scientist but he wants to combine all three.
There's something of that about BoJo as well. On many levels, for many years, he has wanted to be a Churchillian Prime Minister so badly...
... and now he is being Prime Minister really badly.
(If you'll excuse me, I need to answer the door. I think the writers of Week Ending want their joke back.)
I've posted before the video where Boris is plugging his Churchill book and Chris Evans takes him up on what none of the "proper" political journalists mentioned, the book's design to conflate the two men. (Chris Evans is a broadcasting genius, or he would be if only he'd gone to a public school and Oxbridge.)
How did Mr Johnson handle that conflation when it came to Churchill's miserable, sickly last term in office?
In Johnson's case, the first shall be last..... No contradiction here.
It is noticeable how often scientific mavericks are speaking outside their area of expertise. The one pronouncing on immunological "dark matter" is a neurologist who specialises in image analysis.
Well it wouldn't be surprising to find some people are less susceptible than others, for one reason or another. But his claim that Germans have more immunity than other people would need a bit of evidence. It seems unlikely to me to be the main reason for fewer deaths in Germany (other countries with lower death rates are available!) than the UK.
I think Radio 4 More or Less had a look at this last week and came to the conclusion that plenty of early testing and relatively early lockdown were enough to explain the difference, which has been the obvious logical explanation all along.
Not sure about that. His evidence is in the figures and modelling the known factors. At the very least it's a hypothesis ("there could be an unknown factor here") which can't be refuted simply by saying 'I can't think what that factor might be'.
Maybe the More or Less analysis is correct, or maybe Karl Friston is right. I don't know, but I incline to the view that Friston might be right. Germany (and also Austria) are such massive outliers, despite very close links with Northern Italy, that it doesn't seem very plausible that purely by better testing they'd have found enough asymptomatic cases very early on (before Italy even knew it had a problem) to account for all the differences.
Well, I have no idea what is in his model, but as noted above he is not a specialist. Germany is not really an outlier, plenty of other European countries have half the death rate of Germany.
I don't think that significantly more people in Germany (compared to the UK) are impervious to Covid, and I'm also not buying that significantly more people in Germany are geographically isolated.
Identifying a far higher percentage of those infected early on, and introducing lockdown measures relatively earlier seem far more likely to explain most of the difference, even if one guy has made a mathematical model that doesn't agree.
The inconvenient truth:
Japan 7 deaths per million No lockdown, minimal tracking or tracing.
UK 560 deaths per million 8 week lockdown, attempts at tracking and tracing.
Israel 30 deaths per million It doesn't apparently even have a government! The lockdown was severe, then it more or less ended.
Make of that what you will.
Crowds are said to assist the virus's spread. All the above are densely-populated, i.e. fairly like for like.
Japan has the world's oldest population (25% over 65), more so than UK (18%) or Israel (12%). But its per capita death rate is 98.8% lower than the UK's, i.e. pensioners haven't been dropping like flies (HYUFD insists that death rates are linked to the percent of oldies).
Yes. And her brother for that matter. I think Nigella is probably the smartest in the family and has felt she had to play it down due to her gender and looks. Also to help her "domestic goddess" brand. I sense that this is changing now as she turns 60 and that she may become something of a political force over the coming years. I hope so anyway.
There's still that nagging thing about what she saw in Saatchi though. Still, nobody's perfect.
I'm watching the 2005 general election, which was the first one that I watched live at the time. My one abiding memory of the night was Paxman's interview with George Galloway. At the time I thought Paxman was out of order and having watched it again it was worse than I remember. In 1997 and 2001 Paxman was excellent, but he was really poor in 2005.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
I'm watching the 2005 general election, which was the first one that I watched live at the time. My one abiding memory of the night was Paxman's interview with George Galloway. At the time I thought Paxman was out of order and having watched it again it was worse than I remember. In 1997 and 2001 Paxman was excellent, but he was really poor in 2005.
I remember that as well. The phrase he kept repeating IIRC was "Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few ethnic minority women in parliament?". Galloway replied by saying "Aren't you going to congratulate me on having just been elected as MP for Bethnal Green?"
You don't have to be in the building to be at work.
JRM is an idiot
He is an idiot but MPs need to be seen to be at work in a socially distanced environment, They could easily fit into an empty Nightingale
MPs are perfectly capable of asking questions from home, the exceptions are the relevant minister, the LOTO and the speaker. I thought the hybrid system worked very well indeed.
In disbanding the hybird system they're going against their own guidance too.
I'm watching the 2005 general election, which was the first one that I watched live at the time. My one abiding memory of the night was Paxman's interview with George Galloway. At the time I thought Paxman was out of order and having watched it again it was worse than I remember. In 1997 and 2001 Paxman was excellent, but he was really poor in 2005.
Is that the one with 'Don't you owe Oona King an apology for unseating her?'.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
I'm watching the 2005 general election, which was the first one that I watched live at the time. My one abiding memory of the night was Paxman's interview with George Galloway. At the time I thought Paxman was out of order and having watched it again it was worse than I remember. In 1997 and 2001 Paxman was excellent, but he was really poor in 2005.
I remember that as well. The phrase he kept repeating IIRC was "Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few ethnic minority women in parliament?". Galloway replied by saying "Aren't you going to congratulate me on having just been elected as MP for Bethnal Green?"
I'm no fan of Galloway, but he's a very effective political operator. What I had forgotten was that he went for the returning officer in his acceptance speech.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
He's not started well, though, even allowing for his bout of Coronavirus.
It is noticeable how often scientific mavericks are speaking outside their area of expertise. The one pronouncing on immunological "dark matter" is a neurologist who specialises in image analysis.
Well it wouldn't be surprising to find some people are less susceptible than others, for one reason or another. But his claim that Germans have more immunity than other people would need a bit of evidence. It seems unlikely to me to be the main reason for fewer deaths in Germany (other countries with lower death rates are available!) than the UK.
I think Radio 4 More or Less had a look at this last week and came to the conclusion that plenty of early testing and relatively early lockdown were enough to explain the difference, which has been the obvious logical explanation all along.
Not sure about that. His evidence is in the figures and modelling the known factors. At the very least it's a hypothesis ("there could be an unknown factor here") which can't be refuted simply by saying 'I can't think what that factor might be'.
Maybe the More or Less analysis is correct, or maybe Karl Friston is right. I don't know, but I incline to the view that Friston might be right. Germany (and also Austria) are such massive outliers, despite very close links with Northern Italy, that it doesn't seem very plausible that purely by better testing they'd have found enough asymptomatic cases very early on (before Italy even knew it had a problem) to account for all the differences.
Well, I have no idea what is in his model, but as noted above he is not a specialist. Germany is not really an outlier, plenty of other European countries have half the death rate of Germany.
I don't think that significantly more people in Germany (compared to the UK) are impervious to Covid, and I'm also not buying that significantly more people in Germany are geographically isolated.
Identifying a far higher percentage of those infected early on, and introducing lockdown measures relatively earlier seem far more likely to explain most of the difference, even if one guy has made a mathematical model that doesn't agree.
The inconvenient truth:
Japan 7 deaths per million No lockdown, minimal tracking or tracing.
UK 560 deaths per million 8 week lockdown, attempts at tracking and tracing.
Israel 30 deaths per million It doesn't apparently even have a government! The lockdown was severe, then it more or less ended.
Make of that what you will.
Crowds are said to assist the virus's spread. All the above are densely-populated, i.e. fairly like for like.
Japan has the world's oldest population (25% over 65), more so than UK (18%) or Israel (12%). But its per capita death rate is 98.8% lower than the UK's, i.e. pensioners haven't been dropping like flies (HYUFD insists that death rates are linked to the percent of oldies).
I don't know, what do you make of it?
I know nothing about those countries.
I just think that reaching for a "a lot more people in Germany are impervious to Covid" to explain fewer deaths in Germany than the UK is unlikely speculation. And doesn't really help explain all the countries in Europe that have much lower death rates than Germany. Especially when we seem to already have a simpler more logical explanation.
John Newton from the National Test and Not Trace service on today.
No doubt he will let us know that all his staff will be issued with the very latest in abacus technology. These will be world class abaci as they will be Made in Little England
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
Lets check the most recent Republican Presidents
Nixon - Criminal Reagan - Promoted criminal members of the Nixon administration, engaged in illegal central American wars Bush Snr - Covered up Reagan's crimes Bush Jr - Gave positions to all of dad's mates who helped with the cover up of Reagan's crimes, engaged in devastating destabilisation of the world with disastrous. murderous invasion of the middle east. Trump - doing ok so far.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
I know many think this (that we will move to WTO) but I disagree. It would be bad for us and bad for the EU, therefore it will only happen if it would benefit Johnson politically, which I do not think it would. What he needs to do to avoid Leaver Loon grief is 2 things. (i) End Free Movement. (ii) Not agree to an extension.
So what I foresee is we agree a Deal that ends FM on 1st Jan 2021 but we retain frictionless access to the Single Market for another year (perhaps longer), paying a fee for the privilege. We use the additional time to negotiate the Final Deal and we end up with close alignment - a relatively Soft Brexit.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
Lets check the most recent Republican Presidents
Nixon - Criminal Reagan - Promoted criminal members of the Nixon administration, engaged in illegal central American wars Bush Snr - Covered up Reagan's crimes Bush Jr - Gave positions to all of dad's mates who helped with the cover up of Reagan's crimes, engaged in devastating destabilisation of the world with disastrous. murderous invasion of the middle east. Trump - doing ok so far.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
I know many think this (that we will move to WTO) but I disagree. It would be bad for us and bad for the EU, therefore it will only happen if it would benefit Johnson politically, which I do not think it would. What he needs to do to avoid Leaver Loon grief is 2 things. (i) End Free Movement. (ii) Not agree to an extension.
So what I foresee is we agree a Deal that ends FM on 1st Jan 2021 but we retain frictionless access to the Single Market for another year (perhaps longer), paying a fee for the privilege. We use the additional time to negotiate the Final Deal and we end up with close alignment - a relatively Soft Brexit.
I sincerely hope you are right. However, while it will be bad for the EU it will be an example of Johnson's macho-ness, after the disappointments and disasters of coronavirus.
I'm watching the 2005 general election, which was the first one that I watched live at the time. My one abiding memory of the night was Paxman's interview with George Galloway. At the time I thought Paxman was out of order and having watched it again it was worse than I remember. In 1997 and 2001 Paxman was excellent, but he was really poor in 2005.
I remember that as well. The phrase he kept repeating IIRC was "Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few ethnic minority women in parliament?". Galloway replied by saying "Aren't you going to congratulate me on having just been elected as MP for Bethnal Green?"
I'm no fan of Galloway, but he's a very effective political operator. What I had forgotten was that he went for the returning officer in his acceptance speech.
Busted flush now. The 'Gorgeous George' brand is in terminal decline.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
I know many think this (that we will move to WTO) but I disagree. It would be bad for us and bad for the EU, therefore it will only happen if it would benefit Johnson politically, which I do not think it would. What he needs to do to avoid Leaver Loon grief is 2 things. (i) End Free Movement. (ii) Not agree to an extension.
So what I foresee is we agree a Deal that ends FM on 1st Jan 2021 but we retain frictionless access to the Single Market for another year (perhaps longer), paying a fee for the privilege. We use the additional time to negotiate the Final Deal and we end up with close alignment - a relatively Soft Brexit.
You'd think the opposition to Johnson would have learnt from the Autumn when they were wrong about Johnson being serious about no deal. Regardless of whether Johnson wants no deal or not now, it's stupid to set the bar so low for him so that any 'deal' is a victory.
Even if no deal happens, not much to be gained from talking it up in advance either.
I mentioned Dorset South as an example of first time incumbency bonus the other day. It turns out that the Tory candidate in 2005 was a bit of an idiot:
Liverpool players took a knee around the centre circle at Anfield in a message of support following the death in police custody of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The picture featuring 29 Reds players came with the caption "Unity is strength. #BlackLivesMatter".
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
Absolute garbage. As I said the other day, I am judging Johnson on objective measures of leadership. He fails completely, or scores low on all. I would not put him in charge of a Parish Council, or even the proverbial whelk stall.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
Absolute garbage. As I said the other day, I am judging Johnson on objective measures of leadership. He fails completely, or scores low on all. I would not put him in charge of a Parish Council, or even the proverbial whelk stall.
Parish Councils take collective decisions. Johnson could not be "in charge" of one.
Yes. And her brother for that matter. I think Nigella is probably the smartest in the family and has felt she had to play it down due to her gender and looks. Also to help her "domestic goddess" brand. I sense that this is changing now as she turns 60 and that she may become something of a political force over the coming years. I hope so anyway.
There's still that nagging thing about what she saw in Saatchi though. Still, nobody's perfect.
The Throttler. Sense she was messed up and looking for love (and money) in all the wrong places.
Liverpool players took a knee around the centre circle at Anfield in a message of support following the death in police custody of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The picture featuring 29 Reds players came with the caption "Unity is strength. #BlackLivesMatter".
I always thought the old adage of keeping politics out of sport was sensible . It seems to be in danger of being ignored in more recent times. One thing for a player to do something like this on an individual basis but think its a bit creepy and unfair if a sporting institution (or indeed any employer) organises it. Some players or employees may just want to keep politics away from their work or sport and this sort of thing stops that
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
I know many think this (that we will move to WTO) but I disagree. It would be bad for us and bad for the EU, therefore it will only happen if it would benefit Johnson politically, which I do not think it would. What he needs to do to avoid Leaver Loon grief is 2 things. (i) End Free Movement. (ii) Not agree to an extension.
So what I foresee is we agree a Deal that ends FM on 1st Jan 2021 but we retain frictionless access to the Single Market for another year (perhaps longer), paying a fee for the privilege. We use the additional time to negotiate the Final Deal and we end up with close alignment - a relatively Soft Brexit.
Wouldn't that be cherry picking by dividing FM with the benefits of the Single Market by staying nominally inside three of the four parts of it? I really don't think the EU would take that but I hope you're right.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
Absolute garbage. As I said the other day, I am judging Johnson on objective measures of leadership. He fails completely, or scores low on all. I would not put him in charge of a Parish Council, or even the proverbial whelk stall.
Parish Councils take collective decisions. Johnson could not be "in charge" of one.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
Lets check the most recent Republican Presidents
Nixon - Criminal Reagan - Promoted criminal members of the Nixon administration, engaged in illegal central American wars Bush Snr - Covered up Reagan's crimes Bush Jr - Gave positions to all of dad's mates who helped with the cover up of Reagan's crimes, engaged in devastating destabilisation of the world with disastrous. murderous invasion of the middle east. Trump - doing ok so far.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
I know many think this (that we will move to WTO) but I disagree. It would be bad for us and bad for the EU, therefore it will only happen if it would benefit Johnson politically, which I do not think it would. What he needs to do to avoid Leaver Loon grief is 2 things. (i) End Free Movement. (ii) Not agree to an extension.
So what I foresee is we agree a Deal that ends FM on 1st Jan 2021 but we retain frictionless access to the Single Market for another year (perhaps longer), paying a fee for the privilege. We use the additional time to negotiate the Final Deal and we end up with close alignment - a relatively Soft Brexit.
I sincerely hope you are right. However, while it will be bad for the EU it will be an example of Johnson's macho-ness, after the disappointments and disasters of coronavirus.
Move overnight from frictionless trade to WTO? - I simply cannot see it.
I have 2 USP positions on here atm and this is the 2nd.
Liverpool players took a knee around the centre circle at Anfield in a message of support following the death in police custody of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The picture featuring 29 Reds players came with the caption "Unity is strength. #BlackLivesMatter".
I always thought the old adage of keeping politics out of sport was sensible . It seems to be in danger of being ignored in more recent times. One thing for a player to do something like this on an individual basis but think its a bit creepy and unfair if a sporting institution (or indeed any employer) organises it. Some players or employees may just want to keep politics away from their work or sport and this sort of thing stops that
Maybe it's something else we can all do at 8pm on Thursday?
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
I know many think this (that we will move to WTO) but I disagree. It would be bad for us and bad for the EU, therefore it will only happen if it would benefit Johnson politically, which I do not think it would. What he needs to do to avoid Leaver Loon grief is 2 things. (i) End Free Movement. (ii) Not agree to an extension.
So what I foresee is we agree a Deal that ends FM on 1st Jan 2021 but we retain frictionless access to the Single Market for another year (perhaps longer), paying a fee for the privilege. We use the additional time to negotiate the Final Deal and we end up with close alignment - a relatively Soft Brexit.
I sincerely hope you are right. However, while it will be bad for the EU it will be an example of Johnson's macho-ness, after the disappointments and disasters of coronavirus.
Move overnight from frictionless trade to WTO? - I simply cannot see it.
I have 2 USP positions on here atm and this is the 2nd.
1. Trump will be THRASHED in Nov.
2. WTO "No Deal" Brexit is a Not Happening event.
I am happy to be judged on these.
You could be very disappointed by the end of January next year, and you will still have to submit a tax return and pay HMRC!
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
Absolute garbage. As I said the other day, I am judging Johnson on objective measures of leadership. He fails completely, or scores low on all. I would not put him in charge of a Parish Council, or even the proverbial whelk stall.
Parish Councils take collective decisions. Johnson could not be "in charge" of one.
Your pedantry is amusing, but in practice you are not correct. Technically he could be "in charge" if he were Chair and every decision was tied and he used his casting vote. He would also have the right to set an agenda, which would be on the back of a fag packet and would be lost on his way to the village hall. If the Parish Clerk were female and married he would probably shag her and cause her to resign. Planning proposals would be nodded through if the local landowner bought into his latest hare brain scheme for the village to cut itself off from the wider community, and the village budget would be completely blown to bits and the Councillor with responsibility for finance would resign. A Boris yes man would be put in his place. The Parish Council would be put into special measures, and Boris would resign having royally fucked up the village, to spend more time in the seclusion of The Old Rectory, or when possible his vineyard n Tuscany. So yes he could "lead" a Parish Council and screw it up pretty well.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Quite. Its going to be No Deal. There will be some triumphant BS in July. Then the stories come thick and fast about how "No Deal" actually required us to be ready, and we won't be as its physically impossible to set up the reams of red tape and army of pen pushers that Tories are so enamored of who will have to run the hard border. Nor will it be physically possible to set up the actual border - inspections facilities etc etc etc.
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
I know many think this (that we will move to WTO) but I disagree. It would be bad for us and bad for the EU, therefore it will only happen if it would benefit Johnson politically, which I do not think it would. What he needs to do to avoid Leaver Loon grief is 2 things. (i) End Free Movement. (ii) Not agree to an extension.
So what I foresee is we agree a Deal that ends FM on 1st Jan 2021 but we retain frictionless access to the Single Market for another year (perhaps longer), paying a fee for the privilege. We use the additional time to negotiate the Final Deal and we end up with close alignment - a relatively Soft Brexit.
Wouldn't that be cherry picking by dividing FM with the benefits of the Single Market by staying nominally inside three of the four parts of it? I really don't think the EU would take that but I hope you're right.
It is cherry picking but it will be time limited and we will be paying a large sum of money for it.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
That's also true for Republican presidents in the United States.
Lets check the most recent Republican Presidents
Nixon - Criminal Reagan - Promoted criminal members of the Nixon administration, engaged in illegal central American wars Bush Snr - Covered up Reagan's crimes Bush Jr - Gave positions to all of dad's mates who helped with the cover up of Reagan's crimes, engaged in devastating destabilisation of the world with disastrous. murderous invasion of the middle east. Trump - doing ok so far.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
"A good source of protein."
Some Quorn weevils for me, please
Quorn is on the Great Central Railway. Have you done the line?
I'm watching the 2005 general election, which was the first one that I watched live at the time. My one abiding memory of the night was Paxman's interview with George Galloway. At the time I thought Paxman was out of order and having watched it again it was worse than I remember. In 1997 and 2001 Paxman was excellent, but he was really poor in 2005.
I remember that as well. The phrase he kept repeating IIRC was "Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few ethnic minority women in parliament?". Galloway replied by saying "Aren't you going to congratulate me on having just been elected as MP for Bethnal Green?"
I'm no fan of Galloway, but he's a very effective political operator. What I had forgotten was that he went for the returning officer in his acceptance speech.
Busted flush now. The 'Gorgeous George' brand is in terminal decline.
Mouthy misogynist.
Galloway is a brilliant orator but a thoroughly vile human being. Of course he was right about Iraq.
Comments
Then we get into 2021. More triumphant BS. Followed very quickly with "what now". We'll find out there is a reason that no other country has ever cut every trade deal it has in one go, and how to trade "WTO" when "WTO" isn't what the people saying "go WTO" thought it was. People clueless about Dover - Calais and GATT24 will be leading the UK in its unique in history trade experiment.
I'm sure it will all be a roaring success. Govey on TV saying that of course its good for British Business that the Tories have toed them up in red tape. Some other faceless cabinet plank saying that of course its good for British consumers that food standards have just been slashed and that there are now added weevils in our food.
Should be the next item on the agenda, before any smaller shops or other inside activity.
Sounds perfect for working in an American inner-city environment...
So that too.
Prioritising opening Westfield, where people spend hours cooped up inside in air conditioned hell, over opening the vast beer garden in the Edinboro Castle, NW1 is madness in more ways than one.
The Edinboro Castle, I see. Been there a few times. Quite a big outdoor area.
@Selebian, you might be right, it might well be black basalt! Hopefully I can find somewhere local with it because I need to make sure the pieces are small enough to fill in the gaps...
Thank you both.
Where we are now reminds me of that old kids party game where everybody is shown a series of obstacles they will have to negotiate blindfolded.
The obstacles are then removed and people are stepping over thin air to general hilarity.
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2020/05/31/longtime-supporters-dismayed-at-de-blasios-shift-from-police-reformer-to-defender-1289640
...Jonathan Rosen, a longtime adviser to the mayor, reacted to de Blasio’s statements with: “What the fucking fuck?”...
https://twitter.com/TheProleStar/status/1267385425083224066
take that video from earlier with the drinkers on the heath. much less likely to get to that stage in a beer garden (imo).
also, the guy kicking the ball
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1267481858465583105
I don't think that significantly more people in Germany (compared to the UK) are impervious to Covid, and I'm also not buying that significantly more people in Germany are geographically isolated.
Identifying a far higher percentage of those infected early on, and introducing lockdown measures relatively earlier seem far more likely to explain most of the difference, even if one guy has made a mathematical model that doesn't agree.
JRM is an idiot
https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1267482003156406272
https://twitter.com/edokeefe/status/1267481144427253764
https://twitter.com/edokeefe/status/1267480935823441920
MPs doing the same? free pass!!
Cummings broke quarantine.
MPs are currently shielding. JRM wants them back at Westminster against scientific advice. He's an idiot.
She said he 'seemed nice'.
Lucky she wasn't older.....
Japan 7 deaths per million
No lockdown, minimal tracking or tracing.
UK 560 deaths per million
8 week lockdown, attempts at tracking and tracing.
Israel 30 deaths per million
It doesn't apparently even have a government!
The lockdown was severe, then it more or less ended.
Make of that what you will.
Crowds are said to assist the virus's spread. All the above are densely-populated, i.e. fairly like for like.
Japan has the world's oldest population (25% over 65), more so than UK (18%) or Israel (12%). But its per capita death rate is 98.8% lower than the UK's, i.e. pensioners haven't been dropping like flies (HYUFD insists that death rates are linked to the percent of oldies).
https://twitter.com/JenWilliamsMEN/status/1267486164929384450
In disbanding the hybird system they're going against their own guidance too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52848184
I know nothing about those countries.
I just think that reaching for a "a lot more people in Germany are impervious to Covid" to explain fewer deaths in Germany than the UK is unlikely speculation. And doesn't really help explain all the countries in Europe that have much lower death rates than Germany. Especially when we seem to already have a simpler more logical explanation.
AmritsarBloody Sunday.Nixon - Criminal
Reagan - Promoted criminal members of the Nixon administration, engaged in illegal central American wars
Bush Snr - Covered up Reagan's crimes
Bush Jr - Gave positions to all of dad's mates who helped with the cover up of Reagan's crimes, engaged in devastating destabilisation of the world with disastrous. murderous invasion of the middle east.
Trump - doing ok so far.
So with the exception of Trump you are spot on.
Mind you, the truly great react as if someone is "desecrating the colossal Zeus of Pheidias with a coal hammer".....
So what I foresee is we agree a Deal that ends FM on 1st Jan 2021 but we retain frictionless access to the Single Market for another year (perhaps longer), paying a fee for the privilege. We use the additional time to negotiate the Final Deal and we end up with close alignment - a relatively Soft Brexit.
- Lowest number of positive tests since March
- Lowest number of reported deaths since March
Though note 7 day rolling average of reported deaths will suffer tomorrow when Bank Holiday Monday drops out.
Edit... quite reasonably.
Mouthy misogynist.
Even if no deal happens, not much to be gained from talking it up in advance either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-election_day_events_of_the_2005_United_Kingdom_general_election#Ed_Matts
So perhaps that played a part in Labour holding the seat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101st_Airborne_Division#Civil_rights
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/52875059
Liverpool players took a knee around the centre circle at Anfield in a message of support following the death in police custody of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The picture featuring 29 Reds players came with the caption "Unity is strength. #BlackLivesMatter".
Sam Coates sounding very agitated to hear that, demanding every conceivable piece of data possible.
Newton has already explained that some people won't need any contact tracing - eg someone in a care home where all their contacts are already known.
What's Ursula's proposal to decarbonise the largest economy in the EU?
I have 2 USP positions on here atm and this is the 2nd.
1. Trump will be THRASHED in Nov.
2. WTO "No Deal" Brexit is a Not Happening event.
I am happy to be judged on these.