Boris the idiot arguing against the non-existent "let it rip" group. No one is saying we should do that. C***.
It is a total straw man, the only people arguing this are the likes of Piers Corbyn, who claim it is all a hoax.
Quite a few of my Facebook friends (genuinely) support Let it Rip.
They often think that the whole thing is a plot to make them get a Bill Gates tracking vaccine injected.
"Stratified risk" or whatever it's called is "let it rip (except among the elderly)".
I would be very interested to know what the hospitalisation/ventilation/death rate is of the student population, seemingly the majority of which now have or live with someone who has the virus.
During education Qs prior to this debate I believe the minister said we currently have just over 9,000 positive cases among about two million current students. (edit/ that might have been new cases over the past week)
Thanks
What about hospitalisations, etc? Did he mention that?
She. No, but the hospitalisation rate is so low at that age range that with 9,000 weekly new cases nationwide it can't have been large.
So go on then Keir, what's your plan? Let's hear it.
I love your sense of humour.
That even you're coming to realise Keir is an empty suit really shows something.
Today's politicians just aren't suited to this sort of crisis. I'd prefer to have Harold Wilson, John Major, Mrs Thatcher or Jim Callaghan in charge at the moment. It's got nothing to do with party politics, it's more to do with character and statesmanship.
It's because nowadays you only get the top job by being big on slogans and charisma. Standards and backbone don't cut it
Boris the idiot arguing against the non-existent "let it rip" group. No one is saying we should do that. C***.
It is a total straw man, the only people arguing this are the likes of Piers Corbyn, who claim it is all a hoax.
Quite a few of my Facebook friends (genuinely) support Let it Rip.
They often think that the whole thing is a plot to make them get a Bill Gates tracking vaccine injected.
"Stratified risk" or whatever it's called is "let it rip (except among the elderly)".
The line that irritates me is the "why can't we all decide our own risks?"
Sure, fine. People can decide their own risk. But don't they dare decide someone else's risk. If they want to risk being infected, I'm fine with that, and in my opinion, so should everyone else be fine with that. Their body, their choice. But they have no right to risk infecting someone else. None at all.
If anyone can work out a way to thread that particular needle, they're brighter than everyone else in the world, and they have the solution to all infectious outbreaks.
If we do go with that approach, I reckon we should add a proviso: If someone has chosen not to follow the precautions we outline, and they end up infecting others, than every case "downstream" from them is a criminal charge.
- For every case where someone gets ill: one charge of Actual Bodily Harm (because they caused these people to be harmed thanks to their own deliberate carelessness) - For every case where someone downstream gets hospitalised: one charge of GBH - For every case where someone downstream dies: charge them with culpable homicide.
That's surely fair enough? People should be willing to bear the consequences of their own actions and decisions, and when they end up causing hurt or death, they should face the consequences of that - like drunk drivers are supposed to do.
A fair position. Does that also go for flu, and other infectious diseases?
I did think it might be quite entertaining for the farmers to turn up and spray a few thousand litres of silage over the front entrance of Portcullis House.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
All good stuff and certainly better than what has been proposed so far. I still think it's too late but as an interim measure, better than nothing.
Except for pubs, I would close them entirely.
There's still no logical reasoning behind that, you just seem to have this weird obsession with closing down pubs despite little evidence it will make any difference. We know the major transmission vector is people's front rooms. Closing down pubs sends people into front rooms. So you also have to stop household mixing, but that is notoriously difficult to police and requires an army of citizen snitches which is no way to conduct a free society.
No, the answer is making the community safe by removing people with the virus from the community until they don't have it. Hotel based separation is the answer, it works in the short and medium term until there is a vaccine.
The policies to remove people from the population aren't currently working, or are non-existent.
I think you're right with what you say - I think it's too late to implement it though. This should have been in place from July.
It actually isn't too late, the government could push through the policy tomorrow and start doing it next week with all new positive cases (and families if necessary) in all of the empty hotels across the country and let the councils run the programmes, they'll know local catering companies and delivery mechanisms better than someone in Whitehall.
It's a policy which brings down transmission very fast and has proven to work.
Take a look at China. An outbreak in one area, and they propose to test all 9m people in a week. I acknowledge there's an element of state propaganda in everything that China puts out, but such numbers are not at all unrealistic. Do that in the NE, for example, isolate as you suggest, and R is about 0.1 by the end of the month.
It would not have been impossible to build that capacity over the summer (and still isn't).
Doing so would shortcircuit every inefficiency and problem with track & trace, too.
Leaving up to local councils also means not needing to build an unweildy national system which takes months to prepare and put in place. Local councils could probably get this up and running overnight and the £500 per week cash inducement would be a nothing thing to figure out for the treasury.
I don't understand why no one in the government has got the capability to push this option. Starmer is perfectly placed to push it because he doesn't have to implement it and if the government fuck it up he can just say they did it badly.
You're being quite persuasive on this 'isolate in hotels' thing.
Why do you think it is not being considered?
It's very expensive, probably £6-7bn per week at the moment, maybe even up to £10bn. It also has bad optics because it will be "paid holiday for nothing" headlines in the mail. It would also be tough to get it passed the right wing of the Tory party because it "rewards" irresponsibility. Even so none of those are serious concerns compared to a second national lockdown.
I also think the machinery of the British state is simply incapable of thinking of the most simple solutions to problems. Lockdown is simple, solution to lots of immediate problems even though it stores up significant issues for the future, that's something that can be dealt with later.
The problems we face need lots of small measures, not one big one, even this policy would need to be backed up by loads of other smaller ones.
If it's 100k people in a week - and we get hotel rooms for 100 pound a night, that's 10m quid a week. Add on 50 quid to include food and it's 15m.
Now obviously in week 2 there'd be twice as many people, so 30m. Then if you pay people 500 quid a week on top, that's another 50m.
How are you getting to 10bn or is that a typo?
Rough calculation, probably a bit much. Could be done for £2-3bn per week which I think is acceptable.
I was never likely to go overboard in support for the PM but I thought he was 'not at all good' this afternoon. Starmer asked a perfectly reasonable question about Track and Trace and Johnson preferred to make puerile debating points instead of answering.
Boris the idiot arguing against the non-existent "let it rip" group. No one is saying we should do that. C***.
It is a total straw man, the only people arguing this are the likes of Piers Corbyn, who claim it is all a hoax.
Quite a few of my Facebook friends (genuinely) support Let it Rip.
They often think that the whole thing is a plot to make them get a Bill Gates tracking vaccine injected.
"Stratified risk" or whatever it's called is "let it rip (except among the elderly)".
The line that irritates me is the "why can't we all decide our own risks?"
Sure, fine. People can decide their own risk. But don't they dare decide someone else's risk. If they want to risk being infected, I'm fine with that, and in my opinion, so should everyone else be fine with that. Their body, their choice. But they have no right to risk infecting someone else. None at all.
If anyone can work out a way to thread that particular needle, they're brighter than everyone else in the world, and they have the solution to all infectious outbreaks.
If we do go with that approach, I reckon we should add a proviso: If someone has chosen not to follow the precautions we outline, and they end up infecting others, than every case "downstream" from them is a criminal charge.
- For every case where someone gets ill: one charge of Actual Bodily Harm (because they caused these people to be harmed thanks to their own deliberate carelessness) - For every case where someone downstream gets hospitalised: one charge of GBH - For every case where someone downstream dies: charge them with culpable homicide.
That's surely fair enough? People should be willing to bear the consequences of their own actions and decisions, and when they end up causing hurt or death, they should face the consequences of that - like drunk drivers are supposed to do.
A fair position. Does that also go for flu, and other infectious diseases?
If we've issued a set of recommendations and precautions and people choose to ignore them, then yes, especially in any sort of pandemic or epidemic situation (where there is no plausible excuse for not comprehending the severity of it). Like people with HIV who decide not to bother with precautions or warning others.
- being too complacent about travel from Europe in January and February - moving OAPs into homes from hospitals without testing them - developing the NHS-X app rather than using Apple/Google technology - closing schools at all, or at least without a clear plan to reopen them.
The first let the virus in in the first place (at least with the numbers and speed it came), the second may have cost 10-20k lives, the third has meant we're unprepared for the second wave and the fourth has blighted a year's schooling for a generation.
However, no. 1 accorded with expert advice, so I think it's mainly the other three I'd hold them responsible for.
And afaik there's no evidence that Prime Minister Starmer would have done anything different on any of them.
Fair enough take. But politics does not work this way. When things go horribly run under a government the public do not conduct forensic counterfactuals asking themselves if the opposition would have been any better. For example, the financial crash and resulting economic downturn and crisis in the public finances which dominated the GE of 2010. There was no evidence that the situation would have been better or would have been better handled by a Cameron Conservative government rather than Brown's Labour one - the opposite if anything - but this did not prevent a narrative of "Labour's mess" taking root. Similarly here, regardless of how you think Starmer would have performed relative to Johnson, if this pans out as badly as it looks like doing, this government will own it.
The reason that Labour owned the Financial Crash in 2008 was because Cameron and Osborne were effective in pinning the blame to them. They had a simple story, "Labour didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining," which was true enough to pass muster, even if it had nothing to do with banking regulation. And they repeated it enough so that it became part of the common consciousness.
Starmer has not found the simple message to use to pin the blame for Covid onto the Conservatives in general and Johnson in particular. It's not inevitable that they will take the majority of the blame. Labour have to convince the public that they should.
Come the economic crisis that will be much easier.
Reminds me of the scene out of the Inbetweeners when the only way they can get a drink is to get a random to order them all carvery dinners with their pints.
A petty complaint on language. Regardless of whose fault it is and competence of government preparations it really is going to require a lot of personal response from businesses.
That they need to may well be unfair when it was not their choice, but whose choice it was doesnt change who has to act for a business.
Starmers position seems to be local lockdowns don't work, so ???? He wants another national lockdown?
Starmer is a clueless politician. Look at today's poll. Everything the Government does at the moment is unpopular yet Labour are falling back. As I keep saying just think of the the golden opportunity he had last year which he managed to turn into a 80 seat tory majority.
Starmers position seems to be local lockdowns don't work, so ???? He wants another national lockdown?
There's a logic behind that.
It is is possible to live in a tier 3 area, work in a tier 2 area, and have kids in school in tier 1.
So a national approach could make sense.
Personally that's my position...but i don't think its Starmers. His seems to be x doesn't work, but i am supporting for the moment, kind of, if only testing was better etc.
A petty complaint on language. Regardless of whose fault it is and competence of government preparations it really is going to require a lot of personal response from businesses.
That they need to may well be unfair when it was not their choice, but whose choice it was doesnt change who has to act for a business.
That's how I read it. Regardless of what who did what to get us where we are now, here are the things YOU need to be doing now to ensure continuity in YOUR business.
I really do not see what is wrong with that. Indeed, it would be derelict if a Business minister was not conveying something along those lines.
A petty complaint on language. Regardless of whose fault it is and competence of government preparations it really is going to require a lot of personal response from businesses.
That they need to may well be unfair when it was not their choice, but whose choice it was doesnt change who has to act for a business.
Today is October 12th - and it's impossible to know what your business needs to be on January 1st 2021 because we don't know how business will work on January 1st 2021...
Perhaps Trafalgar Group has forecast Trump winning there?
Not wishing to claim he thinks he is going to win DC but could this be (a) to reach parts of Virginia that get the signal from DC and / or (b) to reach out to fundraisers / Republicans?
My friend is a redundancy consultation. Now, in her case, getting the redundancy wouldn't be too bad – she has been at her employer for 20 years and in any case the company pays more than the statutory. She also has three months' notice –– so her potential payoff is substantial.
Now, she has spotted an internal job advertised which is outside her own department and not in the jobs pool for the redundancy consultation. She fancies applying for it.
Her question is, will the actual act of her applying compromise her ability to walk away if she isn't offered any of the original pooled jobs? I.e. would the employer be able to force her to take the job she applied for whether she decided she wanted to or not?
Thanks for any advice.
Depending on how well she gets on with her employer, it may be something she can mention that she is interested in but question how that impacts the redundancy arrangements. I can't imagine the employer could "force" her to take one of the other jobs
A petty complaint on language. Regardless of whose fault it is and competence of government preparations it really is going to require a lot of personal response from businesses.
That they need to may well be unfair when it was not their choice, but whose choice it was doesnt change who has to act for a business.
Today is October 12th - and it's impossible to know what your business needs to be on January 1st 2021 because we don't know how business will work on January 1st 2021...
A tangential issue at best when the complaint was about the use of You as if it were accusatory. It was utterly generic language and distracts from actually substantive complaints about the mess the gov have gotten in.
A focus on petty things when there's bigger things to complain about really irritates me, as it is less effective. The gov can distract from failings to rebut a stupid complaint.
Just because it is stupid doesn't mean it is confusing.
Government really need to get on top of the messaging here - TV and radio ads in every break tomorrow, a lot of social media advertising and engagement.
We know that the Lobby hacks find all this stuff utterly confusing, and will do their best to convince everyone else it's confusing too - when they're not asking inane questions of ministers or looking for the edgiest of edge cases.
Starmers position seems to be local lockdowns don't work, so ???? He wants another national lockdown?
There's a logic behind that.
It is is possible to live in a tier 3 area, work in a tier 2 area, and have kids in school in tier 1.
So a national approach could make sense.
Face it hes even more clueless than Bozo
Is that the latest defence from those who (for the time being) still support the Party-formally-known as Conservative? “Our guy is totally shit, but the LoTO is shit too”? Not sure it will wash that well after another 4 years of Bozo the Clown. All Starmer needs to do is look moderately reasonable and roughly competent, and next to the Clown it won’t be difficult, particularly after a few more years of back if a fag packet government. Ps good to see you Mr Alanbrooke , haven’t seen you for ages!
My friend is a redundancy consultation. Now, in her case, getting the redundancy wouldn't be too bad – she has been at her employer for 20 years and in any case the company pays more than the statutory. She also has three months' notice –– so her potential payoff is substantial.
Now, she has spotted an internal job advertised which is outside her own department and not in the jobs pool for the redundancy consultation. She fancies applying for it.
Her question is, will the actual act of her applying compromise her ability to walk away if she isn't offered any of the original pooled jobs? I.e. would the employer be able to force her to take the job she applied for whether she decided she wanted to or not?
Thanks for any advice.
If the employer is able to make her an offer of reasonable alternative employment (reasonableness both in relation to the T&Cs and her aptitude and skills) then it can avoid making her redundant. It sounds as if the alternative role she has spotted would be a reasonable such offer, so the company could offer it to her anyway, if the thought occurred to them. The act of applying for it would both put the thought into their head and establish that it is a reasonable offer. So if she really wants redundancy there isn't any point in applying for another internal job.
Perhaps Trafalgar Group has forecast Trump winning there?
Not wishing to claim he thinks he is going to win DC but could this be (a) to reach parts of Virginia that get the signal from DC and / or (b) to reach out to fundraisers / Republicans?
Northeast Virginia is very strong Democrat territory.
Starmers position seems to be local lockdowns don't work, so ???? He wants another national lockdown?
There's a logic behind that.
It is is possible to live in a tier 3 area, work in a tier 2 area, and have kids in school in tier 1.
So a national approach could make sense.
Face it hes even more clueless than Bozo
Is that the latest defence from those who (for the time being) still support the Party-formally-known as Conservative? “Our guy is totally shit, but the LoTO is shit too”? Not sure it will wash that well after another 4 years of Bozo the Clown. All Starmer needs to do is look moderately reasonable and roughly competent, and next to the Clown it won’t be difficult, particularly after a few more years of back if a fag packet government. Ps good to see you Mr Alanbrooke , haven’t seen you for ages!
Yes. That 'the other guy was worse' is essentially how we got landed with Bozo in the first place. If things continue on current path, Starmer may have to do little more than play the Biden strategy. Relying on that so far out is however a gamble.
Well, he is not far wrong with California, at least LA. Downtown is apparently totally dystopian
LA Downtown, like most other downtowns in the US (or the UK for that matter) is a lot less dystopian than it used to be.
When I first visited LA in 1998 (for E3!), downtown was completely dead. There was nothing there other than aggressive panhandlers and a few rundown looking office buildings. Skid row had spilled out over several streets and it as pretty awful. The only hotels were cheap ones for the convention center. (And if you had half a brain you stayed somewhere nice like Santa Monica or Beverly Hills.)
In the last 22 years, nice hotels, restaurants, apartments, theatres and bars have moved in. Downtown is cool - you can be near the Staples Center (go Lakers!), close to the Coliseum and USC. There is much better public transport. And the police have done a much better job (massively better than in SF or NY) of dealing with aggressive pan handlers.
I would say that downtown LA is much better than SF these days.
The same is true in Baltimore. Sure, there is still huge urban blight and derelict areas within the city. But Capitol Hill, the harbour, and Fell's Point in particular are wonderful places to visit and live. That was not the case 20-30 years ago.
I'm going to slightly disagree with you @rcs1000 re LA although I agree that there has been a massively amount of investment and shiny new hospitals but I was referring to Skid Row and the general explosion in homelessness, it is awful. That has got worse since I first started going over 20 years ago.
Well, he is not far wrong with California, at least LA. Downtown is apparently totally dystopian
LA Downtown, like most other downtowns in the US (or the UK for that matter) is a lot less dystopian than it used to be.
When I first visited LA in 1998 (for E3!), downtown was completely dead. There was nothing there other than aggressive panhandlers and a few rundown looking office buildings. Skid row had spilled out over several streets and it as pretty awful. The only hotels were cheap ones for the convention center. (And if you had half a brain you stayed somewhere nice like Santa Monica or Beverly Hills.)
In the last 22 years, nice hotels, restaurants, apartments, theatres and bars have moved in. Downtown is cool - you can be near the Staples Center (go Lakers!), close to the Coliseum and USC. There is much better public transport. And the police have done a much better job (massively better than in SF or NY) of dealing with aggressive pan handlers.
I would say that downtown LA is much better than SF these days.
The same is true in Baltimore. Sure, there is still huge urban blight and derelict areas within the city. But Capitol Hill, the harbour, and Fell's Point in particular are wonderful places to visit and live. That was not the case 20-30 years ago.
I'm going to slightly disagree with you @rcs1000 re LA although I agree that there has been a massively amount of investment and shiny new hospitals but I was referring to Skid Row and the general explosion in homelessness, it is awful. That has got worse since I first started going over 20 years ago.
Agree re SF. Awful place
I always thought the whole point of LA is that it doesn't have a downtown and is all sprawl with no centre?
These "unofficial"/"fake" drop boxes are popping up all over the US.
I know someone who works in a Library in Florida, which is an official drop box site. They had people come trying their luck claiming to be there to "collect" the early votes . . . despite the fact that it was before early voting had even started yet . . .
Starmers position seems to be local lockdowns don't work, so ???? He wants another national lockdown?
There's a logic behind that.
It is is possible to live in a tier 3 area, work in a tier 2 area, and have kids in school in tier 1.
So a national approach could make sense.
Face it hes even more clueless than Bozo
Is that the latest defence from those who (for the time being) still support the Party-formally-known as Conservative? “Our guy is totally shit, but the LoTO is shit too”? Not sure it will wash that well after another 4 years of Bozo the Clown. All Starmer needs to do is look moderately reasonable and roughly competent, and next to the Clown it won’t be difficult, particularly after a few more years of back if a fag packet government. Ps good to see you Mr Alanbrooke , haven’t seen you for ages!
Covid and Trump are hardly the most exciting topics and currently that's all there is.
These "unofficial"/"fake" drop boxes are popping up all over the US.
One would hope a Democrat voter would not drop a vote off at a GOP office, so not sure what the game is here. Is it to deliberately lose GOP votes or have them discounted in order to call fraud case in a state that does not matter, is it to ballot stuff, or is it to deprive Democrat voters who do fall for these boxes? If it is large scale and nationwide, that's surely a sizeable escalation of the attempt to undermine a free and fair election.
These "unofficial"/"fake" drop boxes are popping up all over the US.
One would hope a Democrat voter would not drop a vote off at a GOP office, so not sure what the game is here. Is it to deliberately lose GOP votes or have them discounted in order to call fraud case in a state that does not matter, is it to ballot stuff, or is it to deprive Democrat voters who do fall for these boxes? If it is large scale and nationwide, that's surely a sizeable escalation of the attempt to undermine a free and fair election.
The article suggests it seeks to exploit a change in rules allowing people to designate someone else to drop off their vote to make it easier for Republicans to vote by effectively collecting them up at unofficial locations.
Starmers position seems to be local lockdowns don't work, so ???? He wants another national lockdown?
There's a logic behind that.
It is is possible to live in a tier 3 area, work in a tier 2 area, and have kids in school in tier 1.
So a national approach could make sense.
Face it hes even more clueless than Bozo
Is that the latest defence from those who (for the time being) still support the Party-formally-known as Conservative? “Our guy is totally shit, but the LoTO is shit too”? Not sure it will wash that well after another 4 years of Bozo the Clown. All Starmer needs to do is look moderately reasonable and roughly competent, and next to the Clown it won’t be difficult, particularly after a few more years of back if a fag packet government. Ps good to see you Mr Alanbrooke , haven’t seen you for ages!
Yes. That 'the other guy was worse' is essentially how we got landed with Bozo in the first place. If things continue on current path, Starmer may have to do little more than play the Biden strategy. Relying on that so far out is however a gamble.
He's bland and useless. A man surrounded by turds in his cabinet and couldn't even organise a shit show.
Fining one person £10000 might not be sufficient in extreme cases. If someone is doing a £100k wedding for 300 people, £10k isnt a big deterrent. Can they fine everyone who attends?
It was only in January that the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, was talking about how this government would not be “trying to ‘control the narrative’ and all that New Labour junk and this government will not be run by ‘comms grid’”, adding that the government had “a significant majority and little need to worry about short-term unpopularity”.
Now the government can’t even say: “Not every job can survive in an era of social distancing and we have precisely zero intention of protecting every job until either palliative treatments or a vaccine allows us to end social distancing – so learn to code and stop kvetching about a poster!” Or failing that, just ignore a Twitter storm because, you know, it’s Twitter, so who cares?
Why does this matter? Because the government’s coronavirus policy as a whole bears the imprimatur of that same lack of self-confidence
I note Warrington is being put into Tier 2 not Tier 3 with Liverpool. Makes sense, I couldn't understand why Warrington had been put into a harsher lockdown than Manchester along with Liverpool at the time it happened, the cases in Warrington are nowhere near Liverpool levels nor is Warrington hospital seeing the same level of strain.
Fining one person £10000 might not be sufficient in extreme cases. If someone is doing a £100k wedding for 300 people, £10k isnt a big deterrent. Can they fine everyone who attends?
After they've paid all their costs it'd be rare to be making more than a £10k profit for one event.
"Four years ago, voters who decided in the presidential campaign’s waning days broke decisively for Trump, a political newcomer, delivering him a shock victory. This year, evidence suggests there are few who have yet to make up their minds. But many of those who had been on the fence appear to be coming down on Biden’s side."
Maybe the confirmation bias at work, but this is very much in line with my more anecdotal observations
Comments
Idiots.
Has been so for decades.
Johnson said he had the full support of Mayors, so he lied to the House.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvR2QiJ8wno
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1315674217086676994
"Simple"
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1315675341621358593?s=20
The government also announced a further 50 people had died with Covid-19, after testing positive within the last 28 days.
That includes 43 in England, four in Wales, three in Northern Ireland and none in Scotland.
middle class ponce
And at least half utterly wrong.
But thanks anyways.
That they need to may well be unfair when it was not their choice, but whose choice it was doesnt change who has to act for a business.
It is is possible to live in a tier 3 area, work in a tier 2 area, and have kids in school in tier 1.
So a national approach could make sense.
I really do not see what is wrong with that. Indeed, it would be derelict if a Business minister was not conveying something along those lines.
Meanwhile the PM's Press Conf appears to have been pushed back to 1900
Is 'distinctly uncommercial' a euphemism for 'crap', or is he actually pursuing something construed as art?
These "unofficial"/"fake" drop boxes are popping up all over the US.
A focus on petty things when there's bigger things to complain about really irritates me, as it is less effective. The gov can distract from failings to rebut a stupid complaint.
We know that the Lobby hacks find all this stuff utterly confusing, and will do their best to convince everyone else it's confusing too - when they're not asking inane questions of ministers or looking for the edgiest of edge cases.
(in Liverpool City Region)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking
Agree re SF. Awful place
https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/wedding-essex-venue-margaretting-breaks-4598326
I'm backing Armenia on Nargorno-Karabakh
Now the government can’t even say: “Not every job can survive in an era of social distancing and we have precisely zero intention of protecting every job until either palliative treatments or a vaccine allows us to end social distancing – so learn to code and stop kvetching about a poster!” Or failing that, just ignore a Twitter storm because, you know, it’s Twitter, so who cares?
Why does this matter? Because the government’s coronavirus policy as a whole bears the imprimatur of that same lack of self-confidence
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2020/10/government-s-apology-over-ballerina-ad-shows-it-can-t-defend-its-economic
"Four years ago, voters who decided in the presidential campaign’s waning days broke decisively for Trump, a political newcomer, delivering him a shock victory. This year, evidence suggests there are few who have yet to make up their minds. But many of those who had been on the fence appear to be coming down on Biden’s side."
Maybe the confirmation bias at work, but this is very much in line with my more anecdotal observations
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/as-trump-stumbles-voters-finalize-their-choices-and-bidens-lead-grows/2020/10/11/0ed19f6e-0a7f-11eb-991c-be6ead8c4018_story.html