There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
About the money, I really don't know. I am 100 per cent sure Boris will not take tough, unpopular decisions, though. He'll leave that for his successor.
There is also the public inquiry into Covid -- Boris will want to boot the publication of the report until after the next election. Fortunately, Labour have shown him the blueprint in how to do this. The Iraq War inquiry was announced in 2009 by Gordon Brown and published 7 years later in 2016.
So, let me see .... MexicanPete's nightmare is ... the Shagster puts off announcing any COVID inquiry until 2022, so it won't report till way into the future; he gets his extra seats from the boundaries in 2023; he continues to spaff the electorate with his sticky honey till 2023; he goes to the country and is returned with another majority.
He will have "won London twice, triumphed in the referendum, done Brexit, thrashed COVID & clobbered Labour twice in the Generals".
He can retire a hero. We are finally rid of him.
HYUFD will be in the House of Lords.
And the country will be in ruins.
What country? The United Kingdom of England, Wales, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.
Sounds a good (if geographically illogical) idea for the UK to join the Asia-Pacific trade act . Maybe then move on and errmm (thinking leftfield here) join a free trade area closer to home like errm the EU?
Fantastic idea. Can you suggest one that doesn’t come with political baggage?
One Labour frontbencher tells me: “In our focus groups, the more we attack the government, the more people don’t like it.” The accusation that the government has been too slow to take measures to control the virus resonates with the public because they largely agree. “Anywhere else you attack them, you have people saying, ‘That’s not fair.’”
Very interesting. My theory is that deep down the public aren’t so pro-lockdown as the polls suggest. Also, I reckon quite a few people think that the people catching it aren’t playing by the rules (i.e. not the fault of the government), That would make sense as I think we all like to think “it couldn’t happen to me.”
I think people are all for lockdown yesterday until they have done it for 2-3 weeks, with the kids at home, nothing is open, etc, then it quickly becomes no fun at all.
A lot of people, while not ignoring, are undoubtedly being creative with their interpretation of lockdown. My next door neighbour’s mum comes and goes frequently, maybe she’s in a support bubble, but I’ve little doubt that while the massive parties steal the headlines much larger small scale breaches happen all the time.
Sounds a good (if geographically illogical) idea for the UK to join the Asia-Pacific trade act . Maybe then move on and errmm (thinking leftfield here) join a free trade area closer to home like errm the EU?
Fantastic idea. Can you suggest one that doesn’t come with political baggage?
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
Perhaps the Scottish people are disparate, rather than dispirit?
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Does the jingoism never get tiresome?
Alexa.....another burst of Rule Britannia....
Which facts do you dispute?
I'm sure even Goebbels told the truth sometimes but do we really need this patriotic blather? It's one of the reasons Hartlepudlians think they're too smart to mix with the riff- raff of the EU.
There is a huge amount of cognitive dissonance going on with the pro-EU lot. They claim to be internationalists but then say we should prioritise association with certain countries close to us, with which we apparently have some sort of particularly close cultural affinity. But if I said we should prioritise association with the Anglophone countries of the world because we have close cultural ties, they would probably call me a racist.
CP-TPP is the future of world trade. Doubly so if we can get the USA involved.
Sounds a good (if geographically illogical) idea for the UK to join the Asia-Pacific trade act . Maybe then move on and errmm (thinking leftfield here) join a free trade area closer to home like errm the EU?
Fantastic idea. Can you suggest one that doesn’t come with political baggage?
Quite. I don't think CPTPP is going to ask us to join an ever-closer union or impose a common currency on us. And we do have a trade deal with a local free trade area, although no doubt it could be improved on.
One Labour frontbencher tells me: “In our focus groups, the more we attack the government, the more people don’t like it.” The accusation that the government has been too slow to take measures to control the virus resonates with the public because they largely agree. “Anywhere else you attack them, you have people saying, ‘That’s not fair.’”
Very interesting. My theory is that deep down the public aren’t so pro-lockdown as the polls suggest. Also, I reckon quite a few people think that the people catching it aren’t playing by the rules (i.e. not the fault of the government), That would make sense as I think we all like to think “it couldn’t happen to me.”
I think people are all for lockdown yesterday until they have done it for 2-3 weeks, with the kids at home, nothing is open, etc, then it quickly becomes no fun at all.
A lot of people, while not ignoring, are undoubtedly being creative with their interpretation of lockdown. My next door neighbour’s mum comes and goes frequently, maybe she’s in a support bubble, but I’ve little doubt that while the massive parties steal the headlines much larger small scale breaches happen all the time.
The "support bubble" thing is definitely being exploited beyonds its intended use. My older but perfectly independent neighbours have had their kids pop round on their usual regular basis throughout the pandemic, one of which works in the NHS.
Sounds a good (if geographically illogical) idea for the UK to join the Asia-Pacific trade act . Maybe then move on and errmm (thinking leftfield here) join a free trade area closer to home like errm the EU?
Fantastic idea. Can you suggest one that doesn’t come with political baggage?
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
'Made available' is not the same as 'delivered over the border', mind. But on the other points - still open for now.
They are available in a warehouse to be delivered overnight. The UK government is doing a "fair shares" roll out - so Guernsey, with 0.1% of the UK population gets 0.1% of the doses available. How quickly its delivered is down to the individual governments/health authorities. And this "Scotland is less densely populated" skips the fact that around three quarters live in the Central Belt.
Er, Guernsey has 0% of the UK population as it isn't part of the UK (but is presumably part of the area the UK government is responsible for procuring vaccines for).
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
Perhaps the Scottish people are disparate, rather than dispirit?
Although....
They woouldn't get any vaccine at all if you had your way. You've never apologised for suggesting that based on a complete misreading of someone else's posting.
Well this has gone up quickly - tbc but could easily be Kent COVID - and in fairness they got the results confirmed a week last Friday and locked down Saturday lunch time....they are also doing extensive testing - UK equivalent of a million a day.
There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
About the money, I really don't know. I am 100 per cent sure Boris will not take tough, unpopular decisions, though. He'll leave that for his successor.
There is also the public inquiry into Covid -- Boris will want to boot the publication of the report until after the next election. Fortunately, Labour have shown him the blueprint in how to do this. The Iraq War inquiry was announced in 2009 by Gordon Brown and published 7 years later in 2016.
So, let me see .... MexicanPete's nightmare is ... the Shagster puts off announcing any COVID inquiry until 2022, so it won't report till way into the future; he gets his extra seats from the boundaries in 2023; he continues to spaff the electorate with his sticky honey till 2023; he goes to the country and is returned with another majority.
He will have "won London twice, triumphed in the referendum, done Brexit, thrashed COVID & clobbered Labour twice in the Generals".
He can retire a hero. We are finally rid of him.
HYUFD will be in the House of Lords.
And the country will be in ruins.
What country? The United Kingdom of England, Wales, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.
But .... connected by bridges.
The 'Bonkers Bridge' from Plymouth to Port Stanley will be one of the great engineering wonders of the world.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
'Made available' is not the same as 'delivered over the border', mind. But on the other points - still open for now.
They are available in a warehouse to be delivered overnight. The UK government is doing a "fair shares" roll out - so Guernsey, with 0.1% of the UK population gets 0.1% of the doses available. How quickly its delivered is down to the individual governments/health authorities. And this "Scotland is less densely populated" skips the fact that around three quarters live in the Central Belt.
Er, Guernsey has 0% of the UK population as it isn't part of the UK (but is presumably part of the area the UK government is responsible for procuring vaccines for).
Shorthand - the UK is also covering Gibraltar, for example.
Adding today's Opinium poll into the EMA gives the Tories a 1.4% lead over Labour and leaves them 17 short of an overall majority.
So Starmer probably PM but only with SNP and LD support
Labour have lost their minds. What is their strongest suit? young voters. They have strived over the past year to make the lives of their core constituency just about as unpleasant as they could. They are offering nothing in the future.
Those voters may still favour labour over conservative, but will they turn out?
If you mean they have not opposed lockdowns - as I suppose you do - then this shouldn't cost them politically amongst the young. Most of the anti-lockdowners are middle aged men. In bow ties.
There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
Fancy a bet then?
Tories will take a 10% lead in the polls by this time next year.
I think sometime over the next three months, you are right and the Tories pull away again. I just don't see how, when economic reality bites Johnson and Sunak don't get skewered, you can tell me how they manage it, if you like.
So I will take a rain check on your bet, tempting though it is. After I had finished polishing your Nostradamus halo earlier, I later recalled that @Mysticrose (and I think it was you, apologies if it is fake news) cashed out your Biden position in favour of Trump midway through election night.
There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
About the money, I really don't know. I am 100 per cent sure Boris will not take tough, unpopular decisions, though. He'll leave that for his successor.
There is also the public inquiry into Covid -- Boris will want to boot the publication of the report until after the next election. Fortunately, Labour have shown him the blueprint in how to do this. The Iraq War inquiry was announced in 2009 by Gordon Brown and published 7 years later in 2016.
So, let me see .... MexicanPete's nightmare is ... the Shagster puts off announcing any COVID inquiry until 2022, so it won't report till way into the future; he gets his extra seats from the boundaries in 2023; he continues to spaff the electorate with his sticky honey till 2023; he goes to the country and is returned with another majority.
He will have "won London twice, triumphed in the referendum, done Brexit, thrashed COVID & clobbered Labour twice in the Generals".
He can retire a hero. We are finally rid of him.
HYUFD will be in the House of Lords.
And the country will be in ruins.
What country? The United Kingdom of England, Wales, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.
But .... connected by bridges.
The 'Bonkers Bridge' from Plymouth to Port Stanley will be one of the great engineering wonders of the world.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
'Made available' is not the same as 'delivered over the border', mind. But on the other points - still open for now.
They are available in a warehouse to be delivered overnight. The UK government is doing a "fair shares" roll out - so Guernsey, with 0.1% of the UK population gets 0.1% of the doses available. How quickly its delivered is down to the individual governments/health authorities. And this "Scotland is less densely populated" skips the fact that around three quarters live in the Central Belt.
Thanks for that clarification - I had wondered about the wording.
Overnight all of Trump's legal team for the senate trial quit.
I am thinking that is not a good sign.
Isn’t it? It sounds like a very good sign to me. It suggests they think the Senate’s going to screw the orange haired motherf****** like a whore paid by the orgasm.
Or, more likely, it could be that they don’t want to be associated with the nature of Trump’s defence which will almost certainly lead to his being cleared of the charges by a craven bunch of Republican Senators.
Damaging for business with a good 60% of their clients.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Does the jingoism never get tiresome?
Alexa.....another burst of Rule Britannia....
Which facts do you dispute?
I'm sure even Goebbels told the truth sometimes but do we really need this patriotic blather? It's one of the reasons Hartlepudlians think they're too smart to mix with the riff- raff of the EU.
There is a huge amount of cognitive dissonance going on with the pro-EU lot. They claim to be internationalists but then say we should prioritise association with certain countries close to us, with which we apparently have some sort of particularly close cultural affinity. But if I said we should prioritise association with the Anglophone countries of the world because we have close cultural ties, they would probably call me a racist.
Sometime during the Remianer parliament I went to a charity dinner in the City.
To avoid the 316th conversation on Brexit, someone bought up the comment by aide to David Cameron... it was something on the lines of "why should we prioritise the well being of the people of the UK over the well being of people in poor country x?"
One person vehemently approved - internationalism OK. Others nodded.
A chap sitting next to me had been a bit quiet.
Then he pointed out, as a serving officer in the army, that if the government of the country didn't think that it owed a duty to it's citizens, why did the citizens own a duty to the Government? He being one of the citizens in question.
There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
About the money, I really don't know. I am 100 per cent sure Boris will not take tough, unpopular decisions, though. He'll leave that for his successor.
There is also the public inquiry into Covid -- Boris will want to boot the publication of the report until after the next election. Fortunately, Labour have shown him the blueprint in how to do this. The Iraq War inquiry was announced in 2009 by Gordon Brown and published 7 years later in 2016.
So, let me see .... MexicanPete's nightmare is ... the Shagster puts off announcing any COVID inquiry until 2022, so it won't report till way into the future; he gets his extra seats from the boundaries in 2023; he continues to spaff the electorate with his sticky honey till 2023; he goes to the country and is returned with another majority.
He will have "won London twice, triumphed in the referendum, done Brexit, thrashed COVID & clobbered Labour twice in the Generals".
He can retire a hero. We are finally rid of him.
HYUFD will be in the House of Lords.
And the country will be in ruins.
MexicanPete's nightmare has a decent chance of coming true, and anyone writing off Boris' chances at this stage is being far too hasty. If this last week is proof of anything, it's that Boris is a lucky general...
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Does the jingoism never get tiresome?
Alexa.....another burst of Rule Britannia....
Which facts do you dispute?
I'm sure even Goebbels told the truth sometimes but do we really need this patriotic blather? It's one of the reasons Hartlepudlians think they're too smart to mix with the riff- raff of the EU.
There is a huge amount of cognitive dissonance going on with the pro-EU lot. They claim to be internationalists but then say we should prioritise association with certain countries close to us, with which we apparently have some sort of particularly close cultural affinity. But if I said we should prioritise association with the Anglophone countries of the world because we have close cultural ties, they would probably call me a racist.
CP-TPP is the future of world trade. Doubly so if we can get the USA involved.
A grandiose assertion indeed. I think dry January is taking its toll. But nearly there now.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
Perhaps the Scottish people are disparate, rather than dispirit?
Although....
They woouldn't get any vaccine at all if you had your way. You've never apologised for suggesting that based on a complete misreading of someone else's posting.
The complete misreading was those who have no concept of hyperbole, used in reposnse to hyperbole.
Malcy: "Never mind the 6 figures dead , some on here just think Tories are awesome because we have some vaccines. Happy that they kill more than anyone with their incompetence and justify it all because we can jab the few left."
Me: "Can I suggest the Government stops sending any more vaccines to Scotland? Just to see what malcy with a proper grievance looks like.
Of course, they don't need many anyway, because he's told us there's only a few left alive..."
One Labour frontbencher tells me: “In our focus groups, the more we attack the government, the more people don’t like it.” The accusation that the government has been too slow to take measures to control the virus resonates with the public because they largely agree. “Anywhere else you attack them, you have people saying, ‘That’s not fair.’”
Very interesting. My theory is that deep down the public aren’t so pro-lockdown as the polls suggest. Also, I reckon quite a few people think that the people catching it aren’t playing by the rules (i.e. not the fault of the government), That would make sense as I think we all like to think “it couldn’t happen to me.”
I think people are all for lockdown yesterday until they have done it for 2-3 weeks, with the kids at home, nothing is open, etc, then it quickly becomes no fun at all.
A lot of people, while not ignoring, are undoubtedly being creative with their interpretation of lockdown. My next door neighbour’s mum comes and goes frequently, maybe she’s in a support bubble, but I’ve little doubt that while the massive parties steal the headlines much larger small scale breaches happen all the time.
Yes, it is quite likely that the headline cases -- anti-mask demos and social media stars in first class plane seats -- give people a false sense of security. I'm not flying to Dubai so I'm safe.
But the rules did become too complex for most people to keep up with. Even for gov.uk to keep up with -- often rule changes would take days to be fully reported online.
My test, and argument to fellow PBers, is that if the Prime Minister gets it wrong or Cabinet Ministers disagree about the meaning of new rules (for instance Gove and Sunak on coffee shop muffins) then the public should not be blamed.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Watching Marr interviewing the Taoiseach made me want to throw something at the tv. Marr asked him to comment about the poor vaccine programme in EU. The Taoiseach went on a ramble about it being the fault of the failure of AZ to deliver on agreed volumes and that they hadn’t had issues with other companies and Marr just let it ride.
Why are the EU not being pulled up on blaming AZ for their problems - they didn’t even approve it until Friday so the slow roll out is nothing to do with AZ and is down to the EU slow approvals, poor purchasing negotiations and badly coordinated country based vaccination plans.
If the EU had approved AZ in December and no deliveries then fine but no jabs from AZ before Friday are purely the fault of the EU.
On top of this Pfizer and Moderna seem to get a free pass on having reduced their deliveries to EU - they have production issues every bit as valid as AZ.
So AZ have no blame for the EU making a hash of this but it seems to be the narrative and ridiculous how it’s being allowed to pass but Marr and other useful idiots.....
In fairness to him Marr is an equal opportunity interviewer, he lets everyone away with anything, whether it reflects his own biases or not.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
Big differences between Scottish health areas, for reasons that aren't clear. eg Dundee has vaccinated more than twice as many people per cent than Edinburgh.
IF you are a person that had to junk a long standing family business for ever, or a single mum with three kids and one computer in a council flat, are you really thinking about the government's covid death count?
No you are thinking about how lockdown destroyed your life, and the lives of those you love.
I have some fairly young retired friends (ie mid-60s). They talk of a "lost" year, one where they were still young and fit enough to enjoy travelling, music festivals etc and have not been able to do so. They won't get it back. And they have been locked down without anything to do. At least work has kept me sane.
I fall into that young-ish retired age group and although I am upset about not being able to travel (particularly regarding a family wedding in Italy last year) I am just thankful that I am not trying to run a business in these times or am the single mother with kids in a tower block. I have done WEA courses and U3A activities on line, I have done far more cooking from scatch and tried new recipes and have gone for long local walks. These boomer whingers ought to think more about what they have and not what they are missing.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Exactly , first time it is not given to their chums it is a success, if only they had thought of that a year ago.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Exactly , first time it is not given to their chums it is a success, if only they had thought of that a year ago.
It's funny, there's an argument upthread that Bingham's appointment was the chumocracy at work. I don't think they can ever win.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
She has no scientific qualifications whatsoever beyond a bachelor's degree.
Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have undermined the vaccination campaign by making a cretinous statement about not wanting to vaccinate the whole population because the side effects of the vaccines would be so serious.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
'Made available' is not the same as 'delivered over the border', mind. But on the other points - still open for now.
They are available in a warehouse to be delivered overnight. The UK government is doing a "fair shares" roll out - so Guernsey, with 0.1% of the UK population gets 0.1% of the doses available. How quickly its delivered is down to the individual governments/health authorities. And this "Scotland is less densely populated" skips the fact that around three quarters live in the Central Belt.
Er, Guernsey has 0% of the UK population as it isn't part of the UK (but is presumably part of the area the UK government is responsible for procuring vaccines for).
Shorthand - the UK is also covering Gibraltar, for example.
Which has done very well - 38% have had their first jab - quite a long way ahead of their immediate neighbour:
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Does the jingoism never get tiresome?
Alexa.....another burst of Rule Britannia....
Which facts do you dispute?
I'm sure even Goebbels told the truth sometimes but do we really need this patriotic blather? It's one of the reasons Hartlepudlians think they're too smart to mix with the riff- raff of the EU.
Always harping on back to the war. It's just 'de trop' old bean.
I think with a minimal amount of study that you’d discover much of Goebbels best work predates WWII.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Really? She still beat the vaccine teams of almost every other country - or superstate for that matter - in the world. Perhaps more of them should have married Tory MPs!
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
Perhaps the Scottish people are disparate, rather than dispirit?
Although....
Who would believe that lying turd in any case, those numbers will be faker than a three bob bit. Half them will be sitting in warehouses down south. We will see when Scottish Government publish the real numbers this week, what is the betting Union jack will be lying.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
Perhaps the Scottish people are disparate, rather than dispirit?
Although....
They woouldn't get any vaccine at all if you had your way. You've never apologised for suggesting that based on a complete misreading of someone else's posting.
The complete misreading was those who have no concept of hyperbole, used in reposnse to hyperbole.
Malcy: "Never mind the 6 figures dead , some on here just think Tories are awesome because we have some vaccines. Happy that they kill more than anyone with their incompetence and justify it all because we can jab the few left."
Me: "Can I suggest the Government stops sending any more vaccines to Scotland? Just to see what malcy with a proper grievance looks like.
Of course, they don't need many anyway, because he's told us there's only a few left alive..."
You think that needs an apology? Really?
Yes, because you suggested depriving an entire part of the UK of vaccine just to satisfy your spite. I wouldn't dream of saying that about say the Guernseyese. Or the Welsh, or English, or Rockallese.
And all you did was tell me to fuck off because I didn't see the joke.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Really? She still beat the vaccine teams of almost every other country - or superstate for that matter - in the world. Perhaps more of them should have married Tory MPs!
I have often found the spouses of Tory MPs to be way more formidable than their other half.....
Frankly, if the US had any kind of regulatory sanctions for lawyers worth a damn that letter would put the author before them for bringing the profession into disrepute. I have seen some pretty objectionable letters from lawyers in my time but that is another level of nonsense.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
Perhaps the Scottish people are disparate, rather than dispirit?
Although....
They woouldn't get any vaccine at all if you had your way. You've never apologised for suggesting that based on a complete misreading of someone else's posting.
The complete misreading was those who have no concept of hyperbole, used in reposnse to hyperbole.
Malcy: "Never mind the 6 figures dead , some on here just think Tories are awesome because we have some vaccines. Happy that they kill more than anyone with their incompetence and justify it all because we can jab the few left."
Me: "Can I suggest the Government stops sending any more vaccines to Scotland? Just to see what malcy with a proper grievance looks like.
Of course, they don't need many anyway, because he's told us there's only a few left alive..."
You think that needs an apology? Really?
Yes, because you suggested depriving an entire part of the UK of vaccine just to satisfy your spite. I wouldn't dream of saying that about say the Guernseyese. Or the Welsh, or English, or Rockallese.
And all you did was tell me to fuck off because I didn't see the joke.
Oh again, fuck off. Not my fault you don't get the concept of hyperbole.
Watching Marr interviewing the Taoiseach made me want to throw something at the tv. Marr asked him to comment about the poor vaccine programme in EU. The Taoiseach went on a ramble about it being the fault of the failure of AZ to deliver on agreed volumes and that they hadn’t had issues with other companies and Marr just let it ride.
Why are the EU not being pulled up on blaming AZ for their problems - they didn’t even approve it until Friday so the slow roll out is nothing to do with AZ and is down to the EU slow approvals, poor purchasing negotiations and badly coordinated country based vaccination plans.
If the EU had approved AZ in December and no deliveries then fine but no jabs from AZ before Friday are purely the fault of the EU.
On top of this Pfizer and Moderna seem to get a free pass on having reduced their deliveries to EU - they have production issues every bit as valid as AZ.
So AZ have no blame for the EU making a hash of this but it seems to be the narrative and ridiculous how it’s being allowed to pass but Marr and other useful idiots.....
In fairness to him Marr is an equal opportunity interviewer, he lets everyone away with anything, whether it reflects his own biases or not.
Best bit was his wild claim that he only got informed when Boris called , they then switched to Martin and he looked amazed and said NO it is not true , no idea where you got that rubbish from.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
Perhaps the Scottish people are disparate, rather than dispirit?
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Exactly , always their chums, just lucky this one did not make the usual total mess of it.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Exactly , always their chums, just lucky this one did not make the usual total mess of it.
malcy, think the ice under your feet might be a tad thin when talking about politicians appointing their chums...!
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Does the jingoism never get tiresome?
Alexa.....another burst of Rule Britannia....
Which facts do you dispute?
I'm sure even Goebbels told the truth sometimes but do we really need this patriotic blather? It's one of the reasons Hartlepudlians think they're too smart to mix with the riff- raff of the EU.
Always harping on back to the war. It's just 'de trop' old bean.
I think with a minimal amount of study that you’d discover much of Goebbels best work predates WWII.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
'Made available' is not the same as 'delivered over the border', mind. But on the other points - still open for now.
They are available in a warehouse to be delivered overnight. The UK government is doing a "fair shares" roll out - so Guernsey, with 0.1% of the UK population gets 0.1% of the doses available. How quickly its delivered is down to the individual governments/health authorities. And this "Scotland is less densely populated" skips the fact that around three quarters live in the Central Belt.
Er, Guernsey has 0% of the UK population as it isn't part of the UK (but is presumably part of the area the UK government is responsible for procuring vaccines for).
Shorthand - the UK is also covering Gibraltar, for example.
Which has done very well - 38% have had their first jab - quite a long way ahead of their immediate neighbour:
They believe that they are Utterly Right. Morally Right. Saving The World From The Conspiracy. God* has Told Them.
This is why it is extremism - they can justify anything now to themselves. Anything.
*In the case of the USAian version, this is probably literally true. However, there are atheists who are like this - they believe religiously, without the religion.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
'Made available' is not the same as 'delivered over the border', mind. But on the other points - still open for now.
They are available in a warehouse to be delivered overnight. The UK government is doing a "fair shares" roll out - so Guernsey, with 0.1% of the UK population gets 0.1% of the doses available. How quickly its delivered is down to the individual governments/health authorities. And this "Scotland is less densely populated" skips the fact that around three quarters live in the Central Belt.
Thanks for that clarification - I had wondered about the wording.
However she will not have mentioned that last time the Tories cried foul , at least 30% of their numbers were in transit from England/Wales or in transit locally, so not available to go into anyone's arm. When that was pointed out they then claimed the Scottish Government had caused a national security risk. One thing is certain any numbers emanating from Union Jack or Carlotta will be well doctored and at best half the truth maximum.
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
I remember it well! I suspect the escargots for the vomit induction - Becker should have been a contributing factor!
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
'Made available' is not the same as 'delivered over the border', mind. But on the other points - still open for now.
They are available in a warehouse to be delivered overnight. The UK government is doing a "fair shares" roll out - so Guernsey, with 0.1% of the UK population gets 0.1% of the doses available. How quickly its delivered is down to the individual governments/health authorities. And this "Scotland is less densely populated" skips the fact that around three quarters live in the Central Belt.
Er, Guernsey has 0% of the UK population as it isn't part of the UK (but is presumably part of the area the UK government is responsible for procuring vaccines for).
Tories need to look after their tax havens, need someone to handle all their incoming bundles.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
'Made available' is not the same as 'delivered over the border', mind. But on the other points - still open for now.
They are available in a warehouse to be delivered overnight. The UK government is doing a "fair shares" roll out - so Guernsey, with 0.1% of the UK population gets 0.1% of the doses available. How quickly its delivered is down to the individual governments/health authorities. And this "Scotland is less densely populated" skips the fact that around three quarters live in the Central Belt.
Er, Guernsey has 0% of the UK population as it isn't part of the UK (but is presumably part of the area the UK government is responsible for procuring vaccines for).
Shorthand - the UK is also covering Gibraltar, for example.
Which has done very well - 38% have had their first jab - quite a long way ahead of their immediate neighbour:
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Exactly , always their chums, just lucky this one did not make the usual total mess of it.
malcy, think the ice under your feet might be a tad thin when talking about politicians appointing their chums...!
Chap yesterday was quoting what appeared to be the number of vaccines provided to France already and what is expected even on a reduced scale, and that such a slow rollout looks very strange as a result, and that would seem to confirm that. Very odd.
Thank goodness their cases are not surging like Spain's right now.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
She has no scientific qualifications whatsoever beyond a bachelor's degree.
Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have undermined the vaccination campaign by making a cretinous statement about not wanting to vaccinate the whole population because the side effects of the vaccines would be so serious.
She has a first-class degree in Biochemistry from Oxford and an MBA from Harvard [from wiki].
In any case, it is reasonable to judge appointments by results.
I am not sure this is the hill to die on, if you are fighting the chumocracy -- try this one instead
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
I remember it well! I suspect the escargots for the vomit induction - Becker should have been a contributing factor!
Thought Becker preferred broom cupboards to outdoors.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
I sincerely hope this conversation was not in a broom cupboard.
Yes but the tweeter does not seem to have taken account of the French government reserving second doses for administration in March after the first jab in February. That would account for a million of the 1.6 million outstanding, would it not?
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
I remember it well! I suspect the escargots for the vomit induction - Becker should have been a contributing factor!
Thought Becker preferred broom cupboards to outdoors.
Are there more French or English in the average French broom cupboard? Asking for a friend.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
No you are thinking about how lockdown destroyed your life, and the lives of those you love.
People I know in this position are extremely grateful for how the Gov't stepped in with massive financial assistance. And most of them I've spoken to were not tory supporters.
It'll be difficult to attach a negative to "Eat out to Help out" in Summer 2020, when it get repeated to popular acclaim later in 2021...
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
Do you have a link to the workings of the Turing scheme regarding where the student's fees go?
And how much do you want to wager that there will be zero interest in the Turing scheme from universities?
There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
About the money, I really don't know. I am 100 per cent sure Boris will not take tough, unpopular decisions, though. He'll leave that for his successor.
There is also the public inquiry into Covid -- Boris will want to boot the publication of the report until after the next election. Fortunately, Labour have shown him the blueprint in how to do this. The Iraq War inquiry was announced in 2009 by Gordon Brown and published 7 years later in 2016.
So, let me see .... MexicanPete's nightmare is ... the Shagster puts off announcing any COVID inquiry until 2022, so it won't report till way into the future; he gets his extra seats from the boundaries in 2023; he continues to spaff the electorate with his sticky honey till 2023; he goes to the country and is returned with another majority.
He will have "won London twice, triumphed in the referendum, done Brexit, thrashed COVID & clobbered Labour twice in the Generals".
He can retire a hero. We are finally rid of him.
HYUFD will be in the House of Lords.
And the country will be in ruins.
MexicanPete's nightmare has a decent chance of coming true, and anyone writing off Boris' chances at this stage is being far too hasty. If this last week is proof of anything, it's that Boris is a lucky general...
He's quite rightly bookies favourite. The biggest thing he had to counter was the sheer sense of absurdity that such a ridiculous character could be PM. I felt that very strongly when he got the job - as I know millions more did - but the sense is dissipating.
I have gotten - and am continuing to getten - used to him. I respect him no more than I did. I like him no more than I did. But I'm no longer in a state of contemptuous disbelief about it. I was for a period but not anymore. I'm afraid it's worn off. My overton window on who can be PM has moved to accommodate "Boris". He's wormed his way into my brain and moved it in the direction of black satire.
I say "afraid" because this is an unwelcome development which does not speak well of me or my millions of ilk. Either our standards are slipping or - and this is the theory I self servingly prefer - it's down to Donald Trump. Four years of him as POTUS has made our alternative reality of a complete charlatan who is not entirely malign seem almost wholesome. Everything is relative in this world after all.
Anyway, that's my take on this. Johnson is likely to lead the Cons into GE24 and he's likely to win it. The most 'smug city' bet in my current portfolio is 4 digits on him still to be PM on 1st July 2022. I did and tipped that 2 months ago at 1.9 and I hope some people followed suit (or even did it before me). It's 1.4 now. And still a buy imo, so no close out yet for me.
No you are thinking about how lockdown destroyed your life, and the lives of those you love.
People I know in this position are extremely grateful for how the Gov't stepped in with massive financial assistance. And most of them I've spoken to were not tory supporters.
It'll be difficult to attach a negative to "Eat out to Help out" in Summer 2020, when it get repeated to popular acclaim later in 2021...
This year's wheeze will be Long Haul To Help Out, respecting Europe's sought-after flyover status.
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
Yes but the tweeter does not seem to have taken account of the French government reserving second doses for administration in March after the first jab in February. That would account for a million of the 1.6 million outstanding, would it not?
As I pointed out last night, the numbers, combined with the reported performance of the French vaccination drive seem to indicate a very inefficient supply chain, with cyclic queuing effects in various places.
What that would mean is that simply pushing more vaccine into it might actually slow things down - until they sort it all out.
Yes but the tweeter does not seem to have taken account of the French government reserving second doses for administration in March after the first jab in February. That would account for a million of the 1.6 million outstanding, would it not?
Do they not have any more deliveries incoming then?
IF you are a person that had to junk a long standing family business for ever, or a single mum with three kids and one computer in a council flat, are you really thinking about the government's covid death count?
No you are thinking about how lockdown destroyed your life, and the lives of those you love.
I agree.
Statistics don't change minds. Personal experiences and vivid stories do.
Often too, these do not immediately show up in polling. It will take a while.
I believe all the main parties are in for a shock down the line. A big shock. In terms of turnout in particular. Why would a young voter choose any of them? what are they offering? A wintry sea of draconian restrictions, authoritarianism and a massive tax burden. Outlawing all of the benefits of being young.
Who would want to vote for that?
People over 60 vote in massive numbers. They have benefitted from the Government rolling out the vaccine. Their children are relieved their parents are safe.
Youngsters got nothing out of Covid - from either party.
That looks like the makings of a very handy Tory win.
You are reading too much into the longterm political consequences of the vaccine roll- out. By the end of this year the vaccine will have been rolled out everywhere. The fact that we were, commendably, a couple of months ahead of the game will be largely forgotten by then, let alone by 2024.
Once the dust has settled countries will be judged by their death rates and how their economy fared during the pandemic. At the moment the UK government does not look as though it is going to come out well on either metric. Things could change, possibly as result of our rapid vaccine roll out but there are no guarantees.
By 2024 The government's substantial achievement on the vaccine front is not going to count for much if we still have one of the worst death rates and a GDP hit greater than our economic peers. All the attention will be on the government's comparative failure on these fronts and the reasons for it.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Really? She still beat the vaccine teams of almost every other country - or superstate for that matter - in the world. Perhaps more of them should have married Tory MPs!
Yep but there are a strange group of people who believe that results don't matter as much as much as accusations of cronyism. They would much rather have a someone in charge who only did as well as, say, the EU in vaccinations but who wasn't the wife of a Tory MP.
Frankly, if the US had any kind of regulatory sanctions for lawyers worth a damn that letter would put the author before them for bringing the profession into disrepute. I have seen some pretty objectionable letters from lawyers in my time but that is another level of nonsense.
Ah, the divide between barristers/advocates and solicitors was ever thus. If you think this is bad you should see some of the shite those of us on the other side of the profession have to put up with that never makes it to counsel.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Really? She still beat the vaccine teams of almost every other country - or superstate for that matter - in the world. Perhaps more of them should have married Tory MPs!
Yep but there are a strange group of people who believe that results don't matter as much as much as accusations of cronyism. They would much rather have a someone in charge who only did as well as, say, the EU in vaccinations but who wasn't the wife of a Tory MP.
I always knew there would be a moment when the Second Amendment might come in handy, and not necessarily for some of those people who support the Second Amendment.
Comments
Although....
https://twitter.com/hamishausk/status/1355833962925592576?s=20
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1355832886964981760?s=19
The 'Bonkers Bridge' from Plymouth to Port Stanley will be one of the great engineering wonders of the world.
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1355742293173612548?s=19
So I will take a rain check on your bet, tempting though it is. After I had finished polishing your Nostradamus halo earlier, I later recalled that @Mysticrose (and I think it was you, apologies if it is fake news) cashed out your Biden position in favour of Trump midway through election night.
https://twitter.com/DanVevers/status/1355833869996593153?s=20
Damaging for business with a good 60% of their clients.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/leave-hong-kong-before-its-too-late-say-those-who-now-call-britain-home?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
To avoid the 316th conversation on Brexit, someone bought up the comment by aide to David Cameron... it was something on the lines of "why should we prioritise the well being of the people of the UK over the well being of people in poor country x?"
One person vehemently approved - internationalism OK. Others nodded.
A chap sitting next to me had been a bit quiet.
Then he pointed out, as a serving officer in the army, that if the government of the country didn't think that it owed a duty to it's citizens, why did the citizens own a duty to the Government? He being one of the citizens in question.
Malcy: "Never mind the 6 figures dead , some on here just think Tories are awesome because we have some vaccines. Happy that they kill more than anyone with their incompetence and justify it all because we can jab the few left."
Me: "Can I suggest the Government stops sending any more vaccines to Scotland? Just to see what malcy with a proper grievance looks like.
Of course, they don't need many anyway, because he's told us there's only a few left alive..."
You think that needs an apology? Really?
But the rules did become too complex for most people to keep up with. Even for gov.uk to keep up with -- often rule changes would take days to be fully reported online.
My test, and argument to fellow PBers, is that if the Prime Minister gets it wrong or Cabinet Ministers disagree about the meaning of new rules (for instance Gove and Sunak on coffee shop muffins) then the public should not be blamed.
Ok, as you were, it’s Labour you’re talking about so you’ll be fine.
See table here: https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/local
https://twitter.com/ToryReformGroup/status/1355828912123686913?s=20
Anything from Labour?
Have you been at the shit memes that don’t stick generator again?
Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have undermined the vaccination campaign by making a cretinous statement about not wanting to vaccinate the whole population because the side effects of the vaccines would be so serious.
https://www.gbc.gi/news/royal-air-force-delivers-8000
https://twitter.com/TheGazmanRants/status/1355495906800508933
And all you did was tell me to fuck off because I didn't see the joke.
Good job there's nothing happened since then to make people revise their opinions, huh?
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
https://twitter.com/aetiology/status/1355673837875171333
https://twitter.com/john_lichfield/status/1355842177692262401?s=20
This is why it is extremism - they can justify anything now to themselves. Anything.
*In the case of the USAian version, this is probably literally true. However, there are atheists who are like this - they believe religiously, without the religion.
One thing is certain any numbers emanating from Union Jack or Carlotta will be well doctored and at best half the truth maximum.
https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1355822630482419713?s=21
I'll get my coat.
https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/police-name-chatham-man-accused-4947008
Thank goodness their cases are not surging like Spain's right now.
In any case, it is reasonable to judge appointments by results.
I am not sure this is the hill to die on, if you are fighting the chumocracy -- try this one instead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Dido
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
And how much do you want to wager that there will be zero interest in the Turing scheme from universities?
https://youtu.be/yhiwb3f4qbA
I have gotten - and am continuing to getten - used to him. I respect him no more than I did. I like him no more than I did. But I'm no longer in a state of contemptuous disbelief about it. I was for a period but not anymore. I'm afraid it's worn off. My overton window on who can be PM has moved to accommodate "Boris". He's wormed his way into my brain and moved it in the direction of black satire.
I say "afraid" because this is an unwelcome development which does not speak well of me or my millions of ilk. Either our standards are slipping or - and this is the theory I self servingly prefer - it's down to Donald Trump. Four years of him as POTUS has made our alternative reality of a complete charlatan who is not entirely malign seem almost wholesome. Everything is relative in this world after all.
Anyway, that's my take on this. Johnson is likely to lead the Cons into GE24 and he's likely to win it. The most 'smug city' bet in my current portfolio is 4 digits on him still to be PM on 1st July 2022. I did and tipped that 2 months ago at 1.9 and I hope some people followed suit (or even did it before me). It's 1.4 now. And still a buy imo, so no close out yet for me.
What that would mean is that simply pushing more vaccine into it might actually slow things down - until they sort it all out.
Once the dust has settled countries will be judged by their death rates and how their economy fared during the pandemic. At the moment the UK government does not look as though it is going to come out well on either metric. Things could change, possibly as result of our rapid vaccine roll out but there are no guarantees.
By 2024 The government's substantial achievement on the vaccine front is not going to count for much if we still have one of the worst death rates and a GDP hit greater than our economic peers. All the attention will be on the government's comparative failure on these fronts and the reasons for it.
https://images.app.goo.gl/kGMdiYyXSHTDgKyr8