Shagger will do his very best to avoid any kind of national lockdown, and then his very best to avoid doing it now. Once again we hear that care homes are being told they will have to take covid-positive residents back from hospitals. Once again we have no way to track the infected once identified. What will be different this time though is that "go to work don't go to work" which was a funny Matt Lucas spoof last time is just the accepted normal now.
"What happened to the Rule of Six" was asked above - it fell apart before launch because of its inherent contradictions and screamingly hypocritical exceptions. The major difference this time is that people don't give a shit having been conditioned to accept that the government doesn't have a clue what it's doing. Perhaps this was the Cummings Herd Immunity master plan: make people utterly distrustful of the institution of government so that you can do herd immunity by default and reshape the state to your own plan.
If it's any consolation the lovely Scots people I met up here in Skye have no clue what the Scottish government's rules really mean, either. Rule of six, but two households, on a croquet lawn, wearing cellophane? You what?
Sturgeon is generally quite popular in a Merkel-esque kind of way (female, cautious, boring, reliable). I am entirely unsure she is the firebrand needed to lead Scotland to Indy. She does not inspire, she calms - a bit.
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
You think he didn't foresee the inflation thing? He's a clever cookie. It widens his choices - he can save a shedload on govt index linked obligations, or look personally bountiful by waiving the effect of eotho, or a mixture (waive for wages, not for indexed bonds).
No not inflation, I refer to it perhaps causing the idea of the virus having gone away and putting into place the idea to ignore social distancing. Perhaps I'm reaching.
I think so. The absence of significant numbers of cases and deaths were causing people to get out more anyway.
People won't live locked down forever, VE Day weekend when it was gloriously sunny and we were still in lockdown is when it began to end for me, most houses on my street were out in their gardens and at least half of them had visitors despite it being illegal still at the time.
The problem is that this attitude - and I accept I might be reaching - leads to cases going up again.
The Government clearly thinks this is an issue, hence their change in tack this week.
I just don't see how we avoid the economy being in a hole for a long period of time and I can only blame Government incompetence for that. They started briefing about getting back to work, they decided to let groups of 30 meet, they said get out and use the pubs.
We will see what happens - but I think perhaps people being scared to go out might be seen as better in the long term
The Government is being responsible. The fact is they're caught trying to deal with an irresistable force and an immoveable objection simultaneously. They're trying to deal with COVID19 and the Economy, its not possible to deal with one and not the other which leads to "inconsistencies".
If you try and only deal with one issue then you can be clear and simple and consistent . . . and the rest of society will burn as a result.
Pardon me. But why don't they just say that then? Problem is they wanted the economy to return to "normal" just three short weeks ago. And that it was "completely safe" to do so. They gave the distinct Impression it was over. They now seem staggered that this has led to an uptick in the virus. That it is a trade-off is blindingly obvious to most on here. Difficult choices need to be made. But they have never communicated that. Indeed, I have heard people say "when we had the pandemic." At the same time the world was recording record infections. But the government has always preferred cakeism to levelling about the facts.
I can't speak for others, but the fact that there is a trade off has always been clear and made clear to me.
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
Trollope!
I only asked.
I confess I was a bit pleased with this
Now your username becomes clear...
Yep - you got it. 'Planty Pall' would have avoided any cycling confusion.
Shagger will do his very best to avoid any kind of national lockdown, and then his very best to avoid doing it now. Once again we hear that care homes are being told they will have to take covid-positive residents back from hospitals. Once again we have no way to track the infected once identified. What will be different this time though is that "go to work don't go to work" which was a funny Matt Lucas spoof last time is just the accepted normal now.
"What happened to the Rule of Six" was asked above - it fell apart before launch because of its inherent contradictions and screamingly hypocritical exceptions. The major difference this time is that people don't give a shit having been conditioned to accept that the government doesn't have a clue what it's doing. Perhaps this was the Cummings Herd Immunity master plan: make people utterly distrustful of the institution of government so that you can do herd immunity by default and reshape the state to your own plan.
If it's any consolation the lovely Scots people I met up here in Skye have no clue what the Scottish government's rules really mean, either. Rule of six, but two households, on a croquet lawn, wearing cellophane? You what?
Sturgeon is generally quite popular in a Merkel-esque kind of way (female, cautious, boring, reliable). I am entirely unsure she is the firebrand needed to lead Scotland to Indy. She does not inspire, she calms - a bit.
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
Shagger will do his very best to avoid any kind of national lockdown, and then his very best to avoid doing it now. Once again we hear that care homes are being told they will have to take covid-positive residents back from hospitals. Once again we have no way to track the infected once identified. What will be different this time though is that "go to work don't go to work" which was a funny Matt Lucas spoof last time is just the accepted normal now.
"What happened to the Rule of Six" was asked above - it fell apart before launch because of its inherent contradictions and screamingly hypocritical exceptions. The major difference this time is that people don't give a shit having been conditioned to accept that the government doesn't have a clue what it's doing. Perhaps this was the Cummings Herd Immunity master plan: make people utterly distrustful of the institution of government so that you can do herd immunity by default and reshape the state to your own plan.
If it's any consolation the lovely Scots people I met up here in Skye have no clue what the Scottish government's rules really mean, either. Rule of six, but two households, on a croquet lawn, wearing cellophane? You what?
Sturgeon is generally quite popular in a Merkel-esque kind of way (female, cautious, boring, reliable). I am entirely unsure she is the firebrand needed to lead Scotland to Indy. She does not inspire, she calms - a bit.
Yougov shows the Tories dropping to 40% from 44.7% across GB last December.
Yes they have lost 5% to Labour and 5% to the Brexit Party from their 2019 vote.
Labour have lost 4% to the Greens and 3% to the Tories and 43% of 2019 LDs are now voting Labour
n On the basis of this particular poll the Tories havw lost just over 10% of theit December 2019 vote share.
Yes they would lose their majority but still be largest party in a hung parliament however Starmer would have enough seats to become PM with SNP and LD support
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
In the short term he will remain popular. If Johnson has already pulled the trigger on no deal, he is probably stuffed regardless.
Don't listen to the 'inflation is a positive', arguments either. I remember the late seventies and eighties. High interest rates will follow too. Circa 1991 my mortgage was around 18%. If that sort of rate returns you can use TSE's 'Stepmom on Pornhub' idea to explain that one away.
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
In the short term he will remain popular. If Johnson has already pulled the trigger on no deal, he is probably stuffed regardless.
Don't listen to the 'inflation is a positive', arguments either. I remember the late seventies and eighties. High interest rates will follow too. Circa 1991 my mortgage was around 18%. If that sort of rate returns you can use TSE's 'Stepmom on Pornhub' idea to explain that one away.
Stepmom on Pornhub, I'm sorry?
When something is very bad/a bad outcome is looming, I use the phrase '[we're] more fucked than a stepmom on pornhub.'
Shagger will do his very best to avoid any kind of national lockdown, and then his very best to avoid doing it now. Once again we hear that care homes are being told they will have to take covid-positive residents back from hospitals. Once again we have no way to track the infected once identified. What will be different this time though is that "go to work don't go to work" which was a funny Matt Lucas spoof last time is just the accepted normal now.
"What happened to the Rule of Six" was asked above - it fell apart before launch because of its inherent contradictions and screamingly hypocritical exceptions. The major difference this time is that people don't give a shit having been conditioned to accept that the government doesn't have a clue what it's doing. Perhaps this was the Cummings Herd Immunity master plan: make people utterly distrustful of the institution of government so that you can do herd immunity by default and reshape the state to your own plan.
If it's any consolation the lovely Scots people I met up here in Skye have no clue what the Scottish government's rules really mean, either. Rule of six, but two households, on a croquet lawn, wearing cellophane? You what?
Sturgeon is generally quite popular in a Merkel-esque kind of way (female, cautious, boring, reliable). I am entirely unsure she is the firebrand needed to lead Scotland to Indy. She does not inspire, she calms - a bit.
Yougov shows the Tories dropping to 40% from 44.7% across GB last December.
Yes they have lost 5% to Labour and 5% to the Brexit Party from their 2019 vote.
Labour have lost 4% to the Greens and 3% to the Tories and 43% of 2019 LDs are now voting Labour
n On the basis of this particular poll the Tories havw lost just over 10% of theit December 2019 vote share.
Yes they would lose their majority but still be largest party in a hung parliament however Starmer would have enough seats to become PM with SNP and LD support
Whilst Labour is up 7% to 40% , it is still 1% below its 2017 GB vote share.
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
You think he didn't foresee the inflation thing? He's a clever cookie. It widens his choices - he can save a shedload on govt index linked obligations, or look personally bountiful by waiving the effect of eotho, or a mixture (waive for wages, not for indexed bonds).
No not inflation, I refer to it perhaps causing the idea of the virus having gone away and putting into place the idea to ignore social distancing. Perhaps I'm reaching.
I think so. The absence of significant numbers of cases and deaths were causing people to get out more anyway.
People won't live locked down forever, VE Day weekend when it was gloriously sunny and we were still in lockdown is when it began to end for me, most houses on my street were out in their gardens and at least half of them had visitors despite it being illegal still at the time.
The problem is that this attitude - and I accept I might be reaching - leads to cases going up again.
The Government clearly thinks this is an issue, hence their change in tack this week.
I just don't see how we avoid the economy being in a hole for a long period of time and I can only blame Government incompetence for that. They started briefing about getting back to work, they decided to let groups of 30 meet, they said get out and use the pubs.
We will see what happens - but I think perhaps people being scared to go out might be seen as better in the long term
The Government is being responsible. The fact is they're caught trying to deal with an irresistable force and an immoveable objection simultaneously. They're trying to deal with COVID19 and the Economy, its not possible to deal with one and not the other which leads to "inconsistencies".
If you try and only deal with one issue then you can be clear and simple and consistent . . . and the rest of society will burn as a result.
Pardon me. But why don't they just say that then? Problem is they wanted the economy to return to "normal" just three short weeks ago. And that it was "completely safe" to do so. They gave the distinct Impression it was over. They now seem staggered that this has led to an uptick in the virus. That it is a trade-off is blindingly obvious to most on here. Difficult choices need to be made. But they have never communicated that. Indeed, I have heard people say "when we had the pandemic." At the same time the world was recording record infections. But the government has always preferred cakeism to levelling about the facts.
I can't speak for others, but the fact that there is a trade off has always been clear and made clear to me.
Although it seems it is not the planned reopening of the economy that caused the uptick, but consequent human behaviour. If we were all still socialising in pub gardens in groups of no more than 6 then we might not be in the position we are now.
Shagger will do his very best to avoid any kind of national lockdown, and then his very best to avoid doing it now. Once again we hear that care homes are being told they will have to take covid-positive residents back from hospitals. Once again we have no way to track the infected once identified. What will be different this time though is that "go to work don't go to work" which was a funny Matt Lucas spoof last time is just the accepted normal now.
"What happened to the Rule of Six" was asked above - it fell apart before launch because of its inherent contradictions and screamingly hypocritical exceptions. The major difference this time is that people don't give a shit having been conditioned to accept that the government doesn't have a clue what it's doing. Perhaps this was the Cummings Herd Immunity master plan: make people utterly distrustful of the institution of government so that you can do herd immunity by default and reshape the state to your own plan.
If it's any consolation the lovely Scots people I met up here in Skye have no clue what the Scottish government's rules really mean, either. Rule of six, but two households, on a croquet lawn, wearing cellophane? You what?
Sturgeon is generally quite popular in a Merkel-esque kind of way (female, cautious, boring, reliable). I am entirely unsure she is the firebrand needed to lead Scotland to Indy. She does not inspire, she calms - a bit.
Yougov shows the Tories dropping to 40% from 44.7% across GB last December.
Yes they have lost 5% to Labour and 5% to the Brexit Party from their 2019 vote.
Labour have lost 4% to the Greens and 3% to the Tories and 43% of 2019 LDs are now voting Labour
n On the basis of this particular poll the Tories havw lost just over 10% of theit December 2019 vote share.
Yes they would lose their majority but still be largest party in a hung parliament however Starmer would have enough seats to become PM with SNP and LD support
Whilst Labour is up 7% to 40% , it is still 1% below its 2017 GB vote share.
Partly because while it has won back voters lost to the LDs in 2019 and a few voters lost to the Tories it has still not regained voters it lost from 2017 to 2019 to the SNP
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
You think he didn't foresee the inflation thing? He's a clever cookie. It widens his choices - he can save a shedload on govt index linked obligations, or look personally bountiful by waiving the effect of eotho, or a mixture (waive for wages, not for indexed bonds).
No not inflation, I refer to it perhaps causing the idea of the virus having gone away and putting into place the idea to ignore social distancing. Perhaps I'm reaching.
I think so. The absence of significant numbers of cases and deaths were causing people to get out more anyway.
People won't live locked down forever, VE Day weekend when it was gloriously sunny and we were still in lockdown is when it began to end for me, most houses on my street were out in their gardens and at least half of them had visitors despite it being illegal still at the time.
The problem is that this attitude - and I accept I might be reaching - leads to cases going up again.
The Government clearly thinks this is an issue, hence their change in tack this week.
I just don't see how we avoid the economy being in a hole for a long period of time and I can only blame Government incompetence for that. They started briefing about getting back to work, they decided to let groups of 30 meet, they said get out and use the pubs.
We will see what happens - but I think perhaps people being scared to go out might be seen as better in the long term
It would be interesting to know what has caused the recent rapid growth in cases, after all we spent several weeks after 4 July with cases going nowhere. Given that people are talking about recent local spikes being due to household transmission, I guess it might have been allowing 30 people to mix. I've had no people in my flat since March apart from some heating engineers (which was a bit of a necessity) and have been to half a dozen garden socials so I'm at a bit of a loss as to why people feel the need to huddle together in each others' houses. Just grow up and learn to stand on your own two feet.
Why don’t you grow up and let other people live how they want in their own homes
In Spain family/friends social gatherings are one of the main drivers of the increased infection rates.
You miss the point. I and many others don’t care any more.
Why do you not care? I know you have secret insider knowledge about the imminent availability of a vaccine but even so surely it is worth keeping a lid on it until it is available?
Because I look at the evidence which indicates that this is not a Justinian plague as originally feared but something that causes perhaps 8 weeks of excess mortality, and potentially a post viral syndrome with as yet unspecified severity, prevalence and duration.
The vaccine is useful not because it’s something that magically saves half a million lives in the UK (although it will of course save lives) but because without it the unthinking multitudes will remain too fearful to notice what’s been taken away from them.
Friend of mine still has effects from the virus - 50ish years old, fit as a fiddle; no pre-existing conditions
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
Trollope!
I only asked.
I confess I was a bit pleased with this
There must be many examples.
Grahame Greene was related to Robert Louis Stevenson for example.
Dick Francis and Felix Francis, for a given value of ‘writer.’
Robert Graves and his father.
Nevil Shute’s father also wrote at least one novel.
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft say hi.
Jules and Michel Verne.
Alexandre Dumas pere and fils.
Edit - how about Leonard and Aldous Huxley? Not quite sure whether Leonard would count?
Anyway, I think we’ve established Amis was talking bollocks.
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
You think he didn't foresee the inflation thing? He's a clever cookie. It widens his choices - he can save a shedload on govt index linked obligations, or look personally bountiful by waiving the effect of eotho, or a mixture (waive for wages, not for indexed bonds).
No not inflation, I refer to it perhaps causing the idea of the virus having gone away and putting into place the idea to ignore social distancing. Perhaps I'm reaching.
I think so. The absence of significant numbers of cases and deaths were causing people to get out more anyway.
People won't live locked down forever, VE Day weekend when it was gloriously sunny and we were still in lockdown is when it began to end for me, most houses on my street were out in their gardens and at least half of them had visitors despite it being illegal still at the time.
The problem is that this attitude - and I accept I might be reaching - leads to cases going up again.
The Government clearly thinks this is an issue, hence their change in tack this week.
I just don't see how we avoid the economy being in a hole for a long period of time and I can only blame Government incompetence for that. They started briefing about getting back to work, they decided to let groups of 30 meet, they said get out and use the pubs.
We will see what happens - but I think perhaps people being scared to go out might be seen as better in the long term
It would be interesting to know what has caused the recent rapid growth in cases, after all we spent several weeks after 4 July with cases going nowhere. Given that people are talking about recent local spikes being due to household transmission, I guess it might have been allowing 30 people to mix. I've had no people in my flat since March apart from some heating engineers (which was a bit of a necessity) and have been to half a dozen garden socials so I'm at a bit of a loss as to why people feel the need to huddle together in each others' houses. Just grow up and learn to stand on your own two feet.
Why don’t you grow up and let other people live how they want in their own homes
In Spain family/friends social gatherings are one of the main drivers of the increased infection rates.
You miss the point. I and many others don’t care any more.
Why do you not care? I know you have secret insider knowledge about the imminent availability of a vaccine but even so surely it is worth keeping a lid on it until it is available?
Because I look at the evidence which indicates that this is not a Justinian plague as originally feared but something that causes perhaps 8 weeks of excess mortality, and potentially a post viral syndrome with as yet unspecified severity, prevalence and duration.
The vaccine is useful not because it’s something that magically saves half a million lives in the UK (although it will of course save lives) but because without it the unthinking multitudes will remain too fearful to notice what’s been taken away from them.
BECAUSE WE LOCKED DOWN!
How is this so difficult to understand
Look, here is Georgia.
Does this look like 8 week of Excess Mortality? In August in Georgia on average 112 people die a day. They hit 83 Covid deaths on a single day. Four months after the first peak in April.
Eight fucking week. There's a reason Covid Deniers are called Covid Deniers.
About blooming time! Guernsey, two cases in 4 months, both from recent arrivals in self quarantine. Also fines up to £10,000 - levied over the last 6 months. Very little popular sympathy for transgressors.
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
You think he didn't foresee the inflation thing? He's a clever cookie. It widens his choices - he can save a shedload on govt index linked obligations, or look personally bountiful by waiving the effect of eotho, or a mixture (waive for wages, not for indexed bonds).
No not inflation, I refer to it perhaps causing the idea of the virus having gone away and putting into place the idea to ignore social distancing. Perhaps I'm reaching.
I think so. The absence of significant numbers of cases and deaths were causing people to get out more anyway.
People won't live locked down forever, VE Day weekend when it was gloriously sunny and we were still in lockdown is when it began to end for me, most houses on my street were out in their gardens and at least half of them had visitors despite it being illegal still at the time.
The problem is that this attitude - and I accept I might be reaching - leads to cases going up again.
The Government clearly thinks this is an issue, hence their change in tack this week.
I just don't see how we avoid the economy being in a hole for a long period of time and I can only blame Government incompetence for that. They started briefing about getting back to work, they decided to let groups of 30 meet, they said get out and use the pubs.
We will see what happens - but I think perhaps people being scared to go out might be seen as better in the long term
It would be interesting to know what has caused the recent rapid growth in cases, after all we spent several weeks after 4 July with cases going nowhere. Given that people are talking about recent local spikes being due to household transmission, I guess it might have been allowing 30 people to mix. I've had no people in my flat since March apart from some heating engineers (which was a bit of a necessity) and have been to half a dozen garden socials so I'm at a bit of a loss as to why people feel the need to huddle together in each others' houses. Just grow up and learn to stand on your own two feet.
Why don’t you grow up and let other people live how they want in their own homes
In Spain family/friends social gatherings are one of the main drivers of the increased infection rates.
You miss the point. I and many others don’t care any more.
Why do you not care? I know you have secret insider knowledge about the imminent availability of a vaccine but even so surely it is worth keeping a lid on it until it is available?
Because I look at the evidence which indicates that this is not a Justinian plague as originally feared but something that causes perhaps 8 weeks of excess mortality, and potentially a post viral syndrome with as yet unspecified severity, prevalence and duration.
The vaccine is useful not because it’s something that magically saves half a million lives in the UK (although it will of course save lives) but because without it the unthinking multitudes will remain too fearful to notice what’s been taken away from them.
Friend of mine still has effects from the virus - 50ish years old, fit as a fiddle; no pre-existing conditions
What’s your point? I know loads of people that had it too and are just fine. I also know plenty of people that ended up with post viral fatigue syndrome long before anyone had the word coronavirus in their scrabble notebook. I also know people that are going to die because their cancer treatment got suspended, sacrificed at the holy altar of covid.
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft say hi.
Jules and Michel Verne.
Alexandre Dumas pere and fils.
Martin Amis obviously meant people in his league: the Shakespeares, the Goethes, the Tolstoys...
About blooming time! Guernsey, two cases in 4 months, both from recent arrivals in self quarantine. Also fines up to £10,000 - levied over the last 6 months. Very little popular sympathy for transgressors.
What is about bloody time is payments of £500 for self-isolating as well. Folk unable to afford not to work is being blamed for the spread in the NE. Which ought to have been obvious.
Shagger will do his very best to avoid any kind of national lockdown, and then his very best to avoid doing it now. Once again we hear that care homes are being told they will have to take covid-positive residents back from hospitals. Once again we have no way to track the infected once identified. What will be different this time though is that "go to work don't go to work" which was a funny Matt Lucas spoof last time is just the accepted normal now.
"What happened to the Rule of Six" was asked above - it fell apart before launch because of its inherent contradictions and screamingly hypocritical exceptions. The major difference this time is that people don't give a shit having been conditioned to accept that the government doesn't have a clue what it's doing. Perhaps this was the Cummings Herd Immunity master plan: make people utterly distrustful of the institution of government so that you can do herd immunity by default and reshape the state to your own plan.
If it's any consolation the lovely Scots people I met up here in Skye have no clue what the Scottish government's rules really mean, either. Rule of six, but two households, on a croquet lawn, wearing cellophane? You what?
Sturgeon is generally quite popular in a Merkel-esque kind of way (female, cautious, boring, reliable). I am entirely unsure she is the firebrand needed to lead Scotland to Indy. She does not inspire, she calms - a bit.
Wait - LadyG's done a runner to Skye? Shit, we must be in trouble!
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft say hi.
Jules and Michel Verne.
Alexandre Dumas pere and fils.
Martin Amis obviously meant people in his league: the Shakespeares, the Goethes, the Tolstoys...
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft say hi.
Jules and Michel Verne.
Alexandre Dumas pere and fils.
I have no skin in this game, I abjure your silly ans futile speculations, I merely portray the tree frog.
But I believe D M Thomas and Sean Thomas are the only parent and child authors in the UK (and maybe every significant literary country?) to have had number one bestselling novels.
Kingsley Amis did have a number 1, I don't think Martin did.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/ruth-bader-ginsburg-supreme-court-the-great-equalizer-obituary ... In 1971, as Richard Nixon prepared to make two appointments to the Supreme Court, he faced a dilemma. Yet another Southerner he’d tapped had been nixed for an opposition to desegregation, so Nixon decided to look for someone who was, preferably, not a racist. He considered naming a woman. “I’m not for women, frankly, in any job,” he told his aides, in a little fit of hysterics. “Thank God we don’t have any in the Cabinet.” He didn’t think women should be educated, or “ever be allowed to vote, even.” But, given the momentum of the women’s-rights movement, he conceded the political necessity of naming a woman to the bench: it might gain him a small but crucial number of votes in the upcoming election. “It’s like the Negro vote,” he said. “It’s a hell of a thing.”..
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft say hi.
Jules and Michel Verne.
Alexandre Dumas pere and fils.
I have no skin in this game, I abjure your silly ans futile speculations, I merely portray the tree frog.
But I believe D M Thomas and Sean Thomas are the only parent and child authors in the UK (and maybe every significant literary country?) to have had number one bestselling novels.
Kingsley Amis did have a number 1, I don't think Martin did.
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
You think he didn't foresee the inflation thing? He's a clever cookie. It widens his choices - he can save a shedload on govt index linked obligations, or look personally bountiful by waiving the effect of eotho, or a mixture (waive for wages, not for indexed bonds).
No not inflation, I refer to it perhaps causing the idea of the virus having gone away and putting into place the idea to ignore social distancing. Perhaps I'm reaching.
I think so. The absence of significant numbers of cases and deaths were causing people to get out more anyway.
People won't live locked down forever, VE Day weekend when it was gloriously sunny and we were still in lockdown is when it began to end for me, most houses on my street were out in their gardens and at least half of them had visitors despite it being illegal still at the time.
The problem is that this attitude - and I accept I might be reaching - leads to cases going up again.
The Government clearly thinks this is an issue, hence their change in tack this week.
I just don't see how we avoid the economy being in a hole for a long period of time and I can only blame Government incompetence for that. They started briefing about getting back to work, they decided to let groups of 30 meet, they said get out and use the pubs.
We will see what happens - but I think perhaps people being scared to go out might be seen as better in the long term
It would be interesting to know what has caused the recent rapid growth in cases, after all we spent several weeks after 4 July with cases going nowhere. Given that people are talking about recent local spikes being due to household transmission, I guess it might have been allowing 30 people to mix. I've had no people in my flat since March apart from some heating engineers (which was a bit of a necessity) and have been to half a dozen garden socials so I'm at a bit of a loss as to why people feel the need to huddle together in each others' houses. Just grow up and learn to stand on your own two feet.
Why don’t you grow up and let other people live how they want in their own homes
In Spain family/friends social gatherings are one of the main drivers of the increased infection rates.
You miss the point. I and many others don’t care any more.
Why do you not care? I know you have secret insider knowledge about the imminent availability of a vaccine but even so surely it is worth keeping a lid on it until it is available?
Because I look at the evidence which indicates that this is not a Justinian plague as originally feared but something that causes perhaps 8 weeks of excess mortality, and potentially a post viral syndrome with as yet unspecified severity, prevalence and duration.
The vaccine is useful not because it’s something that magically saves half a million lives in the UK (although it will of course save lives) but because without it the unthinking multitudes will remain too fearful to notice what’s been taken away from them.
BECAUSE WE LOCKED DOWN!
How is this so difficult to understand
Look, here is Georgia.
Does this look like 8 week of Excess Mortality? In August in Georgia on average 112 people die a day. They hit 83 Covid deaths on a single day. Four months after the first peak in April.
Eight fucking week. There's a reason Covid Deniers are called Covid Deniers.
Goodness what a lack of humility and open mindedness you show. Your own graph is showing covid deaths tailing off. And conspicuously does not even include excess mortality.
There are globally esteemed virologists, epidemiologists and Nobel prize winners writing daily counter to your expletive laden “consensus”. I suppose you are one of those that still think with no hard state mandated lockdown we would have had 500k deaths.
That story falls into the trap of comparing confirmed cases now with those back in March as if this is meaningful.
100,000 per day then, maybe 10,000 per day now. We still have the chance to take early action, but with Bozo in charge I'm not hopeful.
To be fair almost EVERYBODY make the same mistake. I just hope that the people making decisions do not follow suit. I more or less ignore news stories with COVID-19 related numbers now and go to the sources to find out what is going on, as 9 times out of 10 the headlines are misleading BS.
South Korea did it best, mask wearing from the start, fewer deaths per head than Sweden and virtually every other western nation while also like Sweden avoiding full lockdown and the resultant damage to the economy
Perhaps the more difficult question isn't the how but the why.
What is it about Sweden and South Korea and other countries that has enabled the restrictions to be seemingly more effective than in for example the UK and the USA?
Is it in the nature of the societies themselves - do we stereotypically deride societies which appear to us to be more "compliant" or more "submissive" or more willing to accede to the diktats of the authorities?
Is there an ingrained resistance to such notions within Anglo-Saxon culture? We have this notion of "freedom" to which many adhere with an almost religious fervour but the philosophy behind the notion of freedom has constrained that freedom so that an individual's freedom cannot come at the cost of someone else's.
I've always had the view your freedom to smoke shouldn't lead to my obligation to breathe in your second-hand smoke. Have we somehow changed this notion of personal freedom to a notion of responsibility-free individualism? I'm sure our resident libertarians would be the first to assert that's not what they mean but I get the sense the freedom to is more important than the freedom from and that's where I part company with the libertarians.
It's that notion of wider responsibility which I feel is missing - accepting a restriction on my freedom to ensure another individual (and their loved ones) doesn't have to suffer from the virus seems a reasonable position. Accepting the notion we have responsibilities beyond ourselves and our immediate families and that we have, individually and collectively, a responsibility to and for each other (even if "each other" mean strangers) shouldn't be a difficult position but it seems to be and especially for many British and American people.
At a second level, there's a measure of fear - not of the virus but of the socio-economic changes it has wrought. There's an almost febrile desire to go back to how things were - the life pre-Covid - but the world has changed (it would have done anyway, it always does) and while the changes to how we live may seem frightening now, human beings are infinitely adaptable and the world will move on.
Is Sean T around in one of his many forms? In the "Telegraph" magazine today Martin Amis is quoted as saying: "There are no other examples of a writer child from a writer parent. It makes me feel freakish". Any thoughts?.
Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft say hi.
Jules and Michel Verne.
Alexandre Dumas pere and fils.
Martin Amis obviously meant people in his league: the Shakespeares, the Goethes, the Tolstoys...
Plenty of Tolstoys wrote fiction.
There was Leo, who wrote War and Peace.
And Nikolai, who pretends to write history.
I was once a footsoldier in Nikolai's army at a Hastings reenactment. He was Godwineson, I was somewhere on the right flank with a spear and shield.
Just seems to be panic, panic, panic from Downing Street now. Flinging out ideas, policies, comms suggestions by the hour without any overall strategy or sense of direction.
As I seem to ask every night now: what is the purpose? What is the strategy? Flatten the curve sufficiently for the NHS to cope, eradicate covid, flatten the curve until the end of term, save christmas. What is it? No one has any idea now.
That story falls into the trap of comparing confirmed cases now with those back in March as if this is meaningful.
100,000 per day then, maybe 10,000 per day now. We still have the chance to take early action, but with Bozo in charge I'm not hopeful.
To be fair almost EVERYBODY make the same mistake. I just hope that the people making decisions do not follow suit. I more or less ignore news stories with COVID-19 related numbers now and go to the sources to find out what is going on, as 9 times out of 10 the headlines are misleading BS.
£10k fines now. And what if there is no vaccine by next Spring? What if it is actually two or three years away? Then what? More fines, more police, more lockdowns, more curfews?
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
You think he didn't foresee the inflation thing? He's a clever cookie. It widens his choices - he can save a shedload on govt index linked obligations, or look personally bountiful by waiving the effect of eotho, or a mixture (waive for wages, not for indexed bonds).
No not inflation, I refer to it perhaps causing the idea of the virus having gone away and putting into place the idea to ignore social distancing. Perhaps I'm reaching.
I think so. The absence of significant numbers of cases and deaths were causing people to get out more anyway.
People won't live locked down forever, VE Day weekend when it was gloriously sunny and we were still in lockdown is when it began to end for me, most houses on my street were out in their gardens and at least half of them had visitors despite it being illegal still at the time.
The problem is that this attitude - and I accept I might be reaching - leads to cases going up again.
The Government clearly thinks this is an issue, hence their change in tack this week.
I just don't see how we avoid the economy being in a hole for a long period of time and I can only blame Government incompetence for that. They started briefing about getting back to work, they decided to let groups of 30 meet, they said get out and use the pubs.
We will see what happens - but I think perhaps people being scared to go out might be seen as better in the long term
It would be interesting to know what has caused the recent rapid growth in cases, after all we spent several weeks after 4 July with cases going nowhere. Given that people are talking about recent local spikes being due to household transmission, I guess it might have been allowing 30 people to mix. I've had no people in my flat since March apart from some heating engineers (which was a bit of a necessity) and have been to half a dozen garden socials so I'm at a bit of a loss as to why people feel the need to huddle together in each others' houses. Just grow up and learn to stand on your own two feet.
Why don’t you grow up and let other people live how they want in their own homes
In Spain family/friends social gatherings are one of the main drivers of the increased infection rates.
You miss the point. I and many others don’t care any more.
Why do you not care? I know you have secret insider knowledge about the imminent availability of a vaccine but even so surely it is worth keeping a lid on it until it is available?
Because I look at the evidence which indicates that this is not a Justinian plague as originally feared but something that causes perhaps 8 weeks of excess mortality, and potentially a post viral syndrome with as yet unspecified severity, prevalence and duration.
The vaccine is useful not because it’s something that magically saves half a million lives in the UK (although it will of course save lives) but because without it the unthinking multitudes will remain too fearful to notice what’s been taken away from them.
BECAUSE WE LOCKED DOWN!
How is this so difficult to understand
Look, here is Georgia.
Does this look like 8 week of Excess Mortality? In August in Georgia on average 112 people die a day. They hit 83 Covid deaths on a single day. Four months after the first peak in April.
Eight fucking week. There's a reason Covid Deniers are called Covid Deniers.
Goodness what a lack of humility and open mindedness you show. Your own graph is showing covid deaths tailing off. And conspicuously does not even include excess mortality.
There are globally esteemed virologists, epidemiologists and Nobel prize winners writing daily counter to your expletive laden “consensus”. I suppose you are one of those that still think with no hard state mandated lockdown we would have had 500k deaths.
After how many weeks?
Hint: Greater than 8.
Covid Denier twitter was full of Bigging up Georgia after the first peak as absolute 100% proof it was totally safe to lift the lockdown fully.
Covid Denier Twitter refuses to acknowledge that Georgia even exists now. They are off finding other lagged data sets to lie about.
Just seems to be panic, panic, panic from Downing Street now. Flinging out ideas, policies, comms suggestions by the hour without any overall strategy or sense of direction.
As I seem to ask every night now: what is the purpose? What is the strategy? Flatten the curve sufficiently for the NHS to cope, eradicate covid, flatten the curve until the end of term, save christmas. What is it? No one has any idea now.
I assume it's keep a lid on it until we have a vaccine, but no-one dare say that. If we never see a vaccine we might as well let it run wild.
Just seems to be panic, panic, panic from Downing Street now. Flinging out ideas, policies, comms suggestions by the hour without any overall strategy or sense of direction.
As I seem to ask every night now: what is the purpose? What is the strategy? Flatten the curve sufficiently for the NHS to cope, eradicate covid, flatten the curve until the end of term, save christmas. What is it? No one has any idea now.
The problem then becomes the sense of panic filters down into the general population and we get panic-buying (already signs I'm hearing) and a general sense of confusion and malaise - everybody wants to do something but no one seems to know what, when, who, where, why and how?
Christmas is more than 3 months away - it's far too early to be calling it. The problem is no one knows what will happen to the virus in the northern hemisphere as we move into autumn with more people indoors more of the time. As we know, outdoor transmission is rare but most outdoor activities are going to be progressively harder as we move into October and the weather turns worse and the daylight is shorter.
That's the issue - as no one knows definitively how this will evolve (will we get a new mutated strain this winter for example?), policy making becomes reactive. I'm sure Johnson (and I'd like to think all of us) would prefer the virus gone - I'd like to think a vaccine (with annual boosts perhaps) will move it to the margins of our lives from being centre stage but until then we face the dilemma we've faced since March - how many lives is the economy worth?
Goodness what a lack of humility and open mindedness you show. Your own graph is showing covid deaths tailing off. And conspicuously does not even include excess mortality.
There are globally esteemed virologists, epidemiologists and Nobel prize winners writing daily counter to your expletive laden “consensus”. I suppose you are one of those that still think with no hard state mandated lockdown we would have had 500k deaths.
The 500,000 deaths was for no mitigation. It was never clamed that 500,000 would die without "hard state mandated lockdown". There were a load of different scenarios modelled for different R0 rates, and different mitigation measures, and using an IFR of 0.9% as it was believed to be at the time. If anything given the measures taken we've actually done a bit worse than the model suggested*, so maybe the 500,000 dead figure was a decent estimate.
* At the time the asymptomatic spread was not given enough emphasis.
South Korea did it best, mask wearing from the start, fewer deaths per head than Sweden and virtually every other western nation while also like Sweden avoiding full lockdown and the resultant damage to the economy
Perhaps the more difficult question isn't the how but the why.
What is it about Sweden and South Korea and other countries that has enabled the restrictions to be seemingly more effective than in for example the UK and the USA?
Is it in the nature of the societies themselves - do we stereotypically deride societies which appear to us to be more "compliant" or more "submissive" or more willing to accede to the diktats of the authorities?
Is there an ingrained resistance to such notions within Anglo-Saxon culture? We have this notion of "freedom" to which many adhere with an almost religious fervour but the philosophy behind the notion of freedom has constrained that freedom so that an individual's freedom cannot come at the cost of someone else's.
I've always had the view your freedom to smoke shouldn't lead to my obligation to breathe in your second-hand smoke. Have we somehow changed this notion of personal freedom to a notion of responsibility-free individualism? I'm sure our resident libertarians would be the first to assert that's not what they mean but I get the sense the freedom to is more important than the freedom from and that's where I part company with the libertarians.
It's that notion of wider responsibility which I feel is missing - accepting a restriction on my freedom to ensure another individual (and their loved ones) doesn't have to suffer from the virus seems a reasonable position. Accepting the notion we have responsibilities beyond ourselves and our immediate families and that we have, individually and collectively, a responsibility to and for each other (even if "each other" mean strangers) shouldn't be a difficult position but it seems to be and especially for many British and American people.
At a second level, there's a measure of fear - not of the virus but of the socio-economic changes it has wrought. There's an almost febrile desire to go back to how things were - the life pre-Covid - but the world has changed (it would have done anyway, it always does) and while the changes to how we live may seem frightening now, human beings are infinitely adaptable and the world will move on.
Your final paragraph is extremely astute. The Universe of February 2020 does not exist anymore and cannot be recreated. The sooner we accept that the better.
About blooming time! Guernsey, two cases in 4 months, both from recent arrivals in self quarantine. Also fines up to £10,000 - levied over the last 6 months. Very little popular sympathy for transgressors.
In recent post, mention was made of upcoming Guersey general election, featuring a horde of hopefuls all running at-large for three dozen or so positions in the local legislature.
Which reminded me of my misspent youth following election returns in West Virginia. Back in those days, each county was practically guaranteed at least one seat in House of Delegates. But larger counties got two or more seats depending on population.
The largest Kanawha County (Charleston) elected 14 delegates, all nominated and elected at-large. In the primary, there would be scores of hopefuls, some Republicans but most Democrats. Each voter had up to 14 votes (but could only vote once for same candidate) in the primary, which nominated 14 for each party. Then in general voters again got 14 votes to use (as many as they cared to) among the 28 nominees.
One feature of this system was seeing which candidates ended up with the most votes, and also what was the margin between 14th (nominated in primary, elected in general) and 15th (top loser).
Note that top vote-getters in the Kanawha Co delegation were in good position to make bids for electoral advancement, such from state senator or congressman to statewide office.
Prime example is Jay Rockefeller (John D. IV) who after a stint with the Peace Corp in early 60s came to WVa with Vista fedeal anti-poverty program. In short order he ran for House of Delegates in Kanawha Co, winning nomination, election and a great deal of statewide publicity. Which launched Jay R. on subsequent career as WV Secretary of State, Governor and US Senator.
Not sure what the deal is in Guernsey. But reckon that topping the poll is a goal often attempted but rarely achieved.
The problem we might have is when Sunak takes over, we go back to where we were.
Someone who keeps handing out free money and free food and booze will be tough to beat!
It looks like Eat Out To Help Out is coming back to bite him - and we will see shortly when the furlough scheme ends, how his popularity might change.
You think he didn't foresee the inflation thing? He's a clever cookie. It widens his choices - he can save a shedload on govt index linked obligations, or look personally bountiful by waiving the effect of eotho, or a mixture (waive for wages, not for indexed bonds).
No not inflation, I refer to it perhaps causing the idea of the virus having gone away and putting into place the idea to ignore social distancing. Perhaps I'm reaching.
I think so. The absence of significant numbers of cases and deaths were causing people to get out more anyway.
People won't live locked down forever, VE Day weekend when it was gloriously sunny and we were still in lockdown is when it began to end for me, most houses on my street were out in their gardens and at least half of them had visitors despite it being illegal still at the time.
The problem is that this attitude - and I accept I might be reaching - leads to cases going up again.
The Government clearly thinks this is an issue, hence their change in tack this week.
I just don't see how we avoid the economy being in a hole for a long period of time and I can only blame Government incompetence for that. They started briefing about getting back to work, they decided to let groups of 30 meet, they said get out and use the pubs.
We will see what happens - but I think perhaps people being scared to go out might be seen as better in the long term
It would be interesting to know what has caused the recent rapid growth in cases, after all we spent several weeks after 4 July with cases going nowhere. Given that people are talking about recent local spikes being due to household transmission, I guess it might have been allowing 30 people to mix. I've had no people in my flat since March apart from some heating engineers (which was a bit of a necessity) and have been to half a dozen garden socials so I'm at a bit of a loss as to why people feel the need to huddle together in each others' houses. Just grow up and learn to stand on your own two feet.
Why don’t you grow up and let other people live how they want in their own homes
In Spain family/friends social gatherings are one of the main drivers of the increased infection rates.
You miss the point. I and many others don’t care any more.
Why do you not care? I know you have secret insider knowledge about the imminent availability of a vaccine but even so surely it is worth keeping a lid on it until it is available?
Because I look at the evidence which indicates that this is not a Justinian plague as originally feared but something that causes perhaps 8 weeks of excess mortality, and potentially a post viral syndrome with as yet unspecified severity, prevalence and duration.
The vaccine is useful not because it’s something that magically saves half a million lives in the UK (although it will of course save lives) but because without it the unthinking multitudes will remain too fearful to notice what’s been taken away from them.
Friend of mine still has effects from the virus - 50ish years old, fit as a fiddle; no pre-existing conditions
What’s your point? I know loads of people that had it too and are just fine. I also know plenty of people that ended up with post viral fatigue syndrome long before anyone had the word coronavirus in their scrabble notebook. I also know people that are going to die because their cancer treatment got suspended, sacrificed at the holy altar of covid.
Vaccine is probably available next year, best try and keep Covid numbers down till then I think. If a vaccine was years away I'd agree about 'living with it' but it isn't so best to sacrifice some short term liberty for long term health
“I’m not going to shy away from the fact that our 2019 manifesto had far too much in it,” he says.
“It was overloaded to the point where people didn’t believe it was deliverable. And once you’re in that space ... it is inevitable that you lose an election.
“But the pandemic in the past six months has almost sort of swept away all the arguments about 2019, 2017 or 2015 ... because I think that we have to make the case that we cannot go back to business as usual at the end of this.
“We have learnt what we value most. We’ve seen cruelly exposed the fragilities of our public services and the economy. And we’ve got to put forward a vision of a better Britain.”
Just seems to be panic, panic, panic from Downing Street now. Flinging out ideas, policies, comms suggestions by the hour without any overall strategy or sense of direction.
As I seem to ask every night now: what is the purpose? What is the strategy? Flatten the curve sufficiently for the NHS to cope, eradicate covid, flatten the curve until the end of term, save christmas. What is it? No one has any idea now.
I assume it's keep a lid on it until we have a vaccine, but no-one dare say that. If we never see a vaccine we might as well let it run wild.
This would be a perfectly fair strategy. So say so! Say that the best evidence indicates that everyone who wants a vaccine will have one in their arm by the first set of next year’s Wimbledon.
Instead it’s all misery, fear and snitching. Despair morphing into mental illness. Hysteria branding children’s psyches perhaps irreversibly. Families feeling shame for the simple act of meeting. The asset poor getting fucked, the asset rich making off like bandits. The young being asked to forfeit so much yet again.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that someone somewhere in Whitehall is addicted to the increasing power grab.
Thank the medical gods that the positive vaccine data will be here soon, so lunatics like Alistair can slide back into their box and the rest of us will have a chance to rethink what sort of society we wish to live in as we rebuild from the ashes.
“Yes, we do watch the Queen’s speech live on Christmas Day ... In times of crisis and in difficult times people do look to the monarch as a voice and a symbol of what it is that we are as a country.”
“I’m not going to shy away from the fact that our 2019 manifesto had far too much in it,” he says.
“It was overloaded to the point where people didn’t believe it was deliverable. And once you’re in that space ... it is inevitable that you lose an election.
“But the pandemic in the past six months has almost sort of swept away all the arguments about 2019, 2017 or 2015 ... because I think that we have to make the case that we cannot go back to business as usual at the end of this.
“We have learnt what we value most. We’ve seen cruelly exposed the fragilities of our public services and the economy. And we’ve got to put forward a vision of a better Britain.”
He gets it
"And we've got to put forward a vision of a better Britain." All he has to do now is think of one.
“I’m not going to shy away from the fact that our 2019 manifesto had far too much in it,” he says.
“It was overloaded to the point where people didn’t believe it was deliverable. And once you’re in that space ... it is inevitable that you lose an election.
“But the pandemic in the past six months has almost sort of swept away all the arguments about 2019, 2017 or 2015 ... because I think that we have to make the case that we cannot go back to business as usual at the end of this.
“We have learnt what we value most. We’ve seen cruelly exposed the fragilities of our public services and the economy. And we’ve got to put forward a vision of a better Britain.”
He gets it
Getting it is easy peasy lemon squeezy. The hard bit is coming up with policies that will fix the problems, that can be delivered, and can garner enough support to be adopted by the party and see the party elected to form a government. Even if you can do all that circumstances can blow you way off course.
“I’m not going to shy away from the fact that our 2019 manifesto had far too much in it,” he says.
“It was overloaded to the point where people didn’t believe it was deliverable. And once you’re in that space ... it is inevitable that you lose an election.
“But the pandemic in the past six months has almost sort of swept away all the arguments about 2019, 2017 or 2015 ... because I think that we have to make the case that we cannot go back to business as usual at the end of this.
“We have learnt what we value most. We’ve seen cruelly exposed the fragilities of our public services and the economy. And we’ve got to put forward a vision of a better Britain.”
He gets it
Getting it is easy peasy lemon squeezy. The hard bit is coming up with policies that will fix the problems, that can be delivered, and can garner enough support to be adopted by the party and see the party elected to form a government. Even if you can do all that circumstances can blow you way off course.
We didn't get it, I don't think many appreciate how low Labour had fallen.
“I’m not going to shy away from the fact that our 2019 manifesto had far too much in it,” he says.
“It was overloaded to the point where people didn’t believe it was deliverable. And once you’re in that space ... it is inevitable that you lose an election.
“But the pandemic in the past six months has almost sort of swept away all the arguments about 2019, 2017 or 2015 ... because I think that we have to make the case that we cannot go back to business as usual at the end of this.
“We have learnt what we value most. We’ve seen cruelly exposed the fragilities of our public services and the economy. And we’ve got to put forward a vision of a better Britain.”
He gets it
Words like these are easy. The difficult bit is putting forward that vision, and then designing workable attractive policies that deliver it. So far Starmer has provided no evidence that he's capable of providing the vision or the policies. Despite his criticism of the government's Covid management he's also failed to say what he would have done differently.
Sooner or later Starmer will have to make clear what he stands for and what he'd do. That will be the test.
According to the linked Telegraph story, this is something Margaret Hodge said last weekend, so hardly news, though I suppose it is printed in the Sunday paper. I thought it was rather an odd topic for Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year.
Comments
Labour have lost 4% to the Greens and 3% to the Tories and 43% of 2019 LDs are now voting Labour
nOn the basis of this particular poll the Tories havw lost just over 10% of theit December 2019 vote share.
https://twitter.com/michaelgove/status/1307389566299582465
Robert Graves and his father.
Nevil Shute’s father also wrote at least one novel.
Would Christopher Tolkien count, perhaps?
And of course Wilbert and Christopher Awdry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brq0NLN7uG0
Alexandre Dumas pere and fils.
Edit - how about Leonard and Aldous Huxley? Not quite sure whether Leonard would count?
Anyway, I think we’ve established Amis was talking bollocks.
How is this so difficult to understand
Look, here is Georgia.
Does this look like 8 week of Excess Mortality? In August in Georgia on average 112 people die a day. They hit 83 Covid deaths on a single day. Four months after the first peak in April.
Eight fucking week. There's a reason Covid Deniers are called Covid Deniers.
100,000 per day then, maybe 10,000 per day now. We still have the chance to take early action, but with Bozo in charge I'm not hopeful.
Folk unable to afford not to work is being blamed for the spread in the NE.
Which ought to have been obvious.
There was Leo, who wrote War and Peace.
And Nikolai, who pretends to write history.
But I believe D M Thomas and Sean Thomas are the only parent and child authors in the UK (and maybe every significant literary country?) to have had number one bestselling novels.
Kingsley Amis did have a number 1, I don't think Martin did.
Gives a flavour of her time:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/ruth-bader-ginsburg-supreme-court-the-great-equalizer-obituary
... In 1971, as Richard Nixon prepared to make two appointments to the Supreme Court, he faced a dilemma. Yet another Southerner he’d tapped had been nixed for an opposition to desegregation, so Nixon decided to look for someone who was, preferably, not a racist. He considered naming a woman. “I’m not for women, frankly, in any job,” he told his aides, in a little fit of hysterics. “Thank God we don’t have any in the Cabinet.” He didn’t think women should be educated, or “ever be allowed to vote, even.” But, given the momentum of the women’s-rights movement, he conceded the political necessity of naming a woman to the bench: it might gain him a small but crucial number of votes in the upcoming election. “It’s like the Negro vote,” he said. “It’s a hell of a thing.”..
Test at Day 7, you miss 12%.
That Knox him out completely.
There are globally esteemed virologists, epidemiologists and Nobel prize winners writing daily counter to your expletive laden “consensus”. I suppose you are one of those that still think with no hard state mandated lockdown we would have had 500k deaths.
What is it about Sweden and South Korea and other countries that has enabled the restrictions to be seemingly more effective than in for example the UK and the USA?
Is it in the nature of the societies themselves - do we stereotypically deride societies which appear to us to be more "compliant" or more "submissive" or more willing to accede to the diktats of the authorities?
Is there an ingrained resistance to such notions within Anglo-Saxon culture? We have this notion of "freedom" to which many adhere with an almost religious fervour but the philosophy behind the notion of freedom has constrained that freedom so that an individual's freedom cannot come at the cost of someone else's.
I've always had the view your freedom to smoke shouldn't lead to my obligation to breathe in your second-hand smoke. Have we somehow changed this notion of personal freedom to a notion of responsibility-free individualism? I'm sure our resident libertarians would be the first to assert that's not what they mean but I get the sense the freedom to is more important than the freedom from and that's where I part company with the libertarians.
It's that notion of wider responsibility which I feel is missing - accepting a restriction on my freedom to ensure another individual (and their loved ones) doesn't have to suffer from the virus seems a reasonable position. Accepting the notion we have responsibilities beyond ourselves and our immediate families and that we have, individually and collectively, a responsibility to and for each other (even if "each other" mean strangers) shouldn't be a difficult position but it seems to be and especially for many British and American people.
At a second level, there's a measure of fear - not of the virus but of the socio-economic changes it has wrought. There's an almost febrile desire to go back to how things were - the life pre-Covid - but the world has changed (it would have done anyway, it always does) and while the changes to how we live may seem frightening now, human beings are infinitely adaptable and the world will move on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brq0NLN7uG0 You stand a good chance of finding the one doing the infecting, which is a start.
As I seem to ask every night now: what is the purpose? What is the strategy? Flatten the curve sufficiently for the NHS to cope, eradicate covid, flatten the curve until the end of term, save christmas. What is it? No one has any idea now.
Hint: Greater than 8.
Covid Denier twitter was full of Bigging up Georgia after the first peak as absolute 100% proof it was totally safe to lift the lockdown fully.
Covid Denier Twitter refuses to acknowledge that Georgia even exists now. They are off finding other lagged data sets to lie about.
https://twitter.com/ProfTomkins/status/1307415641792696329?s=20
That'll be the final straw.
Christmas is more than 3 months away - it's far too early to be calling it. The problem is no one knows what will happen to the virus in the northern hemisphere as we move into autumn with more people indoors more of the time. As we know, outdoor transmission is rare but most outdoor activities are going to be progressively harder as we move into October and the weather turns worse and the daylight is shorter.
That's the issue - as no one knows definitively how this will evolve (will we get a new mutated strain this winter for example?), policy making becomes reactive. I'm sure Johnson (and I'd like to think all of us) would prefer the virus gone - I'd like to think a vaccine (with annual boosts perhaps) will move it to the margins of our lives from being centre stage but until then we face the dilemma we've faced since March - how many lives is the economy worth?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://twitter.com/Justin_1777/status/1307415090161909760
* At the time the asymptomatic spread was not given enough emphasis.
The sooner we accept that the better.
Which reminded me of my misspent youth following election returns in West Virginia. Back in those days, each county was practically guaranteed at least one seat in House of Delegates. But larger counties got two or more seats depending on population.
The largest Kanawha County (Charleston) elected 14 delegates, all nominated and elected at-large. In the primary, there would be scores of hopefuls, some Republicans but most Democrats. Each voter had up to 14 votes (but could only vote once for same candidate) in the primary, which nominated 14 for each party. Then in general voters again got 14 votes to use (as many as they cared to) among the 28 nominees.
One feature of this system was seeing which candidates ended up with the most votes, and also what was the margin between 14th (nominated in primary, elected in general) and 15th (top loser).
Note that top vote-getters in the Kanawha Co delegation were in good position to make bids for electoral advancement, such from state senator or congressman to statewide office.
Prime example is Jay Rockefeller (John D. IV) who after a stint with the Peace Corp in early 60s came to WVa with Vista fedeal anti-poverty program. In short order he ran for House of Delegates in Kanawha Co, winning nomination, election and a great deal of statewide publicity. Which launched Jay R. on subsequent career as WV Secretary of State, Governor and US Senator.
Not sure what the deal is in Guernsey. But reckon that topping the poll is a goal often attempted but rarely achieved.
“It was overloaded to the point where people didn’t believe it was deliverable. And once you’re in that space ... it is inevitable that you lose an election.
“But the pandemic in the past six months has almost sort of swept away all the arguments about 2019, 2017 or 2015 ... because I think that we have to make the case that we cannot go back to business as usual at the end of this.
“We have learnt what we value most. We’ve seen cruelly exposed the fragilities of our public services and the economy. And we’ve got to put forward a vision of a better Britain.”
He gets it
Instead it’s all misery, fear and snitching. Despair morphing into mental illness. Hysteria branding children’s psyches perhaps irreversibly. Families feeling shame for the simple act of meeting. The asset poor getting fucked, the asset rich making off like bandits. The young being asked to forfeit so much yet again.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that someone somewhere in Whitehall is addicted to the increasing power grab.
Thank the medical gods that the positive vaccine data will be here soon, so lunatics like Alistair can slide back into their box and the rest of us will have a chance to rethink what sort of society we wish to live in as we rebuild from the ashes.
£10K fines for those who do not self-isolate when test positive or when told to do so by track and test staff.
Incredible.
Surely some of our MPs are prepared to at least debate this before allowing the executive this level of power.
I'm reaching for my Ben Franklin quote tonight...
“Yes, we do watch the Queen’s speech live on Christmas Day ... In times of crisis and in difficult times people do look to the monarch as a voice and a symbol of what it is that we are as a country.”
Thank God for that
“That’s not a question anybody who’s serious about being prime minister will ever answer.”
Certainly with current HMG no one needs X-Ray vision to possess hindsight. Still helps, though, NOT to be blind or blinkered.
All he has to do now is think of one.
England 2020.
I can't think this is going to do much for the "out of touch" feeling
Sooner or later Starmer will have to make clear what he stands for and what he'd do. That will be the test.
The Hope story currently on the Telegraph site concerns Lord Barker, the former energy minister Greg Barker, trousering £6 million from a Russian oil company. Nice work if you can get it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/19/tory-peer-paid-6m-russian-energy-company-linked-billionaire/