NHS England numbers out - 115 Last 7 days - 97 Spanish Style - 24
No doubt those screaming loudest about our relative performance are being quietest about disparity of reporting around the world
The only way to do a comparison worldwide, will be excess deaths.
But when we come out near the top of that league the deniers will be telling us that, of course, other countries don't count their excess deaths properly.
Even under the tariff plan chicken and beef imported from the USA will still be cheaper than that produced in the UK.
Amazing how quickly the UK folded . Time to order the gimp suit !
So we're going to get cheaper food is what you're saying?
Good. That's what the Kiwis did - abolish tariffs, abolish subsidies, told their farmers to make do without any of that. And they're still exporters.
The food will be cheaper because it will not meet current animal care standards. UK farmers will clearly have to have the standards they work to lowered as well if they are to compete. My guess is that this will not be popular even if it does lower prices a little. We shall see. Luckily - like the people inflicting this on us - I will still be able to buy the good stuff for my family.
Or UK farmers will maintain current standards and consumers can make the choice to buy Red Tractor approved products. Just like we already can do.
I buy Free Range eggs and Red Tractor food even though cheaper caged eggs and cheaper lower standard food is available. People can make a free choice in a free society.
Except they won't be able to make a choice to ban cruel practices in farming if we do the kind of nasty deal with the US that American agribusiness interests are aggressively pushing for. Or are you advocating a free for all with no animal welfare standards at all?
Why won't they be able to make that choice for what they consume? Will free range and Red Tractor etc cease to be an option? Why would that happen?
My point is that consumers shouldn't be allowed to buy products that inflict excessive cruelty on animals. It sounds like you think bear baiting should be brought back as long as there were demand for it.
If that were the case we should be banning roducts from most EU countries and only importing from those with the same welfare standards as ourselves.
The definition of "Excessive Cruelty" is a matter of opinion and politics, so I'm not sure if it is a useful criteria.
There are plenty of enthusiasts out there for free range outdoor etc, even though some free range outdoor whatevers suffer more diseases than indoor or partly indoor stock. Therefore the free range option is arguably more cruel, so perhaps that is the one needing to be banned.
I'm sure we all remember the hyperbolic "Meat is Murder" campaigns, which like most of these are based on emotion not reason.
Sorry - but I think throwing "bear baiting" in implies having run out of good reasons to put forward.
I'll care about chlorinated chicken the moment we remove chlorine from our drinking water from the tap.
As I pointed out to my other half, she could feed US chicken to my daughter every day for the rest of he life and my daughter would still swallow less chlorine than when my wife took her to swimming club for 15 years.
Its not the chlorine that is the problem, more the chicken faeces that they use it to camouflage.
Fox cubs are particularly playful, but they make a hell of a mess. Buggers have dug up half my lawn.
When there are young the end of the garden is like an abattoir, but they do bring us a fine collection of other stuff. Ignoring the usual shiny items we get hundreds of golf balls, balls of all different sizes as well, lots of gloves and shoes and a pair of orange goggles. Last week we had goats cheese and a loaf of bread, also a bag of celery.
We are thinking about cutting down on the Sainsbury's shop.
At our previous home we had a badger sett in the woods beyond the back fence and we often used to see them, especially as we fed them. They were, as I recall, quite partial to chocolate cake.Friend of ours, in a similar situation had an interest in a fish and chip shop and used to collect the scraps and put them out. We had a fox visitor, but were never lucky enough to see cubs
Where we live now is much more suitable for a couple of OAP's but I do miss the animals.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Is it possible his earpiece is actually a hearing aid? (following on the discussion on the previous thread). I haven't seen it so I can't tell.
A much more likely, and sad for the PM on a personal level, explanation I think.
The earpiece was Fake News, put out by a Corbynite website that later retracted it. It was just the shadow in Boris's ear.
Jackson Carlaw, Leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. twisting the knife into BoZo’s belly just now on BBC Radio Scotland. He says, repeatedly, that he is “not wholly convinced” by Dominic Cummings’ explanation for his actions.
Classic code for “the man’s a liar”.
Astonishingly, Carlaw has not spoken to his boss BoZo in months. They have only exchanged two text messages since The Clown was released from hospital.
Carlaw sounds like a drowning man, unable to affect either his opponents nor his (supposed) allies.
The Milton Keynes appointee is a real kick in the groin.
MK? *googles for land of concrete coos* Ah - now I see. Blood is sure thicker than residence when it comes to Tories. But what a dunt in the baws to the actual Scottish Tories. Remiunds me of the day when the Scottish Office was run by a MP from Weston-Super-Mare IIRC.
The new Scottish office minister was born in Hamilton and went to school in Glasgow.
He is Scottish, he just represents an English seat
Your lot howled when Labour and LD MPs from Scotland voted on English matters (a sentiment the SNP entirely sympathise with).
Also - do you think race/genetics/blood rather than voter representation is more important?
That's a point. Presumably the new under-assistant, deputy panjandrum won't be voting on the Scotland only matters that he's supposed to be helping to formulate?
HY is a blood and soil nationalist.
You gotta laugh at Tories. Remember when they screamed their heads off at a jock being their prime minister.
I think it was him being Labour that caused that.
What, not him being a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot'?
You think the main reason for them supposedly "screaming their heads off" was because he was Scottish?
Who said main? I think it was a factor. Unlike Blair, Brown was very identifiably Scottish, regardless of all the Gascoigne goal luvvin', Arctic Monkeys fandom pish he tried. Of course the opposite also applies, why do you think David 'English' Cameron was kept away from any real live Jocks during the indy campaign?
I thought it was a mistake not using Cameron more during the campaign. For all that I was not a fan, he was a good speechmaker, and the one speech he made to an audience of corporates in Edinburgh was well done. I watched it with a Scottish colleague who afterwards said 'there, that was all he needed to say'. I also didn't see any harm in him being publicly heckled - Blair would have just gone for it and got some sympathy out of it.
I completely disagree with you about Brown's Scottishness getting him abused. There's a huge perception gap here between slight intended and slight taken and internalised. It is very hard for an English person who hasn't spent time in Scotland to understand.
I was on a different politics blog back then and I can certainly recall that Brown being a Scot - or more accurately being both Brown AND a Scot - was a source of much negative sentiment from a particular type of (nearly always male) English Tory.
FPT Interestingly Mr Blair, who was born in Scotland, never seemed to attract that animus (or at least the non-Brownian bit).
Edit: but he didn't sound like it - and you can't imagine him as the son of the Manse or Rector in the Edin Uni Union at Bristo.
Blair was just not seen as a Scot in any way.
With Brown, as I recall, it was a combination of things. He was viewed as hardcore Scottish, that was key, and with this being at the time of the Crash, and with him being strongly associated with it, a view gained traction in right wing blogging circles that a sinister, very secretive Caledonian Nexus revolving around him, Darling, Goodwin, RBS, HBOS had "done us up like a kipper". They had gotten hold of a perfectly good English bank, NatWest, and ruined it. They had forced another perfectly good English bank, Lloyds, to swallow the poison of HBOS and ruined it too. They had blown up RBS and then stuck the English taxpayer with the bill for the bailout. Did all this quite deliberately and enjoyed every minute of it, whilst wearing kilts, eating haggis neeps and tatties, and playing the bagpipes.
That's absolutely ridiculous. No one enjoys anyone playing the bagpipes.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Is it possible his earpiece is actually a hearing aid? (following on the discussion on the previous thread). I haven't seen it so I can't tell.
A much more likely, and sad for the PM on a personal level, explanation I think.
It will be important to see how he copes with press conferences, etc.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Is it possible his earpiece is actually a hearing aid? (following on the discussion on the previous thread). I haven't seen it so I can't tell.
YOu can bet it is to answer the questions, the big dumpling cannot think on his feet , his l;ies are appalling
Rees Mogg is the worst. I remember reading about how as a child he turned up at a shareholders' meeting (GEC if I remember correctly) and started berating the chairman over the size of the dividend he'd received on the shares he'd been given by his father. I'm not sure which Viz character he reminds me of most - Spoiled Bastard or Victorian Dad. Either way, he really is a tosser.
Didn't he say once that every time he opened his mouth it meant the Tories losing a vote? I'm not sure what changed between then and him becoming an MP.
I remember him from the Oxford Union. His accent then was a lot "worse" than it is now. As someone from ooop noorth who hadn't met many public school types, it did grate just a little at the time...and he did have a lot to say.
I have some time for the traditionalist approach though. Surely voting by phone takes away some of the supposedly serious nature of parliament? I would say the same for any remote voting (including elections).
Crowding through division lobbies is 'serious'? What other legislature conducts it's voting like that? Apart possibly from the Democratic Party in Iowa?
Most legislatures don't have people voting remotely from a phone whilst wandering about, though.
Even the EU-style voting has its problems. Just sitting there pressing buttons as per your pre-prescribed voting list isn't great (especially when MEPs accidentally press the wrong button).
Wandering about with a phone in hand isn't what I had in mind as an alternative. Might appeal to likes of Cummings of course Otherwise I take your point, although I believe people have been known to go through the wrong lobby on occasions.
True, and quite recently too. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to follow the "right" set of people.
Perhaps those MPs who have to be remote from the chamber should only be able to vote from a registered office from which they 'attend' (either within Parliament or their constituency). I'm not sure how you would enforce that, though.
But when we come out near the top of that league the deniers will be telling us that, of course, other countries don't count their excess deaths properly.
Not much chance of that, given Peru/Ecuador figures.
It's us, Spain or perhaps Belgium within Europe though.
I'd like to see one US trade agreement that says country of original labelling is a trade barrier considering its US law that it must be displayed . . .
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Is it possible his earpiece is actually a hearing aid? (following on the discussion on the previous thread). I haven't seen it so I can't tell.
A much more likely, and sad for the PM on a personal level, explanation I think.
The earpiece was Fake News, put out by a Corbynite website that later retracted it. It was just the shadow in Boris's ear.
That's great news. Was a bit worried Boris might not be able to hear us all.
(Allen is president of the Brookings Institution, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan.)
Are people finally beginning to stand up to Trump? Seems quite a lot are disagreeing with him publicly now.
After the heat clubs got for applying for the furlough scheme.
Tottenham Hotspur have moved to ease some of the financial pressure they face as a result of the coronavirus outbreak by borrowing £175 million from the Bank of England, The Athletic understands.
The north London club met a set of strict criteria to qualify for the government’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF), which will provide an unsecured loan — repayable in full at a rate of 0.5 per cent — to give them financial flexibility and additional working capital during the crisis. Spurs estimate they may stand to lose more than £200 million of revenue in the period from the start of lockdown to June 2021.
The CCCF was set up on March 17 to support large credit-worthy companies affected by the pandemic. The Bank of England intends the scheme to be utilised as a way of assisting firms to bridge disruption to their cash flows.
It is only available to firms with an investment grade credit rating — the highest level of credit rating, which reflects at least an adequate capacity to meet financial commitments — and who make a material contribution to the UK economy.
Manchester United are thought to be the only other Premier League club who would be eligible for the CCFF scheme by virtue of having a formal credit rating from an agency. The CCFF is thought to have loaned more than £20 billion so far to around 100 companies, including EasyJet, Marks & Spencers and Greggs. The Bank of England is expected to confirm a list of the companies to have borrowed from it on Thursday afternoon.
Spurs satisfied the CCFF stipulations after they had £525 million of stadium debt refinanced last year. As first reported by The Athletic, Spurs confirmed in September that Bank of America Merrill Lynch and HSBC had helped to refinance the debt on the private placements market in the USA, over long maturities and at low-interest rates.
Under the scheme, the Bank of England has purchased £175 million of “Commercial Paper” — a short-term obligation sold from one company to another for immediate cash needs — from Tottenham. It is not free money, although it comes at a low, commercial interest rate.
Tottenham will have to repay the loan in April 2021, unless they re-draw it for another year, but the cash will assist in seeing them through what is expected to be a highly challenging period. The finance will not be spent on player transfers, with the club unlikely to have any budget for signings in the next window unless they sell.
I'll care about chlorinated chicken the moment we remove chlorine from our drinking water from the tap.
As I pointed out to my other half, she could feed US chicken to my daughter every day for the rest of he life and my daughter would still swallow less chlorine than when my wife took her to swimming club for 15 years.
That is not the issue with chlorinated chicken though. It is an animal welfare issue leading to the need to use chlorine.
And that's just the nelson touch. There are lots of animal welfare issues or food standard issues today - dutch eggs, donkey meat sold as beef, and don't ask about lettuce.
The EU has more than enough of its own issues and we eat the food today more or less without complaint.
Jackson Carlaw, Leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. twisting the knife into BoZo’s belly just now on BBC Radio Scotland. He says, repeatedly, that he is “not wholly convinced” by Dominic Cummings’ explanation for his actions.
Classic code for “the man’s a liar”.
Astonishingly, Carlaw has not spoken to his boss BoZo in months. They have only exchanged two text messages since The Clown was released from hospital.
Carlaw sounds like a drowning man, unable to affect either his opponents nor his (supposed) allies.
The Milton Keynes appointee is a real kick in the groin.
MK? *googles for land of concrete coos* Ah - now I see. Blood is sure thicker than residence when it comes to Tories. But what a dunt in the baws to the actual Scottish Tories. Remiunds me of the day when the Scottish Office was run by a MP from Weston-Super-Mare IIRC.
The new Scottish office minister was born in Hamilton and went to school in Glasgow.
He is Scottish, he just represents an English seat
Your lot howled when Labour and LD MPs from Scotland voted on English matters (a sentiment the SNP entirely sympathise with).
Also - do you think race/genetics/blood rather than voter representation is more important?
That's a point. Presumably the new under-assistant, deputy panjandrum won't be voting on the Scotland only matters that he's supposed to be helping to formulate?
HY is a blood and soil nationalist.
You gotta laugh at Tories. Remember when they screamed their heads off at a jock being their prime minister.
I think it was him being Labour that caused that.
What, not him being a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot'?
You think the main reason for them supposedly "screaming their heads off" was because he was Scottish?
Who said main? I think it was a factor. Unlike Blair, Brown was very identifiably Scottish, regardless of all the Gascoigne goal luvvin', Arctic Monkeys fandom pish he tried. Of course the opposite also applies, why do you think David 'English' Cameron was kept away from any real live Jocks during the indy campaign?
I thought it was a mistake not using Cameron more during the campaign. For all that I was not a fan, he was a good speechmaker, and the one speech he made to an audience of corporates in Edinburgh was well done. I watched it with a Scottish colleague who afterwards said 'there, that was all he needed to say'. I also didn't see any harm in him being publicly heckled - Blair would have just gone for it and got some sympathy out of it.
I completely disagree with you about Brown's Scottishness getting him abused. There's a huge perception gap here between slight intended and slight taken and internalised. It is very hard for an English person who hasn't spent time in Scotland to understand.
I was on a different politics blog back then and I can certainly recall that Brown being a Scot - or more accurately being both Brown AND a Scot - was a source of much negative sentiment from a particular type of (nearly always male) English Tory.
FPT Interestingly Mr Blair, who was born in Scotland, never seemed to attract that animus (or at least the non-Brownian bit).
Edit: but he didn't sound like it - and you can't imagine him as the son of the Manse or Rector in the Edin Uni Union at Bristo.
Blair was just not seen as a Scot in any way.
With Brown, as I recall, it was a combination of things. He was viewed as hardcore Scottish, that was key, and with this being at the time of the Crash, and with him being strongly associated with it, a view gained traction in right wing blogging circles that a sinister, very secretive Caledonian Nexus revolving around him, Darling, Goodwin, RBS, HBOS had "done us up like a kipper". They had gotten hold of a perfectly good English bank, NatWest, and ruined it. They had forced another perfectly good English bank, Lloyds, to swallow the poison of HBOS and ruined it too. They had blown up RBS and then stuck the English taxpayer with the bill for the bailout. Did all this quite deliberately and enjoyed every minute of it, whilst wearing kilts, eating haggis neeps and tatties, and playing the bagpipes.
That's absolutely ridiculous. No one enjoys anyone playing the bagpipes.
Blimey, there is a lot of anti-English racism in that thread fromthe Nats. I mean , I kno that is their main reason for being Nats, but they normally at least pretend not to be motivated by hatred.
Jackson Carlaw, Leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. twisting the knife into BoZo’s belly just now on BBC Radio Scotland. He says, repeatedly, that he is “not wholly convinced” by Dominic Cummings’ explanation for his actions.
Classic code for “the man’s a liar”.
Astonishingly, Carlaw has not spoken to his boss BoZo in months. They have only exchanged two text messages since The Clown was released from hospital.
Carlaw sounds like a drowning man, unable to affect either his opponents nor his (supposed) allies.
The Milton Keynes appointee is a real kick in the groin.
MK? *googles for land of concrete coos* Ah - now I see. Blood is sure thicker than residence when it comes to Tories. But what a dunt in the baws to the actual Scottish Tories. Remiunds me of the day when the Scottish Office was run by a MP from Weston-Super-Mare IIRC.
The new Scottish office minister was born in Hamilton and went to school in Glasgow.
He is Scottish, he just represents an English seat
Your lot howled when Labour and LD MPs from Scotland voted on English matters (a sentiment the SNP entirely sympathise with).
Also - do you think race/genetics/blood rather than voter representation is more important?
That's a point. Presumably the new under-assistant, deputy panjandrum won't be voting on the Scotland only matters that he's supposed to be helping to formulate?
HY is a blood and soil nationalist.
You gotta laugh at Tories. Remember when they screamed their heads off at a jock being their prime minister.
I think it was him being Labour that caused that.
What, not him being a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot'?
You think the main reason for them supposedly "screaming their heads off" was because he was Scottish?
Who said main? I think it was a factor. Unlike Blair, Brown was very identifiably Scottish, regardless of all the Gascoigne goal luvvin', Arctic Monkeys fandom pish he tried. Of course the opposite also applies, why do you think David 'English' Cameron was kept away from any real live Jocks during the indy campaign?
I thought it was a mistake not using Cameron more during the campaign. For all that I was not a fan, he was a good speechmaker, and the one speech he made to an audience of corporates in Edinburgh was well done. I watched it with a Scottish colleague who afterwards said 'there, that was all he needed to say'. I also didn't see any harm in him being publicly heckled - Blair would have just gone for it and got some sympathy out of it.
I completely disagree with you about Brown's Scottishness getting him abused. There's a huge perception gap here between slight intended and slight taken and internalised. It is very hard for an English person who hasn't spent time in Scotland to understand.
I was on a different politics blog back then and I can certainly recall that Brown being a Scot - or more accurately being both Brown AND a Scot - was a source of much negative sentiment from a particular type of (nearly always male) English Tory.
FPT Interestingly Mr Blair, who was born in Scotland, never seemed to attract that animus (or at least the non-Brownian bit).
Edit: but he didn't sound like it - and you can't imagine him as the son of the Manse or Rector in the Edin Uni Union at Bristo.
Blair was just not seen as a Scot in any way.
With Brown, as I recall, it was a combination of things. He was viewed as hardcore Scottish, that was key, and with this being at the time of the Crash, and with him being strongly associated with it, a view gained traction in right wing blogging circles that a sinister, very secretive Caledonian Nexus revolving around him, Darling, Goodwin, RBS, HBOS had "done us up like a kipper". They had gotten hold of a perfectly good English bank, NatWest, and ruined it. They had forced another perfectly good English bank, Lloyds, to swallow the poison of HBOS and ruined it too. They had blown up RBS and then stuck the English taxpayer with the bill for the bailout. Did all this quite deliberately and enjoyed every minute of it, whilst wearing kilts, eating haggis neeps and tatties, and playing the bagpipes.
Not a bad summation of the frothier postings on here at the time. You still get the occasional outbreak.
Jackson Carlaw, Leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. twisting the knife into BoZo’s belly just now on BBC Radio Scotland. He says, repeatedly, that he is “not wholly convinced” by Dominic Cummings’ explanation for his actions.
Classic code for “the man’s a liar”.
Astonishingly, Carlaw has not spoken to his boss BoZo in months. They have only exchanged two text messages since The Clown was released from hospital.
Carlaw sounds like a drowning man, unable to affect either his opponents nor his (supposed) allies.
The Milton Keynes appointee is a real kick in the groin.
MK? *googles for land of concrete coos* Ah - now I see. Blood is sure thicker than residence when it comes to Tories. But what a dunt in the baws to the actual Scottish Tories. Remiunds me of the day when the Scottish Office was run by a MP from Weston-Super-Mare IIRC.
The new Scottish office minister was born in Hamilton and went to school in Glasgow.
He is Scottish, he just represents an English seat
Your lot howled when Labour and LD MPs from Scotland voted on English matters (a sentiment the SNP entirely sympathise with).
Also - do you think race/genetics/blood rather than voter representation is more important?
That's a point. Presumably the new under-assistant, deputy panjandrum won't be voting on the Scotland only matters that he's supposed to be helping to formulate?
HY is a blood and soil nationalist.
You gotta laugh at Tories. Remember when they screamed their heads off at a jock being their prime minister.
I think it was him being Labour that caused that.
What, not him being a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot'?
You think the main reason for them supposedly "screaming their heads off" was because he was Scottish?
Who said main? I think it was a factor. Unlike Blair, Brown was very identifiably Scottish, regardless of all the Gascoigne goal luvvin', Arctic Monkeys fandom pish he tried. Of course the opposite also applies, why do you think David 'English' Cameron was kept away from any real live Jocks during the indy campaign?
I thought it was a mistake not using Cameron more during the campaign. For all that I was not a fan, he was a good speechmaker, and the one speech he made to an audience of corporates in Edinburgh was well done. I watched it with a Scottish colleague who afterwards said 'there, that was all he needed to say'. I also didn't see any harm in him being publicly heckled - Blair would have just gone for it and got some sympathy out of it.
I completely disagree with you about Brown's Scottishness getting him abused. There's a huge perception gap here between slight intended and slight taken and internalised. It is very hard for an English person who hasn't spent time in Scotland to understand.
I was on a different politics blog back then and I can certainly recall that Brown being a Scot - or more accurately being both Brown AND a Scot - was a source of much negative sentiment from a particular type of (nearly always male) English Tory.
FPT Interestingly Mr Blair, who was born in Scotland, never seemed to attract that animus (or at least the non-Brownian bit).
Edit: but he didn't sound like it - and you can't imagine him as the son of the Manse or Rector in the Edin Uni Union at Bristo.
Blair was just not seen as a Scot in any way.
With Brown, as I recall, it was a combination of things. He was viewed as hardcore Scottish, that was key, and with this being at the time of the Crash, and with him being strongly associated with it, a view gained traction in right wing blogging circles that a sinister, very secretive Caledonian Nexus revolving around him, Darling, Goodwin, RBS, HBOS had "done us up like a kipper". They had gotten hold of a perfectly good English bank, NatWest, and ruined it. They had forced another perfectly good English bank, Lloyds, to swallow the poison of HBOS and ruined it too. They had blown up RBS and then stuck the English taxpayer with the bill for the bailout. Did all this quite deliberately and enjoyed every minute of it, whilst wearing kilts, eating haggis neeps and tatties, and playing the bagpipes.
That's absolutely ridiculous. No one enjoys anyone playing the bagpipes.
Oh, that;'s the Calvinism, dinna ye ken?
Very good. There's always a good bit of self-flagellation in Calvinism, right enough.
But when we come out near the top of that league the deniers will be telling us that, of course, other countries don't count their excess deaths properly.
Not much chance of that, given Peru/Ecuador figures.
It's us, Spain or perhaps Belgium within Europe though.
Personally I think its wrong for MPs to tell the rest of us we need to go back to work in a socially distanced manner which is impossible for a lot of businesses, only for them not to be willing to do the same thing. Not everyone can live their lives remotely on computers.
Is HMG telling people who can quite adequately work remotely, eg MPs, that they should get back to commuting to workplaces? I knew they were a bit crap but I didn't think they were quite that disastrously shyte.
Oh, Rees-Mogg's involved, I see now.
They're telling people who can't work remotely to go back to work and make do. They should do the same. They should live how they preach for the millions of people who can't work remotely. If social distancing is a PITA then get used to it, the rest of the nation has to do so.
Why should businesses that rely upon customers be faced with losing business support, furlough ending, be told they need to simply reopen socially distanced -but social distancing is too much of a PITA for MPs?
Why is social distancing good enough for the public but MPs are too special and precious to waste their time socially distancing?
The question is whether or not MPs can work remotely, and that's a question that many other people are facing in their workplaces. In many cases, remote work is feasible with the right systems in place, but it's still a management decision as to whether to support those systems. The government and JRM in particular have decided that they don't want to do that. Had they taken the other path, they would have been setting an example of how even old-fashioned institutions can embrace new technology and new working patterns.
I agree with you that if remote working were simply impossible for MPs, then MPs would just have to find a way of making it work. It might even be a catalyst for getting Parliament out of Westminster if it's just too cramped to support a socially-distancing workforce. But if remote working is an option, I don't see why it shouldn't be supported, in any workplace where this applies.
I don't think voting on a mobile phone is the same as doing so in person so its arguable that it isn't an option and I think it shouldn't be supported precisely because part of MPs jobs is representing the people and the people don't have an alternative.
If social distancing in Westminster is too cramped then just how do MPs expect businesses up and down the rest of the country to do their jobs and live their lives socially distanced? People up and down the country are being told this is what they have to do and aren't magically getting bigger buildings to do it in so MPs can do the best with what they've got just like everyone else in the same boat.
Or they can decide socially distanced working isn't viable afterall and drop it for the millions of others being told to get back to work too! Not just themselves.
I’m sure the staffers at the Palace of Westminster who catch Covid-19 as a result of this strange form of virtue signalling will take great comfort in the noble principles you espouse.
Is your argument that social distancing isn't safe?
If so,why is social distancing being required for millions of others?
I'm not sure where you get that from. My argument is that working from home is always safer than working in person, with or without social distancing. If you are able to work from home you should. I am not sure how risking lives, of MPs or staffers, or indeed Lords, at the Palace of Westminster helps anyone when MPs can work from home. The current policy is sensible. Your argument is just that MPs should show some form of solidarity with those that can't. That is a noble sentiment but is not worth risking lives for.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Is it possible his earpiece is actually a hearing aid? (following on the discussion on the previous thread). I haven't seen it so I can't tell.
A much more likely, and sad for the PM on a personal level, explanation I think.
The earpiece was Fake News, put out by a Corbynite website that later retracted it. It was just the shadow in Boris's ear.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Is it possible his earpiece is actually a hearing aid? (following on the discussion on the previous thread). I haven't seen it so I can't tell.
A much more likely, and sad for the PM on a personal level, explanation I think.
The earpiece was Fake News, put out by a Corbynite website that later retracted it. It was just the shadow in Boris's ear.
That's great news. Was a bit worried Boris might not be able to hear us all.
I would hate to see anyone go deaf. On the other hand, this has left me wondering if Mr J's ability not to hear the question has partly a physical cause irrespective of whether or not it has suddenly got worse lately thanks to covid. And if so whether he woudl admit it, like that Labour chap I mentioned earlier today.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
Even under the tariff plan chicken and beef imported from the USA will still be cheaper than that produced in the UK.
Amazing how quickly the UK folded . Time to order the gimp suit !
So we're going to get cheaper food is what you're saying?
Good. That's what the Kiwis did - abolish tariffs, abolish subsidies, told their farmers to make do without any of that. And they're still exporters.
The food will be cheaper because it will not meet current animal care standards. UK farmers will clearly have to have the standards they work to lowered as well if they are to compete. My guess is that this will not be popular even if it does lower prices a little. We shall see. Luckily - like the people inflicting this on us - I will still be able to buy the good stuff for my family.
Or UK farmers will maintain current standards and consumers can make the choice to buy Red Tractor approved products. Just like we already can do.
I buy Free Range eggs and Red Tractor food even though cheaper caged eggs and cheaper lower standard food is available. People can make a free choice in a free society.
Doesn't the welfare of the animals figure anywhere in your argument or is that just irrelevant?
I would have thought that the fact that all these avoidable viruses (Ebola, Covid-19, Sars, HIV-Aids, Swine Fever) have come from our treatment of animals might at least cause you to stop and think about the way we treat them for a minute.
Rees Mogg is the worst. I remember reading about how as a child he turned up at a shareholders' meeting (GEC if I remember correctly) and started berating the chairman over the size of the dividend he'd received on the shares he'd been given by his father. I'm not sure which Viz character he reminds me of most - Spoiled Bastard or Victorian Dad. Either way, he really is a tosser.
Didn't he say once that every time he opened his mouth it meant the Tories losing a vote? I'm not sure what changed between then and him becoming an MP.
I remember him from the Oxford Union. His accent then was a lot "worse" than it is now. As someone from ooop noorth who hadn't met many public school types, it did grate just a little at the time...and he did have a lot to say.
I have some time for the traditionalist approach though. Surely voting by phone takes away some of the supposedly serious nature of parliament? I would say the same for any remote voting (including elections).
Crowding through division lobbies is 'serious'? What other legislature conducts it's voting like that? Apart possibly from the Democratic Party in Iowa?
Most legislatures don't have people voting remotely from a phone whilst wandering about, though.
Even the EU-style voting has its problems. Just sitting there pressing buttons as per your pre-prescribed voting list isn't great (especially when MEPs accidentally press the wrong button).
Wandering about with a phone in hand isn't what I had in mind as an alternative. Might appeal to likes of Cummings of course Otherwise I take your point, although I believe people have been known to go through the wrong lobby on occasions.
True, and quite recently too. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to follow the "right" set of people.
Perhaps those MPs who have to be remote from the chamber should only be able to vote from a registered office from which they 'attend' (either within Parliament or their constituency). I'm not sure how you would enforce that, though.
Somewhat worrying that some at least of our MP's don't know who their friends are.
If it's possible to identify exactly where someone was 13 years ago from their mobile phone usage, I'm sure it can't be that difficult to ensure someone always votes rom their 'appointed place'
Jackson Carlaw, Leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. twisting the knife into BoZo’s belly just now on BBC Radio Scotland. He says, repeatedly, that he is “not wholly convinced” by Dominic Cummings’ explanation for his actions.
Classic code for “the man’s a liar”.
Astonishingly, Carlaw has not spoken to his boss BoZo in months. They have only exchanged two text messages since The Clown was released from hospital.
Carlaw sounds like a drowning man, unable to affect either his opponents nor his (supposed) allies.
The Milton Keynes appointee is a real kick in the groin.
MK? *googles for land of concrete coos* Ah - now I see. Blood is sure thicker than residence when it comes to Tories. But what a dunt in the baws to the actual Scottish Tories. Remiunds me of the day when the Scottish Office was run by a MP from Weston-Super-Mare IIRC.
The new Scottish office minister was born in Hamilton and went to school in Glasgow.
He is Scottish, he just represents an English seat
Your lot howled when Labour and LD MPs from Scotland voted on English matters (a sentiment the SNP entirely sympathise with).
Also - do you think race/genetics/blood rather than voter representation is more important?
That's a point. Presumably the new under-assistant, deputy panjandrum won't be voting on the Scotland only matters that he's supposed to be helping to formulate?
HY is a blood and soil nationalist.
You gotta laugh at Tories. Remember when they screamed their heads off at a jock being their prime minister.
I think it was him being Labour that caused that.
What, not him being a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot'?
You think the main reason for them supposedly "screaming their heads off" was because he was Scottish?
Who said main? I think it was a factor. Unlike Blair, Brown was very identifiably Scottish, regardless of all the Gascoigne goal luvvin', Arctic Monkeys fandom pish he tried. Of course the opposite also applies, why do you think David 'English' Cameron was kept away from any real live Jocks during the indy campaign?
I thought it was a mistake not using Cameron more during the campaign. For all that I was not a fan, he was a good speechmaker, and the one speech he made to an audience of corporates in Edinburgh was well done. I watched it with a Scottish colleague who afterwards said 'there, that was all he needed to say'. I also didn't see any harm in him being publicly heckled - Blair would have just gone for it and got some sympathy out of it.
I completely disagree with you about Brown's Scottishness getting him abused. There's a huge perception gap here between slight intended and slight taken and internalised. It is very hard for an English person who hasn't spent time in Scotland to understand.
I was on a different politics blog back then and I can certainly recall that Brown being a Scot - or more accurately being both Brown AND a Scot - was a source of much negative sentiment from a particular type of (nearly always male) English Tory.
FPT Interestingly Mr Blair, who was born in Scotland, never seemed to attract that animus (or at least the non-Brownian bit).
Edit: but he didn't sound like it - and you can't imagine him as the son of the Manse or Rector in the Edin Uni Union at Bristo.
Blair was just not seen as a Scot in any way.
With Brown, as I recall, it was a combination of things. He was viewed as hardcore Scottish, that was key, and with this being at the time of the Crash, and with him being strongly associated with it, a view gained traction in right wing blogging circles that a sinister, very secretive Caledonian Nexus revolving around him, Darling, Goodwin, RBS, HBOS had "done us up like a kipper". They had gotten hold of a perfectly good English bank, NatWest, and ruined it. They had forced another perfectly good English bank, Lloyds, to swallow the poison of HBOS and ruined it too. They had blown up RBS and then stuck the English taxpayer with the bill for the bailout. Did all this quite deliberately and enjoyed every minute of it, whilst wearing kilts, eating haggis neeps and tatties, and playing the bagpipes.
That's absolutely ridiculous. No one enjoys anyone playing the bagpipes.
Bagpipes are a lot like the Corona Virus. Being exposed to them is bad but being exposed to them inside, as opposed to the open air, is positively dangerous.
I'll care about chlorinated chicken the moment we remove chlorine from our drinking water from the tap.
As I pointed out to my other half, she could feed US chicken to my daughter every day for the rest of he life and my daughter would still swallow less chlorine than when my wife took her to swimming club for 15 years.
Its not the chlorine that is the problem, more the chicken faeces that they use it to camouflage.
LOL and you think public swimming pools don't contain feces, urine and God knows what else ? You can tell the stress in the pool by the amount of chlorine in it. and yet we gladly throw our chlidren in to them.
(Allen is president of the Brookings Institution, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan.)
Are people finally beginning to stand up to Trump? Seems quite a lot are disagreeing with him publicly now.
Jackson Carlaw, Leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. twisting the knife into BoZo’s belly just now on BBC Radio Scotland. He says, repeatedly, that he is “not wholly convinced” by Dominic Cummings’ explanation for his actions.
Classic code for “the man’s a liar”.
Astonishingly, Carlaw has not spoken to his boss BoZo in months. They have only exchanged two text messages since The Clown was released from hospital.
Carlaw sounds like a drowning man, unable to affect either his opponents nor his (supposed) allies.
The Milton Keynes appointee is a real kick in the groin.
MK? *googles for land of concrete coos* Ah - now I see. Blood is sure thicker than residence when it comes to Tories. But what a dunt in the baws to the actual Scottish Tories. Remiunds me of the day when the Scottish Office was run by a MP from Weston-Super-Mare IIRC.
The new Scottish office minister was born in Hamilton and went to school in Glasgow.
He is Scottish, he just represents an English seat
Your lot howled when Labour and LD MPs from Scotland voted on English matters (a sentiment the SNP entirely sympathise with).
Also - do you think race/genetics/blood rather than voter representation is more important?
That's a point. Presumably the new under-assistant, deputy panjandrum won't be voting on the Scotland only matters that he's supposed to be helping to formulate?
HY is a blood and soil nationalist.
You gotta laugh at Tories. Remember when they screamed their heads off at a jock being their prime minister.
I think it was him being Labour that caused that.
What, not him being a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot'?
You think the main reason for them supposedly "screaming their heads off" was because he was Scottish?
Who said main? I think it was a factor. Unlike Blair, Brown was very identifiably Scottish, regardless of all the Gascoigne goal luvvin', Arctic Monkeys fandom pish he tried. Of course the opposite also applies, why do you think David 'English' Cameron was kept away from any real live Jocks during the indy campaign?
I thought it was a mistake not using Cameron more during the campaign. For all that I was not a fan, he was a good speechmaker, and the one speech he made to an audience of corporates in Edinburgh was well done. I watched it with a Scottish colleague who afterwards said 'there, that was all he needed to say'. I also didn't see any harm in him being publicly heckled - Blair would have just gone for it and got some sympathy out of it.
I completely disagree with you about Brown's Scottishness getting him abused. There's a huge perception gap here between slight intended and slight taken and internalised. It is very hard for an English person who hasn't spent time in Scotland to understand.
I was on a different politics blog back then and I can certainly recall that Brown being a Scot - or more accurately being both Brown AND a Scot - was a source of much negative sentiment from a particular type of (nearly always male) English Tory.
FPT Interestingly Mr Blair, who was born in Scotland, never seemed to attract that animus (or at least the non-Brownian bit).
Edit: but he didn't sound like it - and you can't imagine him as the son of the Manse or Rector in the Edin Uni Union at Bristo.
Blair was just not seen as a Scot in any way.
With Brown, as I recall, it was a combination of things. He was viewed as hardcore Scottish, that was key, and with this being at the time of the Crash, and with him being strongly associated with it, a view gained traction in right wing blogging circles that a sinister, very secretive Caledonian Nexus revolving around him, Darling, Goodwin, RBS, HBOS had "done us up like a kipper". They had gotten hold of a perfectly good English bank, NatWest, and ruined it. They had forced another perfectly good English bank, Lloyds, to swallow the poison of HBOS and ruined it too. They had blown up RBS and then stuck the English taxpayer with the bill for the bailout. Did all this quite deliberately and enjoyed every minute of it, whilst wearing kilts, eating haggis neeps and tatties, and playing the bagpipes.
That's absolutely ridiculous. No one enjoys anyone playing the bagpipes.
Bagpipes are a lot like the Corona Virus. Being exposed to them is bad but being exposed to them inside, as opposed to the open air, is positively dangerous.
The playing of the Piob Mhor does need to be done outside ideally -
You know how we have manifestos telling us what somebody plans to do if they get into power - what is the equivalent over there?
Is there something other than the rhetoric on the campaign trail?
I saw an article recently mocking Jared Kushner for suggesting the GOP should go into the election with a five point list of key policies, rather than the hundreds they usually have.
I'll care about chlorinated chicken the moment we remove chlorine from our drinking water from the tap.
As I pointed out to my other half, she could feed US chicken to my daughter every day for the rest of he life and my daughter would still swallow less chlorine than when my wife took her to swimming club for 15 years.
That is not the issue with chlorinated chicken though. It is an animal welfare issue leading to the need to use chlorine.
And that's just the nelson touch. There are lots of animal welfare issues or food standard issues today - dutch eggs, donkey meat sold as beef, and don't ask about lettuce.
The EU has more than enough of its own issues and we eat the food today more or less without complaint.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Duh! I am not "the left". I am an ex-Tory activist who has spent his life studying leadership. Boris Johnson does not have leadership skills. He can win an election against an extreme left wing muppet, but that is not BEING PM. It is winning a beauty contest against a very very ugly opponent.
Rees Mogg is the worst. I remember reading about how as a child he turned up at a shareholders' meeting (GEC if I remember correctly) and started berating the chairman over the size of the dividend he'd received on the shares he'd been given by his father. I'm not sure which Viz character he reminds me of most - Spoiled Bastard or Victorian Dad. Either way, he really is a tosser.
Didn't he say once that every time he opened his mouth it meant the Tories losing a vote? I'm not sure what changed between then and him becoming an MP.
I remember him from the Oxford Union. His accent then was a lot "worse" than it is now. As someone from ooop noorth who hadn't met many public school types, it did grate just a little at the time...and he did have a lot to say.
I have some time for the traditionalist approach though. Surely voting by phone takes away some of the supposedly serious nature of parliament? I would say the same for any remote voting (including elections).
Crowding through division lobbies is 'serious'? What other legislature conducts it's voting like that? Apart possibly from the Democratic Party in Iowa?
Most legislatures don't have people voting remotely from a phone whilst wandering about, though.
Even the EU-style voting has its problems. Just sitting there pressing buttons as per your pre-prescribed voting list isn't great (especially when MEPs accidentally press the wrong button).
Wandering about with a phone in hand isn't what I had in mind as an alternative. Might appeal to likes of Cummings of course Otherwise I take your point, although I believe people have been known to go through the wrong lobby on occasions.
True, and quite recently too. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to follow the "right" set of people.
Perhaps those MPs who have to be remote from the chamber should only be able to vote from a registered office from which they 'attend' (either within Parliament or their constituency). I'm not sure how you would enforce that, though.
Somewhat worrying that some at least of our MP's don't know who their friends are.
If it's possible to identify exactly where someone was 13 years ago from their mobile phone usage, I'm sure it can't be that difficult to ensure someone always votes rom their 'appointed place'
Google can do that already. In fact if I was accused of a crime I was sure I hadn't comitted I'd probably turn to Google Maps as my first point of alibi as to where I was on a particualr day.
Even under the tariff plan chicken and beef imported from the USA will still be cheaper than that produced in the UK.
Amazing how quickly the UK folded . Time to order the gimp suit !
So we're going to get cheaper food is what you're saying?
Good. That's what the Kiwis did - abolish tariffs, abolish subsidies, told their farmers to make do without any of that. And they're still exporters.
The food will be cheaper because it will not meet current animal care standards. UK farmers will clearly have to have the standards they work to lowered as well if they are to compete. My guess is that this will not be popular even if it does lower prices a little. We shall see. Luckily - like the people inflicting this on us - I will still be able to buy the good stuff for my family.
Or UK farmers will maintain current standards and consumers can make the choice to buy Red Tractor approved products. Just like we already can do.
I buy Free Range eggs and Red Tractor food even though cheaper caged eggs and cheaper lower standard food is available. People can make a free choice in a free society.
Doesn't the welfare of the animals figure anywhere in your argument or is that just irrelevant?
I would have thought that the fact that all these avoidable viruses (Ebola, Covid-19, Sars, HIV-Aids, Swine Fever) have come from our treatment of animals might at least cause you to stop and think about the way we treat them for a minute.
Yes they did factor. Red Tractor meat and Free Range eggs are about animal welfare not just being British for Red Tractor and that's what I said I choose to buy as do others.
If people on a budget want to prioritise cheap food that meets basic standards but has lower welfare then that's their choice not mine. Caged eggs, Danish bacon etc are all perfectly legal to buy.
Fox cubs are particularly playful, but they make a hell of a mess. Buggers have dug up half my lawn.
When there are young the end of the garden is like an abattoir, but they do bring us a fine collection of other stuff. Ignoring the usual shiny items we get hundreds of golf balls, balls of all different sizes as well, lots of gloves and shoes and a pair of orange goggles. Last week we had goats cheese and a loaf of bread, also a bag of celery.
We are thinking about cutting down on the Sainsbury's shop.
You're lucky. We've had dirty nappies from the neighbour's bin, which they seem to take a particular delight in. Being omnivores...
I tried to keep it savoury. We too have had nappies and worse and I am not going to print the 'worse'!!!!
Deer video to appear at a later date. They also do a lot of damage, but suffer it for the joy of watching them.
I've stopped paying attention to all the latest twists and turns. Social distancing is not a sustainable policy in the long term. This will soon become particularly obvious on public transport and in schools. All the hand-wringing over it will make not the slightest difference in the end. It will eventually go. The needs that we have as human beings cannot be met in a perpetually socially distanced society.
For example, how are driving lessons and driving tests going to work? Or will people just stop learning to drive? For me, the time has come to switch off from these interminable discussions that cannot solve anything.
Jackson Carlaw, Leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. twisting the knife into BoZo’s belly just now on BBC Radio Scotland. He says, repeatedly, that he is “not wholly convinced” by Dominic Cummings’ explanation for his actions.
Classic code for “the man’s a liar”.
Astonishingly, Carlaw has not spoken to his boss BoZo in months. They have only exchanged two text messages since The Clown was released from hospital.
Carlaw sounds like a drowning man, unable to affect either his opponents nor his (supposed) allies.
The Milton Keynes appointee is a real kick in the groin.
MK? *googles for land of concrete coos* Ah - now I see. Blood is sure thicker than residence when it comes to Tories. But what a dunt in the baws to the actual Scottish Tories. Remiunds me of the day when the Scottish Office was run by a MP from Weston-Super-Mare IIRC.
The new Scottish office minister was born in Hamilton and went to school in Glasgow.
He is Scottish, he just represents an English seat
Your lot howled when Labour and LD MPs from Scotland voted on English matters (a sentiment the SNP entirely sympathise with).
Also - do you think race/genetics/blood rather than voter representation is more important?
That's a point. Presumably the new under-assistant, deputy panjandrum won't be voting on the Scotland only matters that he's supposed to be helping to formulate?
HY is a blood and soil nationalist.
You gotta laugh at Tories. Remember when they screamed their heads off at a jock being their prime minister.
I think it was him being Labour that caused that.
What, not him being a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot'?
You think the main reason for them supposedly "screaming their heads off" was because he was Scottish?
Who said main? I think it was a factor. Unlike Blair, Brown was very identifiably Scottish, regardless of all the Gascoigne goal luvvin', Arctic Monkeys fandom pish he tried. Of course the opposite also applies, why do you think David 'English' Cameron was kept away from any real live Jocks during the indy campaign?
I thought it was a mistake not using Cameron more during the campaign. For all that I was not a fan, he was a good speechmaker, and the one speech he made to an audience of corporates in Edinburgh was well done. I watched it with a Scottish colleague who afterwards said 'there, that was all he needed to say'. I also didn't see any harm in him being publicly heckled - Blair would have just gone for it and got some sympathy out of it.
I completely disagree with you about Brown's Scottishness getting him abused. There's a huge perception gap here between slight intended and slight taken and internalised. It is very hard for an English person who hasn't spent time in Scotland to understand.
I was on a different politics blog back then and I can certainly recall that Brown being a Scot - or more accurately being both Brown AND a Scot - was a source of much negative sentiment from a particular type of (nearly always male) English Tory.
FPT Interestingly Mr Blair, who was born in Scotland, never seemed to attract that animus (or at least the non-Brownian bit).
Edit: but he didn't sound like it - and you can't imagine him as the son of the Manse or Rector in the Edin Uni Union at Bristo.
Blair was just not seen as a Scot in any way.
With Brown, as I recall, it was a combination of things. He was viewed as hardcore Scottish, that was key, and with this being at the time of the Crash, and with him being strongly associated with it, a view gained traction in right wing blogging circles that a sinister, very secretive Caledonian Nexus revolving around him, Darling, Goodwin, RBS, HBOS had "done us up like a kipper". They had gotten hold of a perfectly good English bank, NatWest, and ruined it. They had forced another perfectly good English bank, Lloyds, to swallow the poison of HBOS and ruined it too. They had blown up RBS and then stuck the English taxpayer with the bill for the bailout. Did all this quite deliberately and enjoyed every minute of it, whilst wearing kilts, eating haggis neeps and tatties, and playing the bagpipes.
That's absolutely ridiculous. No one enjoys anyone playing the bagpipes.
Bagpipes are a lot like the Corona Virus. Being exposed to them is bad but being exposed to them inside, as opposed to the open air, is positively dangerous.
Yes, I associate them with open air. I suppose in the right hands they can hit the spot.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
Yes. He is showbiz. On the doorstep, at fundraising dinners, rallying calls to the faithful. I've been there, done that, listened as people collectively wet themselves.
But he is absolutely fucking shit as a prime minister.
I've stopped paying attention to all the latest twists and turns. Social distancing is not a sustainable policy in the long term. This will soon become particularly obvious on public transport and in schools. All the hand-wringing over it will make not the slightest difference in the end. It will eventually go. The needs that we have as human beings cannot be met in a perpetually socially distanced society.
For example, how are driving lessons and driving tests going to work? Or will people just stop learning to drive? For me, the time has come to switch off from these interminable discussions that cannot solve anything.
This has been my point.
If social distancing isn't viable then MPs need to identify that sooner than later and fix it for the millions of others who are being told to do it. Why should MPs be able to hide behind a computer screen and not face up to what millions of people are being told is a solution on a daily basis?
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
FFS, how many times do I have to say to you Bozo fanbois, winning a beauty contest does not make you a good PM. He won an election against a very bad opponent. Now he has to do the most important executive role in the country and he has no executive skills. he is hopeless. We are in a crisis and he does not know what to do because it is a bit harder than hosting a gameshow or writing a polemic.
I'll care about chlorinated chicken the moment we remove chlorine from our drinking water from the tap.
As I pointed out to my other half, she could feed US chicken to my daughter every day for the rest of he life and my daughter would still swallow less chlorine than when my wife took her to swimming club for 15 years.
That is not the issue with chlorinated chicken though. It is an animal welfare issue leading to the need to use chlorine.
And that's just the nelson touch. There are lots of animal welfare issues or food standard issues today - dutch eggs, donkey meat sold as beef, and don't ask about lettuce.
The EU has more than enough of its own issues and we eat the food today more or less without complaint.
I don't disagree, but let's not go backwards.
that's a difficult point.
the food debate is a Brexit hangover. I don't for one moment assume that the most litigious nation on the planet doesn't have food standards, merely that they are different. Some US standrads will be higher than Europe, other lower.and this will probably be based as much on local custom and practice as health grounds.
I'd like to see one US trade agreement that says country of original labelling is a trade barrier considering its US law that it must be displayed . . .
Jon Stone is an idiot. He quotes a text from the US government which doesn't at all mean what he thinks it means. What the US is objecting to is a number of individual EU countries introducing their own, excessively complex and inconsistent, rules for labelling of products made from multiple ingredients. They not unreasonably say that these rules should be withdrawn because there is a (simpler) EU-wide directive effective from April 1st 2020.
You know how we have manifestos telling us what somebody plans to do if they get into power - what is the equivalent over there?
Is there something other than the rhetoric on the campaign trail?
I saw an article recently mocking Jared Kushner for suggesting the GOP should go into the election with a five point list of key policies, rather than the hundreds they usually have.
Personally I think its wrong for MPs to tell the rest of us we need to go back to work in a socially distanced manner which is impossible for a lot of businesses, only for them not to be willing to do the same thing. Not everyone can live their lives remotely on computers.
Is HMG telling people who can quite adequately work remotely, eg MPs, that they should get back to commuting to workplaces? I knew they were a bit crap but I didn't think they were quite that disastrously shyte.
Oh, Rees-Mogg's involved, I see now.
They're telling people who can't work remotely to go back to work and make do. They should do the same. They should live how they preach for the millions of people who can't work remotely. If social distancing is a PITA then get used to it, the rest of the nation has to do so.
Why should businesses that rely upon customers be faced with losing business support, furlough ending, be told they need to simply reopen socially distanced -but social distancing is too much of a PITA for MPs?
Why is social distancing good enough for the public but MPs are too special and precious to waste their time socially distancing?
The question is whether or not MPs can work remotely, and that's a question that many other people are facing in their workplaces. In many cases, remote work is feasible with the right systems in place, but it's still a management decision as to whether to support those systems. The government and JRM in particular have decided that they don't want to do that. Had they taken the other path, they would have been setting an example of how even old-fashioned institutions can embrace new technology and new working patterns.
I agree with you that if remote working were simply impossible for MPs, then MPs would just have to find a way of making it work. It might even be a catalyst for getting Parliament out of Westminster if it's just too cramped to support a socially-distancing workforce. But if remote working is an option, I don't see why it shouldn't be supported, in any workplace where this applies.
I don't think voting on a mobile phone is the same as doing so in person so its arguable that it isn't an option and I think it shouldn't be supported precisely because part of MPs jobs is representing the people and the people don't have an alternative.
If social distancing in Westminster is too cramped then just how do MPs expect businesses up and down the rest of the country to do their jobs and live their lives socially distanced? People up and down the country are being told this is what they have to do and aren't magically getting bigger buildings to do it in so MPs can do the best with what they've got just like everyone else in the same boat.
Or they can decide socially distanced working isn't viable afterall and drop it for the millions of others being told to get back to work too! Not just themselves.
I’m sure the staffers at the Palace of Westminster who catch Covid-19 as a result of this strange form of virtue signalling will take great comfort in the noble principles you espouse.
Is your argument that social distancing isn't safe?
If so,why is social distancing being required for millions of others?
I'm not sure where you get that from. My argument is that working from home is always safer than working in person, with or without social distancing. If you are able to work from home you should. I am not sure how risking lives, of MPs or staffers, or indeed Lords, at the Palace of Westminster helps anyone when MPs can work from home. The current policy is sensible. Your argument is just that MPs should show some form of solidarity with those that can't. That is a noble sentiment but is not worth risking lives for.
I don't think that's true of surgeons. I mean, how are they going to keep everything clean
I'll care about chlorinated chicken the moment we remove chlorine from our drinking water from the tap.
As I pointed out to my other half, she could feed US chicken to my daughter every day for the rest of he life and my daughter would still swallow less chlorine than when my wife took her to swimming club for 15 years.
Its not the chlorine that is the problem, more the chicken faeces that they use it to camouflage.
'How clean are the dead animals you eat?' could well be the 'how well do you treat your slaves?' of the 21st Century
More joined up thinking from the NHS. All patients travelling to the UK for treatment must self-isolate at home before travelling to the UK. Including those from Guernsey (zero COVID cases, no new cases for 35 days). So much for "air corridors"!
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
But when we come out near the top of that league the deniers will be telling us that, of course, other countries don't count their excess deaths properly.
Not much chance of that, given Peru/Ecuador figures.
It's us, Spain or perhaps Belgium within Europe though.
In Europe, it's currently us on excess deaths, with Spain narrowly behind and Belgium further behind. And given that our timeline to and pace of recovery seems to be behind theirs, those differences are likely to widen not narrow.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
For now. Besides that’s quite a low bar.
Eh? Why is it a low bar?
Have you seen the past Tory leaders?
Thatcher, Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May, Johnson...
The only truly popular leaders in my lifetime have been Blair, and perhaps Johnson.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Duh! I am not "the left". I am an ex-Tory activist who has spent his life studying leadership. Boris Johnson does not have leadership skills. He can win an election against an extreme left wing muppet, but that is not BEING PM. It is winning a beauty contest against a very very ugly opponent.
He didnt just beat him he crushed him. And if you put lipstick on the ugly opponent it doesn't mean they're suddenly going to win.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
FFS, how many times do I have to say to you Bozo fanbois, winning a beauty contest does not make you a good PM. He won an election against a very bad opponent. Now he has to do the most important executive role in the country and he has no executive skills. he is hopeless. We are in a crisis and he does not know what to do because it is a bit harder than hosting a gameshow or writing a polemic.
I suspect similar things were said about Churchill in 1945. But!
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
For now. Besides that’s quite a low bar.
Eh? Why is it a low bar?
Good answer on the Pretenders, btw - just listened to your clip.
And also, for anyone who has seen The Americans, With or Without You will carry particular resonance.
And as for fame, my slightest claim to media fame is that once, several years ago, to my great embarrassment one of the then new tv channels did a documentary on white collar boxing which included me when I was fighting. It is repeated every 3-5 years on Dave or somesuch.
I'd like to see one US trade agreement that says country of original labelling is a trade barrier considering its US law that it must be displayed . . .
Jon Stone is an idiot. He quotes a text from the US government which doesn't at all mean what he thinks it means. What the US is objecting to is a number of individual EU countries introducing their own, excessively complex and inconsistent, rules for labelling of products made from multiple ingredients. They not unreasonably say that these rules should be withdrawn because there is a (simpler) EU-wide directive effective from April 1st 2020.
Thank you.
It really shouldn't be beyond the wit of journalists to get something so fundamentally basic to the discussion right. Without even checking out American labelling laws (which can be done in seconds), anyone who's ever been to America should be able to tell that "Made in Ameria" is a massive deal over there.
The idea the US would want that banned is patently absurd.
Thatcher, Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May, Johnson...
The only truly popular leaders in my lifetime have been Blair, and perhaps Johnson.
Eh? Margaret Thatcher was extremely popular. In fact, she still is amongst those old enough to remember her premiership - the only ex-PM for which that is true.
I'll care about chlorinated chicken the moment we remove chlorine from our drinking water from the tap.
As I pointed out to my other half, she could feed US chicken to my daughter every day for the rest of he life and my daughter would still swallow less chlorine than when my wife took her to swimming club for 15 years.
Its not the chlorine that is the problem, more the chicken faeces that they use it to camouflage.
LOL and you think public swimming pools don't contain feces, urine and God knows what else ? You can tell the stress in the pool by the amount of chlorine in it. and yet we gladly throw our chlidren in to them.
The nasty stuff in the swimming pool is there *because* our children are in it. Having nasty stuff in our food is avoidable.
More joined up thinking from the NHS. All patients travelling to the UK for treatment must self-isolate at home before travelling to the UK. Including those from Guernsey (zero COVID cases, no new cases for 35 days). So much for "air corridors"!
Guernsey's hospital is good, but some at least cases are sent to Southampton!
NHS England numbers out - 115 Last 7 days - 97 Spanish Style - 24
No doubt those screaming loudest about our relative performance are being quietest about disparity of reporting around the world
The only way to do a comparison worldwide, will be excess deaths.
No, proved and tested and confirmed Covid deaths only
Sorry you are wrong.
Excess deaths may not tell the whole story but it is a much better metric than you suggest because that book can be cooked at will. Take Florida. Over a given time span c4000 pneumonia deaths and c1000 Covid deaths recorded. The same period average for previous years was less than a thousand pneumonia deaths. So Ron, to make his Covid response look better had Covid deaths recorded as pneumonia.
Arguably it was the pneumonia that killed them not the Covid
They all died because their cardio vascular system failed. 100%.
Nothing to do with the Republican Governor at all.
As my father used to say - 'We all die from the same thing - shortage of breath.'
I've stopped paying attention to all the latest twists and turns. Social distancing is not a sustainable policy in the long term. This will soon become particularly obvious on public transport and in schools. All the hand-wringing over it will make not the slightest difference in the end. It will eventually go. The needs that we have as human beings cannot be met in a perpetually socially distanced society.
For example, how are driving lessons and driving tests going to work? Or will people just stop learning to drive? For me, the time has come to switch off from these interminable discussions that cannot solve anything.
Taxi drivers are amongst the highest risk occupations as I recall.
Where social distancing is impossible, such as in cars, trains, some workplaces, masks should be compulsory for all.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
For now. Besides that’s quite a low bar.
Eh? Why is it a low bar?
Good answer on the Pretenders, btw - just listened to your clip.
And also, for anyone who has seen The Americans, With or Without You will carry particular resonance.
And as for fame, my slightest claim to media fame is that once, several years ago, to my great embarrassment one of the then new tv channels did a documentary on white collar boxing which included me when I was fighting. It is repeated every 3-5 years on Dave or somesuch.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
FFS, how many times do I have to say to you Bozo fanbois, winning a beauty contest does not make you a good PM. He won an election against a very bad opponent. Now he has to do the most important executive role in the country and he has no executive skills. he is hopeless. We are in a crisis and he does not know what to do because it is a bit harder than hosting a gameshow or writing a polemic.
I suspect similar things were said about Churchill in 1945. But!
Some people always prefer to make excuses rather than recognise that love him or loathe him Boris is a canny operator and has cultivated a persona that gets folk to the polls to vote for him. The anti Tories will always vote anyone but yet Boris has something that the Tories have not had for a while. 14 million votes in a December election is quite something.
I'd like to see one US trade agreement that says country of original labelling is a trade barrier considering its US law that it must be displayed . . .
Jon Stone is an idiot. He quotes a text from the US government which doesn't at all mean what he thinks it means. What the US is objecting to is a number of individual EU countries introducing their own, excessively complex and inconsistent, rules for labelling of products made from multiple ingredients. They not unreasonably say that these rules should be withdrawn because there is a (simpler) EU-wide directive effective from April 1st 2020.
Thank you.
It really shouldn't be beyond the wit of journalists to get something so fundamentally basic to the discussion right. Without even checking out American labelling laws (which can be done in seconds), anyone who's ever been to America should be able to tell that "Made in Ameria" is a massive deal over there.
The idea the US would want that banned is patently absurd.
I don't so much mind journalists getting things wrong - one expects that - but you do have to raise an eyebrow when they themselves support their 'argument' by referring to a text which proves they are wrong.
I'll care about chlorinated chicken the moment we remove chlorine from our drinking water from the tap.
The issue is he standard of food hygiene that requires it to be chlorinated. But I'm sure you already know that
I believe the US has an order of magnitude higher number of deaths from Salmonella, compared with the European Union. Admittedly, several hundred versus a handful.
Should add salmonella poisoning is an unpleasant experience, even if you don't die. 1.3 million cases in the US annually versus 10 000 in the UK
More joined up thinking from the NHS. All patients travelling to the UK for treatment must self-isolate at home before travelling to the UK. Including those from Guernsey (zero COVID cases, no new cases for 35 days). So much for "air corridors"!
It is the nature of the travel itself that is the problem, surely? Not the prevalence in the place of origin.
Edit: Oops, re-read. Before travelling? Now that makes no sense.
(Allen is president of the Brookings Institution, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan.)
Are people finally beginning to stand up to Trump? Seems quite a lot are disagreeing with him publicly now.
I sense it all crumbling around him now. Been expecting this and I am certain it will continue. Sometimes something is too absurd to carry on being and Trump as US President is one such thing. People have had enough. They are calling time on it.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
Just proves how stupid Tories are, superficial halfwitted cretins.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
For now. Besides that’s quite a low bar.
Eh? Why is it a low bar?
Good answer on the Pretenders, btw - just listened to your clip.
And also, for anyone who has seen The Americans, With or Without You will carry particular resonance.
And as for fame, my slightest claim to media fame is that once, several years ago, to my great embarrassment one of the then new tv channels did a documentary on white collar boxing which included me when I was fighting. It is repeated every 3-5 years on Dave or somesuch.
Rees Mogg is the worst. I remember reading about how as a child he turned up at a shareholders' meeting (GEC if I remember correctly) and started berating the chairman over the size of the dividend he'd received on the shares he'd been given by his father. I'm not sure which Viz character he reminds me of most - Spoiled Bastard or Victorian Dad. Either way, he really is a tosser.
Didn't he say once that every time he opened his mouth it meant the Tories losing a vote? I'm not sure what changed between then and him becoming an MP.
I remember him from the Oxford Union. His accent then was a lot "worse" than it is now. As someone from ooop noorth who hadn't met many public school types, it did grate just a little at the time...and he did have a lot to say.
I have some time for the traditionalist approach though. Surely voting by phone takes away some of the supposedly serious nature of parliament? I would say the same for any remote voting (including elections).
Crowding through division lobbies is 'serious'? What other legislature conducts it's voting like that? Apart possibly from the Democratic Party in Iowa?
Most legislatures don't have people voting remotely from a phone whilst wandering about, though.
Even the EU-style voting has its problems. Just sitting there pressing buttons as per your pre-prescribed voting list isn't great (especially when MEPs accidentally press the wrong button).
Wandering about with a phone in hand isn't what I had in mind as an alternative. Might appeal to likes of Cummings of course Otherwise I take your point, although I believe people have been known to go through the wrong lobby on occasions.
True, and quite recently too. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to follow the "right" set of people.
Perhaps those MPs who have to be remote from the chamber should only be able to vote from a registered office from which they 'attend' (either within Parliament or their constituency). I'm not sure how you would enforce that, though.
Somewhat worrying that some at least of our MP's don't know who their friends are.
If it's possible to identify exactly where someone was 13 years ago from their mobile phone usage, I'm sure it can't be that difficult to ensure someone always votes rom their 'appointed place'
Google can do that already. In fact if I was accused of a crime I was sure I hadn't comitted I'd probably turn to Google Maps as my first point of alibi as to where I was on a particualr day.
Wasn't that effectively what Cummings did in relation to the incorrect press report about a second return trip to Durham? He certainly offered to make electronic data available in evidence.
He did not however make such an offer in respect of the rest of his story so maybe the evidence there wasn't quite so conclusive.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
FFS, how many times do I have to say to you Bozo fanbois, winning a beauty contest does not make you a good PM. He won an election against a very bad opponent. Now he has to do the most important executive role in the country and he has no executive skills. he is hopeless. We are in a crisis and he does not know what to do because it is a bit harder than hosting a gameshow or writing a polemic.
I suspect similar things were said about Churchill in 1945. But!
Oh dear, you are not serious? re you one of the few people that still like to think there is a similarity? I don't think even Bozo believes it now. He is a poundshop Churchill. Not fit to lick the great mans dirtiest boots. Churchill achieved more in a week of his life than Bozo will ever achieve.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
Just proves how stupid Tories are, superficial halfwitted cretins.
@Brom you’re living in the past. No one is really disputing that Boris Johnson is good at elections and his achievement in the General Election was impressive. However that doesn’t matter now. That was then and this is now. His skill as Prime Minister is judged on a completely different metric, and his approval rating suggests the public are not impressed.
Now I’m not saying that the public would not vote Tory again, but that’s a different question.
Re the thread, yes I agree that the Government's reaction to the virus will probably be one of those traumatic events that will remain with voters for years and will impact on the outcome of the next election. The parallel which the Tories will fear is that of Black Wednesday in 1992 which served to undermine their claims to economic competence all the way up to the 1997 general election. The response to the virus is undermining any possible idea that Johnson runs a generally competent government, such has been the shambles witnessed on multiple fronts.
In political terms, the impact will get worse for Johnson. There is a deep recession on the horizon and the question is whether the Conservatives will be blamed for its depth not least on account of their mistakes having led to the UK being late out of the lockdown.
Yesterday saw another 359 deaths confirmed by testing in the UK. That was more than the total recorded for the rest of Europe combined.
OK, if it makes you feel any better I'm not really bothered to argue with the nuance of that point. It would still means that the UK's total of daily deaths was yesterday "only" nearly as high as the total that should have been recorded for the rest of Europe combined. Ahem indeed.
What I'm not prepared to accept is that the death statistics as a whole including those on excess deaths do anything other than support the claim that the UK's response to the virus has led to outcomes worse than anywhere else in Europe.
No -you missed it. it's not "nearly" and "nuance"; it's a steaming pile of bullshit,
Nearly all of the 359 deaths in the number are from the previous fortnight, and the comparison is entirely spurious. The actual number of deaths from yesterday was 20, which will increase as others move through the process and we may have some idea of perhaps 90% of the total in 7 days.
On this one Guido is correct in skewering Newsnight, whose reporting was misleading to (and perhaps beyond) the point off dishonesty. But he diidn't skewer them enough.
They talked about "daily deaths" with the totally misrepresented numbers for their tabloid splash, then went into a spiel about how important it was to be careful.
Just a shitty news report. I don't really know how the Newsnight Editor can sleep at night.
FPT
Actually, the more I look at it, the basis of Guido's objection seems to be a load of "bullshit". You are too trusting of that site.
It's hardly news that the lag in the system the 359 UK deaths reported yesterday were deaths which occurred over the previous fortnight, most within the past few days. That's because of the time lag in UK reporting.
It is however a perfectly reasonable to use that to make comparisons with other European countries, because they too must experience lags between the date of death and the date it is reported.
The only point of substance contained in Guido's report is that the source website (Worldometer) has been dissed by a rival website whose rival data manager claims that the data on his site (Our World in Data) is better, which is not that surprising given that to say the opposite would damage his career prospects. Yet the actual differences are minimal - for Spain 27,940 cumulative deaths on Our World in Data compared to 27,128 on Worldometer or less than a 3% diffrence, with the figures on both the same for the UK. So very similar, not different.
Thanks for the reply.
I'm not debating Guido; I'm debating Newsnight and the quality of their coverage. Guido is a tabloid news site that sometimes generates interesting stories.
The exact phrase used by Nick Watt to comment on the graph put up on Newsnight was:
"what this shows is that the UK now has more daily deaths than the entire EU put together"
The UK figure is simply not what he says it is - "daily deaths"; it is deaths reported today, mainly consisting of deaths that occurred today and over the previous days. It is misleading even before we get into all the stuff needed to make sure the comparison is valid, because most of his number is 5-10 days out of date.
>"It's hardly news that the lag in the system the 359 UK deaths reported yesterday were deaths which occurred over the previous fortnight, most within the past few days. That's because of the time lag in UK reporting."
I agree with this, and they even start talking about difficulties of comparing data a bit further on.
So why on earth did they do the misleading comparison, rather than one using the data accurately?
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
FFS, how many times do I have to say to you Bozo fanbois, winning a beauty contest does not make you a good PM. He won an election against a very bad opponent. Now he has to do the most important executive role in the country and he has no executive skills. he is hopeless. We are in a crisis and he does not know what to do because it is a bit harder than hosting a gameshow or writing a polemic.
I suspect similar things were said about Churchill in 1945. But!
(Allen is president of the Brookings Institution, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan.)
Are people finally beginning to stand up to Trump? Seems quite a lot are disagreeing with him publicly now.
I sense it all crumbling around him now. Been expecting this and I am certain it will continue. Sometimes something is too absurd to carry on being and Trump as US President is one such thing. People have had enough. They are calling time on it.
(Allen is president of the Brookings Institution, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan.)
Are people finally beginning to stand up to Trump? Seems quite a lot are disagreeing with him publicly now.
I sense it all crumbling around him now. Been expecting this and I am certain it will continue. Sometimes something is too absurd to carry on being and Trump as US President is one such thing. People have had enough. They are calling time on it.
A lot of us have had that feeling for a very long time, at least four years in my case. Yet his approval ratings remain stubbornly persistent at around 40/45%. By historical standards that's quite poor for an incumbent President but considering he is by some distance the worst POTUS in my lifetime (and I go back to Truman) it is still extraordinarily high.
As I've said plenty of times, the government are being shat on for being very honest about the death statistics while others are getting a free pass by not. The FT analysis is still the best and while it doesn't mean that the UK has a good showing, but it does show that loads of other countries are doing as badly across Europe, they just aren't recording it in their official statistics.
I've stopped paying attention to all the latest twists and turns. Social distancing is not a sustainable policy in the long term. This will soon become particularly obvious on public transport and in schools. All the hand-wringing over it will make not the slightest difference in the end. It will eventually go. The needs that we have as human beings cannot be met in a perpetually socially distanced society.
For example, how are driving lessons and driving tests going to work? Or will people just stop learning to drive? For me, the time has come to switch off from these interminable discussions that cannot solve anything.
Taxi drivers are amongst the highest risk occupations as I recall.
Where social distancing is impossible, such as in cars, trains, some workplaces, masks should be compulsory for all.
I think when I heard the numbers on More or Less quite some time ago the most at-risk group they could find was London Bus Drivers.
Mr. 86, there's also been much muttering about every case *with* COVID here being described statistically as a death *from* COVID (so if I pummel you to death with a stuff walrus, that counts as a COVID death if your corpse tests positive).
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
Just proves how stupid Tories are, superficial halfwitted cretins.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
Just proves how stupid Tories are, superficial halfwitted cretins.
I'll care about chlorinated chicken the moment we remove chlorine from our drinking water from the tap.
The issue is he standard of food hygiene that requires it to be chlorinated. But I'm sure you already know that
I believe the US has an order of magnitude higher number of deaths from Salmonella, compared with the European Union. Admittedly, several hundred versus a handful.
I think this is true-ish. Though I recall the last time I tried to verify the figures I ran into problems, as reporting of cases is all over the place, so difficult to compare (in a similar manner to Covid deaths, but probably worse).
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Duh! I am not "the left". I am an ex-Tory activist who has spent his life studying leadership. Boris Johnson does not have leadership skills. He can win an election against an extreme left wing muppet, but that is not BEING PM. It is winning a beauty contest against a very very ugly opponent.
He didnt just beat him he crushed him. And if you put lipstick on the ugly opponent it doesn't mean they're suddenly going to win.
The "lip stick on a pig" epithet is the perfect description of both Corbyn and Johnson. Although Corbyn was/is not 17 stone, he was considered more piggy by the electorate who would rather have an incompetent pig (though they didn't guess how incompetent) rather than a terrorist sympathising anti-Semitic Marxist pig
@Big_G_NorthWales I did say that I didn’t think the party political polls would move very much. People are not paying attention to party politics at the moment for obvious reasons.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
FFS, how many times do I have to say to you Bozo fanbois, winning a beauty contest does not make you a good PM. He won an election against a very bad opponent. Now he has to do the most important executive role in the country and he has no executive skills. he is hopeless. We are in a crisis and he does not know what to do because it is a bit harder than hosting a gameshow or writing a polemic.
I suspect similar things were said about Churchill in 1945. But!
Some people always prefer to make excuses rather than recognise that love him or loathe him Boris is a canny operator and has cultivated a persona that gets folk to the polls to vote for him. The anti Tories will always vote anyone but yet Boris has something that the Tories have not had for a while. 14 million votes in a December election is quite something.
You're right; I recall discussing the election result with a couple of Tory acquaintances and on remarking about Boris' lies was told that they didn't matter. He was going to get things done.
That sort of thing can go hard the other way, of course.
Re the thread, yes I agree that the Government's reaction to the virus will probably be one of those traumatic events that will remain with voters for years and will impact on the outcome of the next election. The parallel which the Tories will fear is that of Black Wednesday in 1992 which served to undermine their claims to economic competence all the way up to the 1997 general election. The response to the virus is undermining any possible idea that Johnson runs a generally competent government, such has been the shambles witnessed on multiple fronts.
In political terms, the impact will get worse for Johnson. There is a deep recession on the horizon and the question is whether the Conservatives will be blamed for its depth not least on account of their mistakes having led to the UK being late out of the lockdown.
Yesterday saw another 359 deaths confirmed by testing in the UK. That was more than the total recorded for the rest of Europe combined.
OK, if it makes you feel any better I'm not really bothered to argue with the nuance of that point. It would still means that the UK's total of daily deaths was yesterday "only" nearly as high as the total that should have been recorded for the rest of Europe combined. Ahem indeed.
What I'm not prepared to accept is that the death statistics as a whole including those on excess deaths do anything other than support the claim that the UK's response to the virus has led to outcomes worse than anywhere else in Europe.
No -you missed it. it's not "nearly" and "nuance"; it's a steaming pile of bullshit,
Nearly all of the 359 deaths in the number are from the previous fortnight, and the comparison is entirely spurious. The actual number of deaths from yesterday was 20, which will increase as others move through the process and we may have some idea of perhaps 90% of the total in 7 days.
On this one Guido is correct in skewering Newsnight, whose reporting was misleading to (and perhaps beyond) the point off dishonesty. But he diidn't skewer them enough.
They talked about "daily deaths" with the totally misrepresented numbers for their tabloid splash, then went into a spiel about how important it was to be careful.
Just a shitty news report. I don't really know how the Newsnight Editor can sleep at night.
FPT
Actually, the more I look at it, the basis of Guido's objection seems to be a load of "bullshit". You are too trusting of that site.
It's hardly news that the lag in the system the 359 UK deaths reported yesterday were deaths which occurred over the previous fortnight, most within the past few days. That's because of the time lag in UK reporting.
It is however a perfectly reasonable to use that to make comparisons with other European countries, because they too must experience lags between the date of death and the date it is reported.
The only point of substance contained in Guido's report is that the source website (Worldometer) has been dissed by a rival website whose rival data manager claims that the data on his site (Our World in Data) is better, which is not that surprising given that to say the opposite would damage his career prospects. Yet the actual differences are minimal - for Spain 27,940 cumulative deaths on Our World in Data compared to 27,128 on Worldometer or less than a 3% diffrence, with the figures on both the same for the UK. So very similar, not different.
Thanks for the reply.
I'm not debating Guido; I'm debating Newsnight and the quality of their coverage. Guido is a tabloid news site that sometimes generates interesting stories.
The exact phrase used by Nick Watt to comment on the graph put up on Newsnight was:
"what this shows is that the UK now has more daily deaths than the entire EU put together"
The UK figure is simply not what he says it is - "daily deaths"; it is deaths reported today, mainly consisting of deaths that occurred today and over the previous days. It is misleading even before we get into all the stuff needed to make sure the comparison is valid, because most of his number is 5-10 days out of date.
>"It's hardly news that the lag in the system the 359 UK deaths reported yesterday were deaths which occurred over the previous fortnight, most within the past few days. That's because of the time lag in UK reporting."
I agree with this, and they even start talking about difficulties of comparing data a bit further on.
So why on earth did they do the misleading comparison, rather than one using the data accurately?
I had to talk a journalist (previously mentioned) through the problem of what a 10% rise in something means - i.e. what is 110% of the original value.
Why do you think they are up to complexities like understanding where numbers came from?
Mr. 86, there's also been much muttering about every case *with* COVID here being described statistically as a death *from* COVID (so if I pummel you to death with a stuff walrus, that counts as a COVID death if your corpse tests positive).
Yeah, but as a whole it matches up. If you look at the last three weeks of ONS figures, excess deaths match covid deaths, after there initially being quite a gap. This is the same pattern other nations have produced later in the epidemic.
As I've said plenty of times, the government are being shat on for being very honest about the death statistics while others are getting a free pass by not. The FT analysis is still the best and while it doesn't mean that the UK has a good showing, but it does show that loads of other countries are doing as badly across Europe, they just aren't recording it in their official statistics.
When all the dusts settles, I think we are going to see that Germany clearly handled this initial outbreak best, but most of Western Europe is going to end up roughly the same. Portugal interesting appears to have performed quite well, despite being the poorest Western European nation and bordering Spain.
That isn't to say the UK government haven't made big mistakes, but they really haven't tried to hide any figures.
Why Greece and Eastern European countries have got off lighter will require more research.
Wot about the leadership polls though? As Mike often points out these are a better indicator. Johnson is becoming an even bigger joke than I feared he would be. Memes about earpieces or empty skulls will eventually feed through to the popular subconscious. Those that follow things a little closer will realise the emperor has no leadership skills.
Every week that goes past his incompetence will become more visible. Tories of today will join ex-Tories like myself who rue the day when the dumber section of the party membership foisted him on us.
Not the twitter memes! how will they cope with their massive polling lead.
It's as if the left never learn, Boris had endless memes last year too and won a landslide. Leadership polls will mean a lot less than VI if Boris doesn't fight 2024 so Im not sure Labour can take too much heart from that.
Boris is still polling higher than any Tory leader has got at a general election since Thatcher
Even you know that is only temporary. You must be realising gradually he is useless as a PM. He has no leadership skills.
He is the most popular Tory leader on the doorstep I have ever campaigned for in my lifetime
For now. Besides that’s quite a low bar.
Eh? Why is it a low bar?
Good answer on the Pretenders, btw - just listened to your clip.
And also, for anyone who has seen The Americans, With or Without You will carry particular resonance.
And as for fame, my slightest claim to media fame is that once, several years ago, to my great embarrassment one of the then new tv channels did a documentary on white collar boxing which included me when I was fighting. It is repeated every 3-5 years on Dave or somesuch.
I hope you kept your white collar on in the ring, just to rile your more horny handed opponents. If like other flabbed out boxers you turn to the wrestling, it'd be a great basis on which to hang a ring persona.
Mr. 86, there's also been much muttering about every case *with* COVID here being described statistically as a death *from* COVID (so if I pummel you to death with a stuff walrus, that counts as a COVID death if your corpse tests positive).
Ultimately deaths in excess of the average is all that really matters. I trust the ONS figures for this unconditionally.
Comments
There are plenty of enthusiasts out there for free range outdoor etc, even though some free range outdoor whatevers suffer more diseases than indoor or partly indoor stock. Therefore the free range option is arguably more cruel, so perhaps that is the one needing to be banned.
I'm sure we all remember the hyperbolic "Meat is Murder" campaigns, which like most of these are based on emotion not reason.
Sorry - but I think throwing "bear baiting" in implies having run out of good reasons to put forward.
We chlorinate salad for the same reason but nobody objects to the cruelty to the lettuce.
We had a fox visitor, but were never lucky enough to see cubs
Where we live now is much more suitable for a couple of OAP's but I do miss the animals.
Perhaps those MPs who have to be remote from the chamber should only be able to vote from a registered office from which they 'attend' (either within Parliament or their constituency). I'm not sure how you would enforce that, though.
It's us, Spain or perhaps Belgium within Europe though.
Seems quite a lot are disagreeing with him publicly now.
Tottenham Hotspur have moved to ease some of the financial pressure they face as a result of the coronavirus outbreak by borrowing £175 million from the Bank of England, The Athletic understands.
The north London club met a set of strict criteria to qualify for the government’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF), which will provide an unsecured loan — repayable in full at a rate of 0.5 per cent — to give them financial flexibility and additional working capital during the crisis. Spurs estimate they may stand to lose more than £200 million of revenue in the period from the start of lockdown to June 2021.
The CCCF was set up on March 17 to support large credit-worthy companies affected by the pandemic. The Bank of England intends the scheme to be utilised as a way of assisting firms to bridge disruption to their cash flows.
It is only available to firms with an investment grade credit rating — the highest level of credit rating, which reflects at least an adequate capacity to meet financial commitments — and who make a material contribution to the UK economy.
Manchester United are thought to be the only other Premier League club who would be eligible for the CCFF scheme by virtue of having a formal credit rating from an agency. The CCFF is thought to have loaned more than £20 billion so far to around 100 companies, including EasyJet, Marks & Spencers and Greggs. The Bank of England is expected to confirm a list of the companies to have borrowed from it on Thursday afternoon.
Spurs satisfied the CCFF stipulations after they had £525 million of stadium debt refinanced last year. As first reported by The Athletic, Spurs confirmed in September that Bank of America Merrill Lynch and HSBC had helped to refinance the debt on the private placements market in the USA, over long maturities and at low-interest rates.
Under the scheme, the Bank of England has purchased £175 million of “Commercial Paper” — a short-term obligation sold from one company to another for immediate cash needs — from Tottenham. It is not free money, although it comes at a low, commercial interest rate.
Tottenham will have to repay the loan in April 2021, unless they re-draw it for another year, but the cash will assist in seeing them through what is expected to be a highly challenging period. The finance will not be spent on player transfers, with the club unlikely to have any budget for signings in the next window unless they sell.
https://theathletic.co.uk/1849915/2020/06/04/tottenham-hotspur-loan-government-cashflow-coronavirus/
The EU has more than enough of its own issues and we eat the food today more or less without complaint.
Doesn't the welfare of the animals figure anywhere in your argument or is that just irrelevant?
I would have thought that the fact that all these avoidable viruses (Ebola, Covid-19, Sars, HIV-Aids, Swine Fever) have come from our treatment of animals might at least cause you to stop and think about the way we treat them for a minute.
If it's possible to identify exactly where someone was 13 years ago from their mobile phone usage, I'm sure it can't be that difficult to ensure someone always votes rom their 'appointed place'
You know how we have manifestos telling us what somebody plans to do if they get into power - what is the equivalent over there?
Is there something other than the rhetoric on the campaign trail?
https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/66/4/291/1752328
If people on a budget want to prioritise cheap food that meets basic standards but has lower welfare then that's their choice not mine. Caged eggs, Danish bacon etc are all perfectly legal to buy.
Deer video to appear at a later date. They also do a lot of damage, but suffer it for the joy of watching them.
For example, how are driving lessons and driving tests going to work? Or will people just stop learning to drive? For me, the time has come to switch off from these interminable discussions that cannot solve anything.
But he is absolutely fucking shit as a prime minister.
If social distancing isn't viable then MPs need to identify that sooner than later and fix it for the millions of others who are being told to do it. Why should MPs be able to hide behind a computer screen and not face up to what millions of people are being told is a solution on a daily basis?
the food debate is a Brexit hangover. I don't for one moment assume that the most litigious nation on the planet doesn't have food standards, merely that they are different. Some US standrads will be higher than Europe, other lower.and this will probably be based as much on local custom and practice as health grounds.
But Trump, say, did we get a manifesto in 2016?
Or was it just "Build That Wall" etc from his rallies?
Thatcher, Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May, Johnson...
The only truly popular leaders in my lifetime have been Blair, and perhaps Johnson.
But!
And also, for anyone who has seen The Americans, With or Without You will carry particular resonance.
And as for fame, my slightest claim to media fame is that once, several years ago, to my great embarrassment one of the then new tv channels did a documentary on white collar boxing which included me when I was fighting. It is repeated every 3-5 years on Dave or somesuch.
It really shouldn't be beyond the wit of journalists to get something so fundamentally basic to the discussion right. Without even checking out American labelling laws (which can be done in seconds), anyone who's ever been to America should be able to tell that "Made in Ameria" is a massive deal over there.
The idea the US would want that banned is patently absurd.
Where social distancing is impossible, such as in cars, trains, some workplaces, masks should be compulsory for all.
Should add salmonella poisoning is an unpleasant experience, even if you don't die. 1.3 million cases in the US annually versus 10 000 in the UK
Edit:
Oops, re-read. Before travelling? Now that makes no sense.
He did not however make such an offer in respect of the rest of his story so maybe the evidence there wasn't quite so conclusive.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1268450746422493184
Now I’m not saying that the public would not vote Tory again, but that’s a different question.
I'm not debating Guido; I'm debating Newsnight and the quality of their coverage. Guido is a tabloid news site that sometimes generates interesting stories.
The exact phrase used by Nick Watt to comment on the graph put up on Newsnight was:
"what this shows is that the UK now has more daily deaths than the entire EU put together"
The UK figure is simply not what he says it is - "daily deaths"; it is deaths reported today, mainly consisting of deaths that occurred today and over the previous days. It is misleading even before we get into all the stuff needed to make sure the comparison is valid, because most of his number is 5-10 days out of date.
You can listen to it here at about 2:40.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jr6j/newsnight-03062020
>"It's hardly news that the lag in the system the 359 UK deaths reported yesterday were deaths which occurred over the previous fortnight, most within the past few days. That's because of the time lag in UK reporting."
I agree with this, and they even start talking about difficulties of comparing data a bit further on.
So why on earth did they do the misleading comparison, rather than one using the data accurately?
It's very hard to move away from reported deaths irrespective of the date of death.
Despite the fury by some on here the fact remains that
Boris is only going to stand down if his health is an issue
Or
Letters are sent in to the 1922
It is likely that those shouting loudest for his head are going to be doing the same for 4 more years, sadly for them
There is more to life to be honest
Though I recall the last time I tried to verify the figures I ran into problems, as reporting of cases is all over the place, so difficult to compare (in a similar manner to Covid deaths, but probably worse).
That sort of thing can go hard the other way, of course.
Why do you think they are up to complexities like understanding where numbers came from?
That isn't to say the UK government haven't made big mistakes, but they really haven't tried to hide any figures.
Why Greece and Eastern European countries have got off lighter will require more research.