Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
Boris can do anything he wants at the moment but it won't actually matter.
The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
Yes Boris can try to blame the EU if things have gone badly but if people are unemployed they will be focussed on who promises jobs not who is to blame.
A good lead; the only bit of evidence that jars with its thesis is a few of the ERG claiming they’d only supported the WA on a promise that it would be junked later.
Maybe they were just trying to claim this chaos had been the plan all along, and falling for that human tendency to claim to be on the inside even when you’re not? Or, if true, there is more to this story than simply Johnson not doing his homework?
It’s a very good header, thank you David.
There is some evidence that some MPs believed or were told that the WA could be changed later and voted for it on that basis without really understanding what it said and its implications. Utterly cynical and contemptuous of voters.
But that does not help matters now.
I see very few grounds for optimism.
Johnsons remarks to the Ulster Unionists in the GE campaign that they could chuck the paperwork in the bin shows that even before his "Oven Ready Deal" passed, he wasn't going to implement it. The lack of preparation and recruitment to Irish Sea customs confirms it.
I don't think there was ever any intention to honour it. I cannot see the point in announcing it now though, it could have been done after the Trade talks finished.
I think that forcing the EU to apply customs on a land border was the plan all along, and the WDA was just a way to postpone No Deal for a year, and more importantly an election. An explicit No Deal policy in Autumn 2019 would have been unlikely to have resulted in a Tory majority, and quite possibly would have been the end of Brexit too.
The WDA achieved what it was intended to, to get a Tory majority, and can be discarded now. Johnson never thinks of the consequences of his seducing, and Cummings cares nothing for the Conservative party. He just wants 4 years of revolutionary power so that he can smash as many British institutions as he can. He wants Humpty Dumpty to have a great fall.
Yes - that thesis is more credible than the one set out in the lead, and fits with three known character traits of Johnson - telling different things to different people depending on what they want to hear - saying whatever is needed to get out of the situation in front of him without regard to the future - and not feeling in the slightest bound by anything he has done or said before.
I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times.
The man is clearly a sociopath, and sociopathic leadership seldom ends well.
Johnson's utterings in his fanzine today are a dangerous fiction. To play fast and loose with Northern Ireland politics is either malign or stupid. Johnson's behaviour through the pandemic suggests he is probably both. An expensive education does not guarantee common sense.
I would avoid the character trait comparison with Hitler, but it seems we have our very own Idi Amin in the making. So not even a world beating totalitarian, more the pound shop version.
Johnson may have his failings but comparing him to monsters makes you look unbalanced
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
Boris can do anything he wants at the moment but it won't actually matter. The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
I am not so sure that the purple wall will be the epicentre of the next GE, it has been moving away from Labour for 2 decades. There may be some recovery, but more likely to be different battlegrounds.
Boris isn’t stupid. That’s not his problem. His problem is that he thinks he is cleverer than he is. He buys all his own piffle.
Classic emperor’s new clothes.
The hardest thing for people to learn is where the limits of their intelligence and knowledge is. Boris has never been in a position where he needed to learn this.
Nor has he learnt that there are consequences from lying as he has previously always managed to do well out of the fall out.
On the contrary he has learned that the consequences from lying are a great way to rise the Tory party ranks. He has even created an academy of liars in his cabinet to polish the clear lying talents of Shapps, Jendrick, Patel et al.
A query: The government says is bringing new laws in, with criminal sanctions, effective from Monday. I may be looking in the wrong place but I can't find anywhere the text of the new law/regulations. Can anyone help and provide a link? Thanks
...And so with Cummings’ record in government. He seems to suffer from a sort of inverse dysmorphia. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of the latest clusterfuck staring back, he sees a Steve Jobs or a Warren Buffett, or even a guy who remembers that the label is meant to go on the inside of his pants. As recently as January, Cummings was claiming there are “trillion dollar bills lying on the street” if you just knew how to run government properly. Has he found one yet? I bet you a trillion dollars he never does.
A query: The government says is bringing new laws in, with criminal sanctions, effective from Monday. I may be looking in the wrong place but I can't find anywhere the text of the new law/regulations. Can anyone help and provide a link? Thanks
In what parallel universe of coherent government are you living?
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
A good lead; the only bit of evidence that jars with its thesis is a few of the ERG claiming they’d only supported the WA on a promise that it would be junked later.
Maybe they were just trying to claim this chaos had been the plan all along, and falling for that human tendency to claim to be on the inside even when you’re not? Or, if true, there is more to this story than simply Johnson not doing his homework?
It’s a very good header, thank you David.
There is some evidence that some MPs believed or were told that the WA could be changed later and voted for it on that basis without really understanding what it said and its implications. Utterly cynical and contemptuous of voters.
But that does not help matters now.
I see very few grounds for optimism.
Johnsons remarks to the Ulster Unionists in the GE campaign that they could chuck the paperwork in the bin shows that even before his "Oven Ready Deal" passed, he wasn't going to implement it. The lack of preparation and recruitment to Irish Sea customs confirms it.
I don't think there was ever any intention to honour it. I cannot see the point in announcing it now though, it could have been done after the Trade talks finished.
I think that forcing the EU to apply customs on a land border was the plan all along, and the WDA was just a way to postpone No Deal for a year, and more importantly an election. An explicit No Deal policy in Autumn 2019 would have been unlikely to have resulted in a Tory majority, and quite possibly would have been the end of Brexit too.
The WDA achieved what it was intended to, to get a Tory majority, and can be discarded now. Johnson never thinks of the consequences of his seducing, and Cummings cares nothing for the Conservative party. He just wants 4 years of revolutionary power so that he can smash as many British institutions as he can. He wants Humpty Dumpty to have a great fall.
Yes - that thesis is more credible than the one set out in the lead, and fits with three known character traits of Johnson - telling different things to different people depending on what they want to hear - saying whatever is needed to get out of the situation in front of him without regard to the future - and not feeling in the slightest bound by anything he has done or said before.
I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times.
The man is clearly a sociopath, and sociopathic leadership seldom ends well.
Johnson's utterings in his fanzine today are a dangerous fiction. To play fast and loose with Northern Ireland politics is either malign or stupid. Johnson's behaviour through the pandemic suggests he is probably both. An expensive education does not guarantee common sense.
I would avoid the character trait comparison with Hitler, but it seems we have our very own Idi Amin in the making. So not even a world beating totalitarian, more the pound shop version.
Johnson may have his failings but comparing him to monsters makes you look unbalanced
I know, right? Even in the totalitarian hellscape of 1984, a Two Minutes Hate was sufficient to purge the darkest emotions of the populace, but here comes the Twenty-Four Hours Hate because ... Boris.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
Since the Brexit vote and Trump got in the liberal left have become gradually more deranged. Now anything right of centre is pure evil and they produce a never ending stream of anger and vitriol.
Go on any social media and the endless whinging is absurd, they've lost all sense of perspective.
The lefties on my facebook were even furious about the eat out to help out scheme because it encouraged obesity and therefore will cause more COVID deaths apparently. The fact that the same people were complaining about lack of government support for the hospitality industry before didn't seemed to matter.
A query: The government says is bringing new laws in, with criminal sanctions, effective from Monday. I may be looking in the wrong place but I can't find anywhere the text of the new law/regulations. Can anyone help and provide a link? Thanks
Mysteriously they don't appear to exist. There were Tory MPs complaining about it on Friday. Is it possible for them to introduce them retrospectively?
It is possible for both of these things to be true:
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them. - That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
Because he was telling the truth about the bill ? I don’t wildly disagree with your above comments, but the bill is a disastrous response to any such EU tactics.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
And his supporters.
I think that's more a chicken and egg kinda conundrum.
Very hard to disagree with any of this article. A qualification I would make however is that the Brexit mess we are in is not because of a sudden big dose of ideology, but insufficient little doses of ideology over the last 40 years. If we had been genuinely asked about the incremental change in the nature of the EU (as it now is) over the years this would never have happened. As it was many people ended up with a referendum choice where both were sub optimal.
A good lead; the only bit of evidence that jars with its thesis is a few of the ERG claiming they’d only supported the WA on a promise that it would be junked later.
Maybe they were just trying to claim this chaos had been the plan all along, and falling for that human tendency to claim to be on the inside even when you’re not? Or, if true, there is more to this story than simply Johnson not doing his homework?
It’s a very good header, thank you David.
There is some evidence that some MPs believed or were told that the WA could be changed later and voted for it on that basis without really understanding what it said and its implications. Utterly cynical and contemptuous of voters.
But that does not help matters now.
I see very few grounds for optimism.
Johnsons remarks to the Ulster Unionists in the GE campaign that they could chuck the paperwork in the bin shows that even before his "Oven Ready Deal" passed, he wasn't going to implement it. The lack of preparation and recruitment to Irish Sea customs confirms it.
I don't think there was ever any intention to honour it. I cannot see the point in announcing it now though, it could have been done after the Trade talks finished.
I think that forcing the EU to apply customs on a land border was the plan all along, and the WDA was just a way to postpone No Deal for a year, and more importantly an election. An explicit No Deal policy in Autumn 2019 would have been unlikely to have resulted in a Tory majority, and quite possibly would have been the end of Brexit too.
The WDA achieved what it was intended to, to get a Tory majority, and can be discarded now. Johnson never thinks of the consequences of his seducing, and Cummings cares nothing for the Conservative party. He just wants 4 years of revolutionary power so that he can smash as many British institutions as he can. He wants Humpty Dumpty to have a great fall.
Yes - that thesis is more credible than the one set out in the lead, and fits with three known character traits of Johnson - telling different things to different people depending on what they want to hear - saying whatever is needed to get out of the situation in front of him without regard to the future - and not feeling in the slightest bound by anything he has done or said before.
I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times.
The man is clearly a sociopath, and sociopathic leadership seldom ends well.
Johnson's utterings in his fanzine today are a dangerous fiction. To play fast and loose with Northern Ireland politics is either malign or stupid. Johnson's behaviour through the pandemic suggests he is probably both. An expensive education does not guarantee common sense.
I would avoid the character trait comparison with Hitler, but it seems we have our very own Idi Amin in the making. So not even a world beating totalitarian, more the pound shop version.
Johnson may have his failings but comparing him to monsters makes you look unbalanced
If you read carefully I expressly didn't compare him to the Charlie Chaplain tribute act.
Unbalanced? Just wait until I show you my "moonshot" plan.
Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
Boris can do anything he wants at the moment but it won't actually matter. The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
I am not so sure that the purple wall will be the epicentre of the next GE, it has been moving away from Labour for 2 decades. There may be some recovery, but more likely to be different battlegrounds.
Labour openly despises the white working class and everything they stand for, so it's not exactly a suprise that they are starting to vote elsewhere.
Lots of them voted for Brexit and have valid concerns over immigration, which makes them worse than Hitler to most on the left.
"We hate you vote for us" isn't the best political slogan.
Are they suggesting all normal government actions cease until the pandemic is over?
McConnell has failed to bring to a vote a series of bills relating to the pandemic and the economy that have passed the House.
That is the obvious point which those going to rather amusing lengths to parse what is in itself a harmless piece of legislative posturing seem unaware of.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
Since the Brexit vote and Trump got in the liberal left have become gradually more deranged. Now anything right of centre is pure evil and they produce a never ending stream of anger and vitriol.
Go on any social media and the endless whinging is absurd, they've lost all sense of perspective.
The lefties on my facebook were even furious about the eat out to help out scheme because it encouraged obesity and therefore will cause more COVID deaths apparently. The fact that the same people were complaining about lack of government support for the hospitality industry before didn't seemed to matter.
It may have escaped your notice that Johnson's critics extend far far beyond "Remainers and the liberal left". In fact some of his most vocal critics on here are also Brexiters of longstanding (and way before it ever came to be seen as a serious prospect).
FFS the Government's critics this week were led by Michael Howard!
A query: The government says is bringing new laws in, with criminal sanctions, effective from Monday. I may be looking in the wrong place but I can't find anywhere the text of the new law/regulations. Can anyone help and provide a link? Thanks
Mysteriously they don't appear to exist. There were Tory MPs complaining about it on Friday. Is it possible for them to introduce them retrospectively?
Thanks for this. It's a scandal that something you plan now to do on Monday may be a crime when the time comes in two days time and you have no way of knowing. As with all law the devil is not in the press release but in the text of the regulation.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
And his supporters.
I think that's more a chicken and egg kinda conundrum.
Gradual co-evolution is the answer. To chicken and egg, too.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
It is possible for both of these things to be true:
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them. - That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
Because he was telling the truth about the bill ? I don’t wildly disagree with your above comments, but the bill is a disastrous response to any such EU tactics.
The Government thought that admitting to breaking the law would actually be a political positive. Because breaking the law means setting themselves up in opposition to "remainer judges". As in:
"who determines the law?" "Lawyers and judges" "what unites lawyers and judges?" "Remainers!" "what should Brexit supporters do?" "Break the law!"
They must (should?) be seriously worried about the Daily Mail polling this morning...
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
Since the Brexit vote and Trump got in the liberal left have become gradually more deranged. Now anything right of centre is pure evil and they produce a never ending stream of anger and vitriol.
Go on any social media and the endless whinging is absurd, they've lost all sense of perspective.
The lefties on my facebook were even furious about the eat out to help out scheme because it encouraged obesity and therefore will cause more COVID deaths apparently. The fact that the same people were complaining about lack of government support for the hospitality industry before didn't seemed to matter.
It may have escaped your notice that Johnson's critics extend far far beyond "Remainers and the liberal left". In fact some of his most vocal critics on here are also Brexiters of longstanding (and way before it ever came to be seen as a serious prospect).
FFS the Government's critics this week were led by Michael Howard!
I'm not talking about criticisms of Boris about his current actions, I'm talking about the non-stop deranged bleating about anything and everything that is not left wing that has happened for the past 4 years.
And it's always very personal and nasty, such as saying Boris doesn't care for his own children. What sort of people make up stuff like that about people they've never met on a regular basis?
The same people would be doing this regardless of what Boris did this week.
2) The moonshot idea doesn't strike me as obviously bonkers, and if it works the people involved will look very good. It costs lot of money, but most of it is probably only paid if it's actually going ahead and producing tests, and if it's going ahead and producing tests then it's also saving an ungodly amount of money by solving the virus problem.
[..]
It isn't obviously bonkers but it is a distraction from what they need to do, which is to ramp up testing. This is principally a BAU, operational efficiency project, not a technology project.
Unfortunately this government seems incapable of setting clear objectives and delivering on them.
Similar with the Ventilator Challenge where they made a procurement project (how do you get the most equipment of the required standard as quickly as possible) into a design competition (give us your ideas and we will pick the best).
I think Johnson and Cumming go for the technology and design projects because they are more fun.
Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
Boris can do anything he wants at the moment but it won't actually matter. The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
I am not so sure that the purple wall will be the epicentre of the next GE, it has been moving away from Labour for 2 decades. There may be some recovery, but more likely to be different battlegrounds.
I probably should have been clearer, in the next election the Red Wall seats are not ones that Labour can win, they are seats that Labour will gain as / if the Tories lose them.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
Since the Brexit vote and Trump got in the liberal left have become gradually more deranged. Now anything right of centre is pure evil and they produce a never ending stream of anger and vitriol.
Go on any social media and the endless whinging is absurd, they've lost all sense of perspective.
The lefties on my facebook were even furious about the eat out to help out scheme because it encouraged obesity and therefore will cause more COVID deaths apparently. The fact that the same people were complaining about lack of government support for the hospitality industry before didn't seemed to matter.
90% of social media outrage is sourced from 1% of the population. They are the permanently riled.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
For all Mays faults she wouldn’t have even thought about breaking international law.
People defending Johnson refuse to look at the wider repercussions of doing that . This is not a Remainer v Leave argument , Johnson wants to make it that .
He’s now trying to re-open the divisions when there was a sense the country was moving on.
It’s been said before but can’t be stressed enough: no deal is not an end state. There will eventually be agreements; it’s just that we’ll be negotiating them through necessity and from a far weaker position.
I think that's the judgement call and it is not as straightforward as you think. If no deal really doesn't boil the oceans, melt the hills etc but does lead to some relatively minor inconveniences and, perhaps, a reduction in our huge trade deficit with the EU then the basis for negotiation becomes very different, a nice to have rather than something we need.
No sensible government, or even this one, is going to incur those inconveniences if it is not necessary and a straightforward deal for reciprocal access on the basis of common standards is still within reach but the EU are in danger of overplaying their hand and over estimating the value (at least as perceived by the UK government) of what they are offering.
Our government may also be underestimating the impact of no deal both in terms of the economy and in terms of their standing. The current tactics seem to me to be foolish bordering on stupid. What they should have done, and what Frost seemed to be setting up over the summer, was evidence that they had tried their best but the EU was just too intransigent. Setting fire to existing agreements makes that a somewhat difficult line to take.
A query: The government says is bringing new laws in, with criminal sanctions, effective from Monday. I may be looking in the wrong place but I can't find anywhere the text of the new law/regulations. Can anyone help and provide a link? Thanks
Mysteriously they don't appear to exist. There were Tory MPs complaining about it on Friday. Is it possible for them to introduce them retrospectively?
Thanks for this. It's a scandal that something you plan now to do on Monday may be a crime when the time comes in two days time and you have no way of knowing. As with all law the devil is not in the press release but in the text of the regulation.
I don't think this has bothered the Government much throughout this crisis. I read somewhere last week that there hadn't been a single case before the courts that had ruled for the Government/Crown when it had involved the Coronavirus Act. Most of the offences are resulting in fines, and very few receiving the fines have the inclination to contest the fines before the courts.
It's a thoroughly substandard piece of legislation if actually judged on successful prosecutions. It's something that Parliament is slowly starting to get exercised about and demanding more scrutiny. It was originally excepted as necessary to enable rapid ministerial decision making in a fast changing crisis situation. But now it's increasingly looking like a long haul problem the civil libertarians are getting more vociferous about the lack of input parliament is having into the process.
Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
Boris can do anything he wants at the moment but it won't actually matter. The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
I am not so sure that the purple wall will be the epicentre of the next GE, it has been moving away from Labour for 2 decades. There may be some recovery, but more likely to be different battlegrounds.
Labour openly despises the white working class and everything they stand for, so it's not exactly a suprise that they are starting to vote elsewhere.
Lots of them voted for Brexit and have valid concerns over immigration, which makes them worse than Hitler to most on the left.
"We hate you vote for us" isn't the best political slogan.
Interesting that Mr. Meeks used to hurl this very point at the Tories.
And then they got an 80 seat majority. And then he dropped it.
It may not have as much saliency as either side thinks.
...And so with Cummings’ record in government. He seems to suffer from a sort of inverse dysmorphia. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of the latest clusterfuck staring back, he sees a Steve Jobs or a Warren Buffett, or even a guy who remembers that the label is meant to go on the inside of his pants. As recently as January, Cummings was claiming there are “trillion dollar bills lying on the street” if you just knew how to run government properly. Has he found one yet? I bet you a trillion dollars he never does.
I don’t know. I think it quite possible he’ll pick one up - and we’ll be paying it for the next generation.
I'm extremely uneasy about the idea of having the state make strategic investments in businesses or startups. We have an absolutely amazing VC sector which does that already, we shouldn't make them compete with state funding and we also shouldn't be putting taxpayer money into inherently risky investments.
There's a reason working for a VC company is incredibly stressful, you're always one mistake away from getting the sack. I don't see any way for the state to replicate that kind of environment for employees, and it is a necessary one because of the nature of the investing required.
Finally, I also take issue with the idea that the UK will ever have $1tn tech companies, we don't have the right regulatory or monopoly rules in place for that to happen. If a UK listed company ever got to half that figure MPs would be opening up countless investigations into it and start forcing it to sell divisions or spin it's profitable divisions into separate entities etc... The UK is much more hostile towards megacorps than the US, the EU is as well.
The only thing the taxpayer is going to be left with is a trillion dollar bill that we're all going to pay for.
2) The moonshot idea doesn't strike me as obviously bonkers, and if it works the people involved will look very good. It costs lot of money, but most of it is probably only paid if it's actually going ahead and producing tests, and if it's going ahead and producing tests then it's also saving an ungodly amount of money by solving the virus problem.
[..]
It isn't obviously bonkers but it is a distraction from what they need to do, which is to ramp up testing. This is principally a BAU, operational efficiency project, not a technology project.
Unfortunately this government seems incapable of setting clear objectives and delivering on them.
Similar with the Ventilator Challenge where they made a procurement project (how do you get the most equipment of the required standard as quickly as possible) into a design competition (give us your ideas and we will pick the best).
I think Johnson and Cumming go for the technology and design projects because they are more fun.
Whilst agreeing with the original paragraph, referencing the ventilator challenge seems a bit strange seeing as that is widely seen as one of the best things the government achieved throughout the entire Coronavirus crisis.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
Since you ask, that I was an oddball and a misfit. Which was and is fair enough- temperament is like that. Which is why *that* report went viral- it chimed with what people saw of the adult Boris.
But you can block your ears by calling those with different views to you victims of derangement. If it makes you feel better.
...And so with Cummings’ record in government. He seems to suffer from a sort of inverse dysmorphia. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of the latest clusterfuck staring back, he sees a Steve Jobs or a Warren Buffett, or even a guy who remembers that the label is meant to go on the inside of his pants. As recently as January, Cummings was claiming there are “trillion dollar bills lying on the street” if you just knew how to run government properly. Has he found one yet? I bet you a trillion dollars he never does.
I don’t know. I think it quite possible he’ll pick one up - and we’ll be paying it for the next generation.
I'm extremely uneasy about the idea of having the state make strategic investments in businesses or startups. We have an absolutely amazing VC sector which does that already, we shouldn't make them compete with state funding and we also shouldn't be putting taxpayer money into inherently risky investments.
There's a reason working for a VC company is incredibly stressful, you're always one mistake away from getting the sack. I don't see any way for the state to replicate that kind of environment for employees, and it is a necessary one because of the nature of the investing required.
Finally, I also take issue with the idea that the UK will ever have $1tn tech companies, we don't have the right regulatory or monopoly rules in place for that to happen. If a UK listed company ever got to half that figure MPs would be opening up countless investigations into it and start forcing it to sell divisions or spin it's profitable divisions into separate entities etc... The UK is much more hostile towards megacorps than the US, the EU is as well.
The only thing the taxpayer is going to be left with is a trillion dollar bill that we're all going to pay for.
Government investment should be targeted at investing in the Infrastructure/setting the legislative framework that encourages private sector investment and allows it to flourish. Not picking winners.
...And so with Cummings’ record in government. He seems to suffer from a sort of inverse dysmorphia. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of the latest clusterfuck staring back, he sees a Steve Jobs or a Warren Buffett, or even a guy who remembers that the label is meant to go on the inside of his pants. As recently as January, Cummings was claiming there are “trillion dollar bills lying on the street” if you just knew how to run government properly. Has he found one yet? I bet you a trillion dollars he never does.
I don’t know. I think it quite possible he’ll pick one up - and we’ll be paying it for the next generation.
I'm extremely uneasy about the idea of having the state make strategic investments in businesses or startups. We have an absolutely amazing VC sector which does that already, we shouldn't make them compete with state funding and we also shouldn't be putting taxpayer money into inherently risky investments.
There's a reason working for a VC company is incredibly stressful, you're always one mistake away from getting the sack. I don't see any way for the state to replicate that kind of environment for employees, and it is a necessary one because of the nature of the investing required.
Finally, I also take issue with the idea that the UK will ever have $1tn tech companies, we don't have the right regulatory or monopoly rules in place for that to happen. If a UK listed company ever got to half that figure MPs would be opening up countless investigations into it and start forcing it to sell divisions or spin it's profitable divisions into separate entities etc... The UK is much more hostile towards megacorps than the US, the EU is as well.
The only thing the taxpayer is going to be left with is a trillion dollar bill that we're all going to pay for.
I agree.. The role of the state should be to facilitate the environment where people are minded to risk their own capital on a venture set up. So they should ensure that adequate internet infrastructure is in place, that the right courses are being taught at Universities and colleges, that the tax system is favourable to attracting that business, that sufficient accommodation is available to build the hubs that these types of businesses thrive on, that the law offers effective protection to IP, etc etc but that is then available to everyone so investing not some select few of chosen favourites.
Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
Boris can do anything he wants at the moment but it won't actually matter. The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
I am not so sure that the purple wall will be the epicentre of the next GE, it has been moving away from Labour for 2 decades. There may be some recovery, but more likely to be different battlegrounds.
Labour openly despises the white working class and everything they stand for, so it's not exactly a suprise that they are starting to vote elsewhere.
Lots of them voted for Brexit and have valid concerns over immigration, which makes them worse than Hitler to most on the left.
"We hate you vote for us" isn't the best political slogan.
Far be it for me to paint the Labour Party as a paragon of perfection, and there is an argument to say Labour locally and nationally (in the relatively short time they have ever been in government) have failed their base.
Your assertion however assumes the working class to be xenophobic little Englanders. I don't believe Labour are asking for, or expecting Tommy Robinson's support anytime soon.
Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
Boris can do anything he wants at the moment but it won't actually matter.
The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
Yes Boris can try to blame the EU if things have gone badly but if people are unemployed they will be focussed on who promises jobs not who is to blame.
I half agree. But I think it's not just the number of jobs, but the quality and pay of the jobs. If all the jobs are in Amazon warehouses, call centres or similar I suspect that will not go down well in the 'red wall'. Dignity at work is still a thing up north, I reckon.
I don't subscribe to any magazine at the moment but from the links I have read on here in recent months if I was to do so the Atlantic would be top of the list. Consistently good, informed journalism, it really puts the Economist to shame.
It is possible for both of these things to be true:
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them. - That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
Because he was telling the truth about the bill ? I don’t wildly disagree with your above comments, but the bill is a disastrous response to any such EU tactics.
That would be a novel tactic. Honesty to create an international incident is an uncommon approach.
On the bill - it would have been much better to wait until/if "the EU blocked food exports GB>NI" in which case the bill would have appeared a reasonable and proportionate response to unreasonable (even if "legal") behaviour.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
To my mind the serial adultery and child abandonment speaks for itself. When do you ever see a picture of Boris with his children from previous relationships?
Bozo and Brexit are too perfect together. Both are midlife crises being acted out in public.
Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
Boris can do anything he wants at the moment but it won't actually matter. The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
I am not so sure that the purple wall will be the epicentre of the next GE, it has been moving away from Labour for 2 decades. There may be some recovery, but more likely to be different battlegrounds.
Labour openly despises the white working class and everything they stand for, so it's not exactly a suprise that they are starting to vote elsewhere.
Lots of them voted for Brexit and have valid concerns over immigration, which makes them worse than Hitler to most on the left.
"We hate you vote for us" isn't the best political slogan.
Far be it for me to paint the Labour Party as a paragon of perfection, and there is an argument to say Labour locally and nationally (in the relatively short time they have ever been in government) have failed their base.
Your assertion however assumes the working class to be xenophobic little Englanders. I don't believe Labour are asking for, or expecting Tommy Robinson's support anytime soon.
Lol I said that they voted Brexit and have valid concerns with immigration and you immediately equate that with xenophobia and Tommy Robinson.
This is exactly the attitude that I was talking about and it's actually pretty scary.
Apart from the obvious observation that Brexit will never be "done" and we will never stop talking about it, is it cynical to suppose that in a week where Covid testing is a huge fiasco, and the back to school drive is in chaos, BoZo is happy to beat the Brexit drum again...
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
Kings what? I passed my eleven plus, doesn’t make me better than anyone else.
I had been wondering about these reports of people in Wales/England/Scotland being sent to test centres in Scotland/Wales/England. I had assumed that each constituent country was responsible for its own testing and therefore Scottish residents should be tested in Scotland, Welsh in Wales and English in England etc.
Is it actually the case that the UK Government are overseeing the whole testing process?
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
Don't really get what the Gov'ts game is over Northern Ireland. Is potential disruption to our internal single market (Irish sea checks) going to make signing free trade deals more difficult (Should we wish). The answer is emphatically 'no'. Both the GOP and the DEMs in the USA are keen on this particular aspect of our deal with the EU, and the EU itself is obviously hot on a deal the very same administration signed 8 months ago with it. Furthermore, we've got one signed with Japan (Which would have been concluded mostly before this brouhaha blew up). I can't think of a single world leader that has pointed to this part of the WA and said "We can't do a deal with the UK now because of potential Irish sea checks". Has Moon Jae-in, Scott Morrison, Jacinda Aherne or Modi come out with something about it ? I certainly don't recall it. It's a bizarre and uncompletely unneccessary front to open. The DUP was crossed the moment Johson signed the deal. Pleasing a small band of unionists isn't worth sacrificing Global Britain.
It is possible for both of these things to be true:
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them. - That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
Because he was telling the truth about the bill ? I don’t wildly disagree with your above comments, but the bill is a disastrous response to any such EU tactics.
That would be a novel tactic. Honesty to create an international incident is an uncommon approach.
On the bill - it would have been much better to wait until/if "the EU blocked food exports GB>NI" in which case the bill would have appeared a reasonable and proportionate response to unreasonable (even if "legal") behaviour.
It’s worth remembering that it was Priti Patel, current Home Secretary and ultra keen Brexiteer, who first suggested withholding food from the Irish in order to force them to back down over the backstop.
...And so with Cummings’ record in government. He seems to suffer from a sort of inverse dysmorphia. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of the latest clusterfuck staring back, he sees a Steve Jobs or a Warren Buffett, or even a guy who remembers that the label is meant to go on the inside of his pants. As recently as January, Cummings was claiming there are “trillion dollar bills lying on the street” if you just knew how to run government properly. Has he found one yet? I bet you a trillion dollars he never does.
I don’t know. I think it quite possible he’ll pick one up - and we’ll be paying it for the next generation.
I'm extremely uneasy about the idea of having the state make strategic investments in businesses or startups. We have an absolutely amazing VC sector which does that already, we shouldn't make them compete with state funding and we also shouldn't be putting taxpayer money into inherently risky investments.
There's a reason working for a VC company is incredibly stressful, you're always one mistake away from getting the sack. I don't see any way for the state to replicate that kind of environment for employees, and it is a necessary one because of the nature of the investing required.
Finally, I also take issue with the idea that the UK will ever have $1tn tech companies, we don't have the right regulatory or monopoly rules in place for that to happen. If a UK listed company ever got to half that figure MPs would be opening up countless investigations into it and start forcing it to sell divisions or spin it's profitable divisions into separate entities etc... The UK is much more hostile towards megacorps than the US, the EU is as well.
The only thing the taxpayer is going to be left with is a trillion dollar bill that we're all going to pay for.
I agree.. The role of the state should be to facilitate the environment where people are minded to risk their own capital on a venture set up. So they should ensure that adequate internet infrastructure is in place, that the right courses are being taught at Universities and colleges, that the tax system is favourable to attracting that business, that sufficient accommodation is available to build the hubs that these types of businesses thrive on, that the law offers effective protection to IP, etc etc but that is then available to everyone so investing not some select few of chosen favourites.
It is possible for both of these things to be true:
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them. - That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
Because he was telling the truth about the bill ? I don’t wildly disagree with your above comments, but the bill is a disastrous response to any such EU tactics.
That would be a novel tactic. Honesty to create an international incident is an uncommon approach.
On the bill - it would have been much better to wait until/if "the EU blocked food exports GB>NI" in which case the bill would have appeared a reasonable and proportionate response to unreasonable (even if "legal") behaviour.
The headlines also conjure up an image of the EU starving Northern Ireland for political purposes. When actually the Withdrawal agreement explicitly includes clauses allowing either side to act unilaterally in certain circumstances, where the application of the protocol lead to perverse and negative outcomes for the populations of the Island.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
That may be true. Thankfully that doesn't apply to us.
Right. Because the EU will be raring to admit a member with a hard border with England.....
They have two members that have a hard border with Russia and one with Turkey. So they do have some tolerance for abutting ethno-nationalist rogue states.
That was certainly the Gestapo's experience. People were falling over themselves to shop each other. The manpower of the Gestapo wasn't actually that large and so they were never able to follow up on the mountain of (largely spurious I guess) accusations of anti-Nazi activity.
Don't really get what the Gov'ts game is over Northern Ireland. Is potential disruption to our internal single market (Irish sea checks) going to make signing free trade deals more difficult (Should we wish). The answer is emphatically 'no'. Both the GOP and the DEMs in the USA are keen on this particular aspect of our deal with the EU, and the EU itself is obviously hot on a deal the very same administration signed 8 months ago with it. Furthermore, we've got one signed with Japan (Which would have been concluded mostly before this brouhaha blew up). I can't think of a single world leader that has pointed to this part of the WA and said "We can't do a deal with the UK now because of potential Irish sea checks". Has Moon Jae-in, Scott Morrison, Jacinda Aherne or Modi come out with something about it ? I certainly don't recall it. It's a bizarre and uncompletely unneccessary front to open. The DUP was crossed the moment Johson signed the deal. Pleasing a small band of unionists isn't worth sacrificing Global Britain.
It's not about Northern Ireland so much as it's about allowing politicians to give out state aid without restriction. This is to create more stealing opportunities for politicians, which is the entire point of Brexit.
That was certainly the Gestapo's experience. People were falling over themselves to shop each other. The manpower of the Gestapo wasn't actually that large and so they were never able to follow up on the mountain of (largely spurious I guess) accusations of anti-Nazi activity.
As longs as thousands of people shop Dominic Cummings it'll be worth it...
Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
Boris can do anything he wants at the moment but it won't actually matter. The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
I am not so sure that the purple wall will be the epicentre of the next GE, it has been moving away from Labour for 2 decades. There may be some recovery, but more likely to be different battlegrounds.
Labour openly despises the white working class and everything they stand for, so it's not exactly a suprise that they are starting to vote elsewhere.
Lots of them voted for Brexit and have valid concerns over immigration, which makes them worse than Hitler to most on the left.
"We hate you vote for us" isn't the best political slogan.
Far be it for me to paint the Labour Party as a paragon of perfection, and there is an argument to say Labour locally and nationally (in the relatively short time they have ever been in government) have failed their base.
Your assertion however assumes the working class to be xenophobic little Englanders. I don't believe Labour are asking for, or expecting Tommy Robinson's support anytime soon.
Lol I said that they voted Brexit and have valid concerns with immigration and you immediately equate that with xenophobia and Tommy Robinson.
This is exactly the attitude that I was talking about and it's actually pretty scary.
Because when backed into a corner Johnson feels the best way out is to scapegoat an appropriate group. He picks and choses his foe, depending on the spot of bother he finds himself in. He is divisive and he believes division works for him.
Yes I do have problems with Johnson's personality traits because they impact on my life and my family's wellbeing. Perhaps my biggest disappointment is that the Conservative Party have acquiesced to Johnson and brushed his quite appalling track record of deceit under the carpet. I have my doubts, but this week even loyal Tories like Michael Howard are ringing the alarm bells. We shall see.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
Kings what? I passed my eleven plus, doesn’t make me better than anyone else.
I am reliably told that November is still a likely date for first Ox-AZN vaccines in British arms. Front line workers only. Gradual roll out to other groups thereafter.
The puzzling thing to me is the government’s messaging. It’s all wrong. You might convince even me that the current wave of authoritarianism is ok if you are defining a near term end date with high probability.
Instead they talk about spending £100bn a year on testing as though the crisis is here forever. They speak only vaguely in highly caveated terms about a vaccine. They keep everyone in a state of constant fear about the “second wave”. An emotive and ill defined term that has entered our lexicon so suddenly that almost no one stops to think what it actually means.
The government have to get better at spelling out the temporary nature of this event, that without doubt we’ve already passed through the abyss and the brighter tomorrow is right around the corner.
Boris Johnson might not have died in that hospital room but the optimistic libertarian in him surely did.
Elsewhere on this thread this government is getting correctly panned over Brexit for either not thinking things through past the next couple of months or just lying about the obvious consequences of things shortly down the road.
I'm an optimistic libertarian as well but I don't see the point in spinning a cheerful message about how the end to the virus is just around the corner when nobody has the faintest idea how long it's going to take to get an end to the virus. People need to make plans for what's actually going to happen, and what's actually going to happen won't necessarily be what we want to happen.
It is a credible hypothesis that the virus seems to burn out when a given population hits a certain percentage of deaths per head, perhaps due to T Cell immunity that we are not testing for, and a bulge in excess mortality that will be largely (but far from entirely) smoothed our when looking at the period 2018-2022.
This hypothesis may of course prove to be entirely wrong. And even if it’s correct, it implies perhaps another equivalent dose of fatality as in 2020 (and possibly longcovid) before the UK as a whole gets to NYC levels.
But nevertheless it is not correct to say “no one has the faintest idea” when it will end. Our Prime Minister’s alma mater is sitting on unpublished data that apparently shows its vaccine has at least passable efficacy and is most likely safe enough for a wider roll out. And that the best informed money thinks such a rollout will begin this side of Xmas. Other vaccine approaches are racing through the process as well.
But instead on Cabinet PowerPoint slide #1 all we get is PUBLIC FEAR and on slide #2 VAPOURWARE £££.
That was certainly the Gestapo's experience. People were falling over themselves to shop each other. The manpower of the Gestapo wasn't actually that large and so they were never able to follow up on the mountain of (largely spurious I guess) accusations of anti-Nazi activity.
As longs as thousands of people shop Dominic Cummings it'll be worth it...
It is possible for both of these things to be true:
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them. - That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
Because he was telling the truth about the bill ? I don’t wildly disagree with your above comments, but the bill is a disastrous response to any such EU tactics.
That would be a novel tactic. Honesty to create an international incident is an uncommon approach.
On the bill - it would have been much better to wait until/if "the EU blocked food exports GB>NI" in which case the bill would have appeared a reasonable and proportionate response to unreasonable (even if "legal") behaviour.
The headlines also conjure up an image of the EU starving Northern Ireland for political purposes. When actually the Withdrawal agreement explicitly includes clauses allowing either side to act unilaterally in certain circumstances, where the application of the protocol lead to perverse and negative outcomes for the populations of the Island.
NI won't starve. They have an open land border with the EU. If UK supermarkets suspend their GB > NI deliveries / the NI logistics industry collapses, then foodstuffs will simply be shipped from south of the border.
Sticking a border down the Irish Sea was always a stupid idea. Even Shagger himself said so (when he wasn't too busy shagging). So why did he sign a deal to do so? Why did he make said deal an issue worth fighting a general election over?
It is possible for both of these things to be true:
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them. - That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
Because he was telling the truth about the bill ? I don’t wildly disagree with your above comments, but the bill is a disastrous response to any such EU tactics.
That would be a novel tactic. Honesty to create an international incident is an uncommon approach.
On the bill - it would have been much better to wait until/if "the EU blocked food exports GB>NI" in which case the bill would have appeared a reasonable and proportionate response to unreasonable (even if "legal") behaviour.
Quite. We are breaking the law and a treaty preemptively when the alternative of breaking the law and a treaty only if and when the theoretical circumstances arise is clearly sufficient protection.
Why? It is all about getting Brexit into the news and peoples minds, absolutely nothing to do with the reality of the treaty or protecting UK interests.
It is possible for both of these things to be true:
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them. - That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
Because he was telling the truth about the bill ? I don’t wildly disagree with your above comments, but the bill is a disastrous response to any such EU tactics.
That would be a novel tactic. Honesty to create an international incident is an uncommon approach.
On the bill - it would have been much better to wait until/if "the EU blocked food exports GB>NI" in which case the bill would have appeared a reasonable and proportionate response to unreasonable (even if "legal") behaviour.
The headlines also conjure up an image of the EU starving Northern Ireland for political purposes. When actually the Withdrawal agreement explicitly includes clauses allowing either side to act unilaterally in certain circumstances, where the application of the protocol lead to perverse and negative outcomes for the populations of the Island.
NI won't starve. They have an open land border with the EU. If UK supermarkets suspend their GB > NI deliveries / the NI logistics industry collapses, then foodstuffs will simply be shipped from south of the border.
Sticking a border down the Irish Sea was always a stupid idea. Even Shagger himself said so (when he wasn't too busy shagging). So why did he sign a deal to do so? Why did he make said deal an issue worth fighting a general election over?
Of course they won't starve. My point was that the Government are trying to conjure up images that they might to justify reneging on the Withdrawal Agreement. Even though the Withdrawal agreement itself explicitly contains clauses to allow unilateral action in the event that it might.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
To my mind the serial adultery and child abandonment speaks for itself. When do you ever see a picture of Boris with his children from previous relationships?
Bozo and Brexit are too perfect together. Both are midlife crises being acted out in public.
I'll just quote from this article, since it sets out the abundant historical precedents quite nicely:
'David Lloyd George was a womaniser all his life and in 1943, when he was eighty and to the great disapproval of his daughters, he married Frances Stevenson who had been principal among his bevy of mistresses since 1913.'
'William Gladstone enjoyed the company of London prostitutes – claiming that his aim was their reform – even after he had been made Prime Minister. He had a strange religious temperament which went with a taste for being whipped.'
'Ramsay Macdonald, puritanical, rigorous and austere had a fifteen years’ secret relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville which only a few close friends knew anything about. He wrote her hundreds of intimate letters and what a biographer described as “explicitly romantic poems.”'
'Melbourne also had a long affair with the society beauty Caroline Norton. The husband demanded £1400 which Melbourne refused to pay. The affair continued.'
'The military genius the Duke of Wellington who delivered us from Napoleon was famously described in a contemporary biography as “a cad and a rutting stag.” He married Kitty Pakenham but found her unattractive so he ran a string of mistresses including a princess, many high-born ladies and an ambassador’s wife.'
Etc. etc. etc. But I'm sure their ages were full of tedious, pettifogging moralizers too.
I had been wondering about these reports of people in Wales/England/Scotland being sent to test centres in Scotland/Wales/England. I had assumed that each constituent country was responsible for its own testing and therefore Scottish residents should be tested in Scotland, Welsh in Wales and English in England etc.
Is it actually the case that the UK Government are overseeing the whole testing process?
I read that curiously overloaded and overlong headline, at first glance, as "Johnson a threat to the integrity to the UK". and judging by this week's events I think the first glance was the right one.
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
It strikes me that is this were to become a thing it could transform people`s attitude to mask-wearing. Viral dose (not load) from now on then!
2) The moonshot idea doesn't strike me as obviously bonkers, and if it works the people involved will look very good. It costs lot of money, but most of it is probably only paid if it's actually going ahead and producing tests, and if it's going ahead and producing tests then it's also saving an ungodly amount of money by solving the virus problem.
[..]
It isn't obviously bonkers but it is a distraction from what they need to do, which is to ramp up testing. This is principally a BAU, operational efficiency project, not a technology project.
Unfortunately this government seems incapable of setting clear objectives and delivering on them.
Similar with the Ventilator Challenge where they made a procurement project (how do you get the most equipment of the required standard as quickly as possible) into a design competition (give us your ideas and we will pick the best).
I think Johnson and Cumming go for the technology and design projects because they are more fun.
Whilst agreeing with the original paragraph, referencing the ventilator challenge seems a bit strange seeing as that is widely seen as one of the best things the government achieved throughout the entire Coronavirus crisis.
You have set a pretty low bar there!
Ultimately the problem of the ventilator challenge was not the scrapheap challenge approach, nor the contemporaneous view that covid was principally a viral pneumonia, but rather a misunderstanding of what is needed in intensive care. The care of critically ill patients is much more than sticking a tube down, turning on the oxygen and pulling it out a fortnight later. The problem was always going to be limited by the numbers of ICU staff.
@NerysHughes is right that there were empty wards, and I said so at the time, the problem being that theatres and staff had been converted to use as overflow ICU, perhaps unduly in Winchester.
Skilled staff are pretty much always the limiting factor in health care delivery*. Unskilled staff we can get, and in this context an orthopaedic surgeon running a ventilator is unskilled, because the skillset is so different.
*which is why quality training is not in competition with service delivery. On the contrary it is the very foundation of a sustainable service.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
To my mind the serial adultery and child abandonment speaks for itself. When do you ever see a picture of Boris with his children from previous relationships?
Bozo and Brexit are too perfect together. Both are midlife crises being acted out in public.
I'll just quote from this article, since it sets out the abundant historical precedents quite nicely:
'David Lloyd George was a womaniser all his life and in 1943, when he was eighty and to the great disapproval of his daughters, he married Frances Stevenson who had been principal among his bevy of mistresses since 1913.'
'William Gladstone enjoyed the company of London prostitutes – claiming that his aim was their reform – even after he had been made Prime Minister. He had a strange religious temperament which went with a taste for being whipped.'
'Ramsay Macdonald, puritanical, rigorous and austere had a fifteen years’ secret relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville which only a few close friends knew anything about. He wrote her hundreds of intimate letters and what a biographer described as “explicitly romantic poems.”'
'Melbourne also had a long affair with the society beauty Caroline Norton. The husband demanded £1400 which Melbourne refused to pay. The affair continued.'
'The military genius the Duke of Wellington who delivered us from Napoleon was famously described in a contemporary biography as “a cad and a rutting stag.” He married Kitty Pakenham but found her unattractive so he ran a string of mistresses including a princess, many high-born ladies and an ambassador’s wife.'
Etc. etc. etc. But I'm sure their ages were full of tedious, pettifogging moralizers too.
Comments
The next election is 3 years away - if Brexit has delivered jobs in the Red Wall seats the Tories will win those seats again, if the opposite occurs the Tories will lose those seats.
Yes Boris can try to blame the EU if things have gone badly but if people are unemployed they will be focussed on who promises jobs not who is to blame.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
I think it quite possible he’ll pick one up - and we’ll be paying it for the next generation.
I know, right? Even in the totalitarian hellscape of 1984, a Two Minutes Hate was sufficient to purge the darkest emotions of the populace, but here comes the Twenty-Four Hours Hate because ... Boris.
Go on any social media and the endless whinging is absurd, they've lost all sense of perspective.
The lefties on my facebook were even furious about the eat out to help out scheme because it encouraged obesity and therefore will cause more COVID deaths apparently. The fact that the same people were complaining about lack of government support for the hospitality industry before didn't seemed to matter.
I don’t wildly disagree with your above comments, but the bill is a disastrous response to any such EU tactics.
Unbalanced? Just wait until I show you my "moonshot" plan.
Lots of them voted for Brexit and have valid concerns over immigration, which makes them worse than Hitler to most on the left.
"We hate you vote for us" isn't the best political slogan.
FFS the Government's critics this week were led by Michael Howard!
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
"who determines the law?"
"Lawyers and judges"
"what unites lawyers and judges?"
"Remainers!"
"what should Brexit supporters do?"
"Break the law!"
They must (should?) be seriously worried about the Daily Mail polling this morning...
And it's always very personal and nasty, such as saying Boris doesn't care for his own children. What sort of people make up stuff like that about people they've never met on a regular basis?
The same people would be doing this regardless of what Boris did this week.
Unfortunately this government seems incapable of setting clear objectives and delivering on them.
Similar with the Ventilator Challenge where they made a procurement project (how do you get the most equipment of the required standard as quickly as possible) into a design competition (give us your ideas and we will pick the best).
I think Johnson and Cumming go for the technology and design projects because they are more fun.
Ignore them.
People defending Johnson refuse to look at the wider repercussions of doing that . This is not a Remainer v Leave argument , Johnson wants to make it that .
He’s now trying to re-open the divisions when there was a sense the country was moving on.
No sensible government, or even this one, is going to incur those inconveniences if it is not necessary and a straightforward deal for reciprocal access on the basis of common standards is still within reach but the EU are in danger of overplaying their hand and over estimating the value (at least as perceived by the UK government) of what they are offering.
Our government may also be underestimating the impact of no deal both in terms of the economy and in terms of their standing. The current tactics seem to me to be foolish bordering on stupid. What they should have done, and what Frost seemed to be setting up over the summer, was evidence that they had tried their best but the EU was just too intransigent. Setting fire to existing agreements makes that a somewhat difficult line to take.
It's a thoroughly substandard piece of legislation if actually judged on successful prosecutions. It's something that Parliament is slowly starting to get exercised about and demanding more scrutiny. It was originally excepted as necessary to enable rapid ministerial decision making in a fast changing crisis situation. But now it's increasingly looking like a long haul problem the civil libertarians are getting more vociferous about the lack of input parliament is having into the process.
And then they got an 80 seat majority. And then he dropped it.
It may not have as much saliency as either side thinks.
7th is ours!
There's a reason working for a VC company is incredibly stressful, you're always one mistake away from getting the sack. I don't see any way for the state to replicate that kind of environment for employees, and it is a necessary one because of the nature of the investing required.
Finally, I also take issue with the idea that the UK will ever have $1tn tech companies, we don't have the right regulatory or monopoly rules in place for that to happen. If a UK listed company ever got to half that figure MPs would be opening up countless investigations into it and start forcing it to sell divisions or spin it's profitable divisions into separate entities etc... The UK is much more hostile towards megacorps than the US, the EU is as well.
The only thing the taxpayer is going to be left with is a trillion dollar bill that we're all going to pay for.
Of course, the EU could pick up that subsidy. Yeah - good luck with that....
The code to join this league is: sgihdm
Remove that sock from yer pants.
But you can block your ears by calling those with different views to you victims of derangement. If it makes you feel better.
Your assertion however assumes the working class to be xenophobic little Englanders. I don't believe Labour are asking for, or expecting Tommy Robinson's support anytime soon.
On the bill - it would have been much better to wait until/if "the EU blocked food exports GB>NI" in which case the bill would have appeared a reasonable and proportionate response to unreasonable (even if "legal") behaviour.
Bozo and Brexit are too perfect together. Both are midlife crises being acted out in public.
This is exactly the attitude that I was talking about and it's actually pretty scary.
Apart from the obvious observation that Brexit will never be "done" and we will never stop talking about it, is it cynical to suppose that in a week where Covid testing is a huge fiasco, and the back to school drive is in chaos, BoZo is happy to beat the Brexit drum again...
Is it actually the case that the UK Government are overseeing the whole testing process?
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though.
Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be.
Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1304701556525273088
https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1304611043428139011
Particularly shocking are the spelling errors.
Furthermore, we've got one signed with Japan (Which would have been concluded mostly before this brouhaha blew up). I can't think of a single world leader that has pointed to this part of the WA and said "We can't do a deal with the UK now because of potential Irish sea checks". Has Moon Jae-in, Scott Morrison, Jacinda Aherne or Modi come out with something about it ? I certainly don't recall it. It's a bizarre and uncompletely unneccessary front to open.
The DUP was crossed the moment Johson signed the deal. Pleasing a small band of unionists isn't worth sacrificing Global Britain.
https://www.thejournal.ie/brexit-threat-food-shortages-ireland-4381228-Dec2018/
That was certainly the Gestapo's experience. People were falling over themselves to shop each other. The manpower of the Gestapo wasn't actually that large and so they were never able to follow up on the mountain of (largely spurious I guess) accusations of anti-Nazi activity.
Yes I do have problems with Johnson's personality traits because they impact on my life and my family's wellbeing. Perhaps my biggest disappointment is that the Conservative Party have acquiesced to Johnson and brushed his quite appalling track record of deceit under the carpet. I have my doubts, but this week even loyal Tories like Michael Howard are ringing the alarm bells. We shall see.
https://www.etoncollege.com/admissions/scholarships-and-awards/kings-scholarships/
You can test yourself on the past papers at the bottom of the page.
This hypothesis may of course prove to be entirely wrong. And even if it’s correct, it implies perhaps another equivalent dose of fatality as in 2020 (and possibly longcovid) before the UK as a whole gets to NYC levels.
But nevertheless it is not correct to say “no one has the faintest idea” when it will end. Our Prime Minister’s alma mater is sitting on unpublished data that apparently shows its vaccine has at least passable efficacy and is most likely safe enough for a wider roll out. And that the best informed money thinks such a rollout will begin this side of Xmas. Other vaccine approaches are racing through the process as well.
But instead on Cabinet PowerPoint slide #1 all we get is PUBLIC FEAR and on slide #2 VAPOURWARE £££.
It’s utterly bemusing to me.
Sticking a border down the Irish Sea was always a stupid idea. Even Shagger himself said so (when he wasn't too busy shagging). So why did he sign a deal to do so? Why did he make said deal an issue worth fighting a general election over?
Why? It is all about getting Brexit into the news and peoples minds, absolutely nothing to do with the reality of the treaty or protecting UK interests.
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1304705114637316096?s=20
https://www.salisburyreview.com/articles/a-short-history-of-the-sex-lives-of-britains-prime-ministers/
'David Lloyd George was a womaniser all his life and in 1943, when he was eighty and to the great disapproval of his daughters, he married Frances Stevenson who had been principal among his bevy of mistresses since 1913.'
'William Gladstone enjoyed the company of London prostitutes – claiming that his aim was their reform – even after he had been made Prime Minister. He had a strange religious temperament which went with a taste for being whipped.'
'Ramsay Macdonald, puritanical, rigorous and austere had a fifteen years’ secret relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville which only a few close friends knew anything about. He wrote her hundreds of intimate letters and what a biographer described as “explicitly romantic poems.”'
'Melbourne also had a long affair with the society beauty Caroline Norton. The husband demanded £1400 which Melbourne refused to pay. The affair continued.'
'The military genius the Duke of Wellington who delivered us from Napoleon was famously described in a contemporary biography as “a cad and a rutting stag.” He married Kitty Pakenham but found her unattractive so he ran a string of mistresses including a princess, many high-born ladies and an ambassador’s wife.'
Etc. etc. etc. But I'm sure their ages were full of tedious, pettifogging moralizers too.
https://twitter.com/TheScepticIsle/status/1304705587402477568
The blame for this rests solely on those who wanted it, advocated it, campaigned for it and voted for it.
You won.
SUCK IT UP...
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing
Does anyone have data on the number of tests per day for other countries ?
Ultimately the problem of the ventilator challenge was not the scrapheap challenge approach, nor the contemporaneous view that covid was principally a viral pneumonia, but rather a misunderstanding of what is needed in intensive care. The care of critically ill patients is much more than sticking a tube down, turning on the oxygen and pulling it out a fortnight later. The problem was always going to be limited by the numbers of ICU staff.
@NerysHughes is right that there were empty wards, and I said so at the time, the problem being that theatres and staff had been converted to use as overflow ICU, perhaps unduly in Winchester.
Skilled staff are pretty much always the limiting factor in health care delivery*. Unskilled staff we can get, and in this context an orthopaedic surgeon running a ventilator is unskilled, because the skillset is so different.
*which is why quality training is not in competition with service delivery. On the contrary it is the very foundation of a sustainable service.