Glad we've finally cleared up the Diana case. It was the BBC and the devious Bashir what killed her and it had absolutely nothing to do with being hunted by the private sector paparazzi and tabloid press.
Indeed.
The truth, it seems, doesn’t matter.
Diana continues to be used by others to fulfil their agendas.
Let her rest in peace, ffs.
Piers Morgan has been frothing at the mouth over how the BBC would be all over the tabloids if the roles were reversed.
Burrell also made the point that she ditched her security detail in 1993 due to trust issues well before Bashir was on the scene. No doubt certain people will be looking to re-write history and claim the BBC was responsible for the breakdown of Charles and Diana's marriage. Did Bashir allege to Diana that Charles was having an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles?
It is a murky business .... but it is also very hard not to think that most of the blame really lies with Prince Charles, who married someone he did not love, while telling her the contrary.
That is absolutely unforgiveable, at a personal level.
I have no time for Prince Charles & he is completely unfit to serve as the monarch.
That said, the BBC have had a number of very serious scandals & cover-ups ("How's About than Then").
It would be foolish to deny that the organisation has very serious systemic problems, & it needs urgent reform.
Now then, now then....but Charles is the Prince of Wales, our Prince, the Prince of Hearts.
Luckily the Saville and Bashir scandals fell on Johnson,'s and Patel's watch. I can't think of two politicians better placed to drain the swamp.
Curtains? What colour would you prefer? Israeli Foreign Policy? Official or unofficial?
Scottish Indians hit out at Nicola Sturgeon yesterday after she renamed a strain of Covid-19 over fears it would lead to prejudice. They said the First Minister’s decision to start referring to the Indian variant of the killer bug as “April-02” was “silly”.
The Indian Council of Scotland accused Sturgeon of “playing to the galleries”. Neil Lal, president of the group which represents Scotland’s 33,000 Indians, said: “I’ve not heard from one Indian who has voiced any concern over a Covid strain being called the Indian variant. Not one.
Scottish Indians hit out at Nicola Sturgeon yesterday after she renamed a strain of Covid-19 over fears it would lead to prejudice. They said the First Minister’s decision to start referring to the Indian variant of the killer bug as “April-02” was “silly”.
The Indian Council of Scotland accused Sturgeon of “playing to the galleries”. Neil Lal, president of the group which represents Scotland’s 33,000 Indians, said: “I’ve not heard from one Indian who has voiced any concern over a Covid strain being called the Indian variant. Not one.
Glad we've finally cleared up the Diana case. It was the BBC and the devious Bashir what killed her and it had absolutely nothing to do with being hunted by the private sector paparazzi and tabloid press.
Indeed.
The truth, it seems, doesn’t matter.
Diana continues to be used by others to fulfil their agendas.
Let her rest in peace, ffs.
Piers Morgan has been frothing at the mouth over how the BBC would be all over the tabloids if the roles were reversed.
Burrell also made the point that she ditched her security detail in 1993 due to trust issues well before Bashir was on the scene. No doubt certain people will be looking to re-write history and claim the BBC was responsible for the breakdown of Charles and Diana's marriage. Did Bashir allege to Diana that Charles was having an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles?
It is a murky business .... but it is also very hard not to think that most of the blame really lies with Prince Charles, who married someone he did not love, while telling her the contrary.
That is absolutely unforgiveable, at a personal level.
I have no time for Prince Charles & he is completely unfit to serve as the monarch.
That said, the BBC have had a number of very serious scandals & cover-ups ("How's About than Then").
It would be foolish to deny that the organisation has very serious systemic problems, & it needs urgent reform.
Now then, now then....but Charles is the Prince of Wales, our Prince, the Prince of Hearts.
Luckily the Saville and Bashir scandals fell on Johnson,'s and Patel's watch. I can't think of two politicians better placed to drain the swamp.
Curtains? What colour would you prefer? Israeli Foreign Policy? Official or unofficial?
Saville scandal wasn't on Johnson or Patels watch. Polland report into BBC handling was 2012.
So Priti Patel wasn't challenged on the Daniel Morgan report in spite of his family's public statement. I presume that was a precondition of her agreeing to be interviewed.
Cyclefree - perhaps. But remember it was Labour's Tom Watson who really went after that issue and the targets of the police investigation were the rich and powerful. Not quite sure what that means for Priti's 'values.'
He really went after the *Conservative politicians* who were named by that lying idiot.
Strangely, although a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet was allegedly also implicated and interviewed, that name has never been released, and the one report on it (in the Independent, FWIW) was taken down. Possibly they were told it wasn’t correct. But that didn’t stop Watson naming everyone else, all of whom appear to have been completely innocent.
Afaik he’s never apologised either.
It was party politics at its most brutal, and thoroughly unedifying. One of the more uncomfortable and concerning things among many in Labour’s antisemitism scandal was that it was so bad even Watson couldn’t stomach it. But truthfully he’s no loss to public life.
In passing, have you seen this? (just in case you have missed it)
Note the author. Who does not disclose her conflict of interest in promoting iSage arguments.
How can it be a conflict of interest? It's not a state or corporate body such as a political party or charity, but a grouping brought together to discuss just such arguments.
You’re happy that someone employed by an organisation presents herself as an objective reporter uncritically parroting its views?
Is she a paid employee?I thought she was simply a member. It's not illegal for me to write and publish an article on, say, PTSD in UK ex-servicemen if I also happen to be a member of Help for Heroes.
She's their media advisor. She's done nothing illegal but it's most certainly unethical.
All I do is to draw Ydoethur's attention to a piece which I think will interest him if he hasn't seen it - I don't express an opinion about it, not least because Ydoethur knows 100 times more than I do about pox and 1000 times about being a teacher. I'm absolutely neutral. And I get jumped on by PBTories for that. And for challenging the first one to jump on me for what seemed a genuinely odd reason to me.
If Professor X is iSage's expert on nasal mucus, does he have to admit it every time he pbulishes?
The mask thing was weird. Even JVT spun the line of no to masks. I can only presume they worried about a run on them like bog roll, but still why tell people as they did in the end "make your own".
Obviously some of us got ourselves N95 respirator masks without waiting.
I wonder what difference masks outside of clinical settings have made in the UK.
My experience is that everyone catching it has done so via people they lived with or work with (largely in offices before wfh); or in hospitals or care homes.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
The mask thing was weird. Even JVT spun the line of no to masks. I can only presume they worried about a run on them like bog roll, but still why tell people as they did in the end "make your own".
Obviously some of us got ourselves N95 respirator masks without waiting.
I wonder what difference masks outside of clinical settings have made in the UK.
My experience is that everyone catching it has done so via people they lived with or work with (largely in offices before wfh); or in hospitals or care homes.
Well I think outside in the fresh air, very little, other than the exceptional situations with absolute huge crowds squashed together for hours.
What seems to cause issues is crowded indoor spaces with little air movement, and quite a few scientists how are arguing all the screens that have been erected make the situation worse as it just taps the air.
Interesting article on COVID vaccinations in the US. I had missed that the Biden Administration had set 70% of the adult population having had at least one shot as being a major milestone on the road to normalcy. The UK must already be there?
Scottish Indians hit out at Nicola Sturgeon yesterday after she renamed a strain of Covid-19 over fears it would lead to prejudice. They said the First Minister’s decision to start referring to the Indian variant of the killer bug as “April-02” was “silly”.
The Indian Council of Scotland accused Sturgeon of “playing to the galleries”. Neil Lal, president of the group which represents Scotland’s 33,000 Indians, said: “I’ve not heard from one Indian who has voiced any concern over a Covid strain being called the Indian variant. Not one.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
Interesting article on COVID vaccinations in the US. I had missed that the Biden Administration had set 70% of the adult population having had at least one shot as being a major milestone on the road to normalcy. The UK must already be there?
So Priti Patel wasn't challenged on the Daniel Morgan report in spite of his family's public statement. I presume that was a precondition of her agreeing to be interviewed.
Cyclefree - perhaps. But remember it was Labour's Tom Watson who really went after that issue and the targets of the police investigation were the rich and powerful. Not quite sure what that means for Priti's 'values.'
He really went after the *Conservative politicians* who were named by that lying idiot.
Strangely, although a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet was allegedly also implicated and interviewed, that name has never been released, and the one report on it (in the Independent, FWIW) was taken down. Possibly they were told it wasn’t correct. But that didn’t stop Watson naming everyone else, all of whom appear to have been completely innocent.
Afaik he’s never apologised either.
It was party politics at its most brutal, and thoroughly unedifying. One of the more uncomfortable and concerning things among many in Labour’s antisemitism scandal was that it was so bad even Watson couldn’t stomach it. But truthfully he’s no loss to public life.
In passing, have you seen this? (just in case you have missed it)
Note the author. Who does not disclose her conflict of interest in promoting iSage arguments.
How can it be a conflict of interest? It's not a state or corporate body such as a political party or charity, but a grouping brought together to discuss just such arguments.
You’re happy that someone employed by an organisation presents herself as an objective reporter uncritically parroting its views?
Is she a paid employee?I thought she was simply a member. It's not illegal for me to write and publish an article on, say, PTSD in UK ex-servicemen if I also happen to be a member of Help for Heroes.
She's their media advisor. She's done nothing illegal but it's most certainly unethical.
All I do is to draw Ydoethur's attention to a piece which I think will interest him if he hasn't seen it - I don't express an opinion about it, not least because Ydoethur knows 100 times more than I do about pox and 1000 times about being a teacher. I'm absolutely neutral. And I get jumped on by PBTories for that. And for challenging the first one to jump on me for what seemed a genuinely odd reason to me.
All I did was draw your attention to the non-disclosure of the article author’s conflict of interest. What’s odd is you don’t see a repeatedly unreliable “journalist” once again being economical with the actualite as being worthy of comment.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
Interesting article on COVID vaccinations in the US. I had missed that the Biden Administration had set 70% of the adult population having had at least one shot as being a major milestone on the road to normalcy. The UK must already be there?
Yes, the UK is over 70% of adults (over 18) vaccinated at least once.
In some of the US figures they are using over 16 as the definition, since they are vaccinating down to 16.
I was one of the 1st jabs delivered yesterday! In the Science Museum to boot. Pfizer jab 1 done!
What is interesting is that April and May were actually very good months for vaccine delivery, overall. The massive second dose situation made some people talk of a slow down.
So Priti Patel wasn't challenged on the Daniel Morgan report in spite of his family's public statement. I presume that was a precondition of her agreeing to be interviewed.
Cyclefree - perhaps. But remember it was Labour's Tom Watson who really went after that issue and the targets of the police investigation were the rich and powerful. Not quite sure what that means for Priti's 'values.'
He really went after the *Conservative politicians* who were named by that lying idiot.
Strangely, although a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet was allegedly also implicated and interviewed, that name has never been released, and the one report on it (in the Independent, FWIW) was taken down. Possibly they were told it wasn’t correct. But that didn’t stop Watson naming everyone else, all of whom appear to have been completely innocent.
Afaik he’s never apologised either.
It was party politics at its most brutal, and thoroughly unedifying. One of the more uncomfortable and concerning things among many in Labour’s antisemitism scandal was that it was so bad even Watson couldn’t stomach it. But truthfully he’s no loss to public life.
In passing, have you seen this? (just in case you have missed it)
Note the author. Who does not disclose her conflict of interest in promoting iSage arguments.
How can it be a conflict of interest? It's not a state or corporate body such as a political party or charity, but a grouping brought together to discuss just such arguments.
You’re happy that someone employed by an organisation presents herself as an objective reporter uncritically parroting its views?
Is she a paid employee?I thought she was simply a member. It's not illegal for me to write and publish an article on, say, PTSD in UK ex-servicemen if I also happen to be a member of Help for Heroes.
She's their media advisor. She's done nothing illegal but it's most certainly unethical.
All I do is to draw Ydoethur's attention to a piece which I think will interest him if he hasn't seen it - I don't express an opinion about it, not least because Ydoethur knows 100 times more than I do about pox and 1000 times about being a teacher. I'm absolutely neutral. And I get jumped on by PBTories for that. And for challenging the first one to jump on me for what seemed a genuinely odd reason to me.
All I did was draw your attention to the non-disclosure of the article author’s conflict of interest. What’s odd is you don’t see a repeatedly unreliable “journalist” once again being economical with the actualite as being worthy of comment.
Unlike you, I don't think I am as authoritative as Ydoethur when it comes to the pox in schools. So she may well be quite correct. How would I know? Not for me to comment, just point out something he might want to read.
A couple of comments on the thread topic as an ex-LD member.
I've said on here many times the LDs never came up with a response to David Cameron.
When Cameron became leader, it stopped being easy for the Party and our lack of preparation for the road getting tougher was evident. Cameron (and Howard) had worked out the route back to power was through taking back those ex-Conservatives who had voted LD since the mid-90s and therefore making the Conservatives a viable alternative Government to post-Blair Labour.
Cameron's infamous "love-bombing" of the LDs in the autumn of 2005 was the beginning of the end for the Party in hindsight. It was always inevitable the Conservatives would stop their self-indulgence and become serious about wanting to be in Government again and the LDs just couldn't respond to Cameron in the same way as the Conservatives never got to grips with Blair and that cost them three GE defeats and a decade or more out of Government.
It's very hard for a party when your opponents start agreeing with you - the Greens will find this out once everybody starts being "environmental". It ought not to matter - if the policies you agree with are being enacted, the colour of the rosette of the Party enacting them shouldn't matter.
For the LDs to "break through" (as distinct from being a bit-part kingmaker under PR), you need one of the two main parties to schism. The 1981 SDP breakaway nearly worked and had it not been for the Falklands War, might well have done so. In the autumn of 2003, the Conservatives were on the brink - they might well have finished third in 2005 with IDS as leader.
Then we had 2019 and there was just a moment when the Conservatives faced an existential challenge from Farage's Brexit Party - could there have been a schism if there had been no Johnson to take over from the discredited May?
Once thing of which I'm certain there will be other "chances" for the re-alignment of politics of which I've heard so much in the past fifty years - perhaps the next one will be if and when Labour come to the conclusion they can't win an overall majority on their own and recognise the need to "work with" the SNP, LDs, Greens, PC and whoever else.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
That article majors against the idea that the virus was genetically engineered, perhaps deliberately, by the Chinese.
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
Indeed but the part in there for me that swung it was that no staff at the lab tested positive for the virus or having antibodies against it. The only way to counter that is to say the Chinese fiddled the tests or results, which is an unfalsifiable proposition.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
What a total pile of shite. He’s an... astrophysicist. And a stupid one
‘First, seriously considering this shocking, ill-founded accusation serves to further undermine the autonomy and academic freedom of researchers around the world who work in highly specialized fields.’
He doesn’t want us to even CONSIDER the lab leak Thesis. Maybe that sentence is so weak and evasive because it is badly translated from the original Mandarin
Furthermore, all his ‘evidence’ is aimed at the idea the virus was altered and weaponised in the lab and maybe deliberately leaked. Hardly anyone is saying that - yet. Far more likely is an accidental leak. They happen
Johnson's lying is often "just" a consequence of laziness and failure to seriously engage with the details (when he needs to - micromanagement leads to other issues of course) in favour of simple crowd pleasing solutions.
And often he just flat out lies.
"I paid for the wallpaper", as an example
Is there proof that he didn't pay and even if he didn't it did not cost the taxpayer a penny. Wallpapergate did for Labour in the by and local elections...
Yes it did, what was spent was on top of the annual £30,000 taxpayer funded allowance for Downing Street improvement.
That's splitting hairs. The Pm is entitled to spend 30k a year on refurbishment. The wallpaper cost the taxpayer nothing
I think you have missed the point being made. But let's assume for a moment, you haven't, therein lies a bigger issue. Who paid for the £200,000 wallpaper, either directly, or indirectly, and what did they expect in return?
Let's move back to the real world. The wallpaper did not cost 200k...
You've forgotten about the curtains too.
In all fairness, removal of Mrs May's John Lewis beige decor was worth every penny. My point is who paid for it and why?
Wallpaper-gate ... It is just bemusing that you are so interested in it.
After all ... Llafur spent £ 52 m on an airport which is virtually worthless. Dodgy Dave would have made £ 21 m on Greensill share options (lovely paean in the header, BTW). That is corruption. And we are talking about wallpaper and Theresa May's curtains !
Are you the kind of person who asks the window-cleaner for a receipt? Or sits in the forecourt of a Motorway Service station on a folding fishing chair with your own Thermoses, cheese sandwich and digestives.?
Wallpaper-gate seems to betray a complete lack of perspective on the part of its small but very dedicated band of followers.
Sure, let's make sure public money is spent wisely, and let's start with some huge-ticket items.
"Or sits in the forecourt of a Motorway Service station on a folding fishing chair with your own Thermoses, cheese sandwich and digestives.? "
The mask thing was weird. Even JVT spun the line of no to masks. I can only presume they worried about a run on them like bog roll, but still why tell people as they did in the end "make your own".
Obviously some of us got ourselves N95 respirator masks without waiting.
I wonder what difference masks outside of clinical settings have made in the UK.
My experience is that everyone catching it has done so via people they lived with or work with (largely in offices before wfh); or in hospitals or care homes.
Well I think outside in the fresh air, very little, other than the exceptional situations with absolute huge crowds squashed together for hours.
What seems to cause issues is crowded indoor spaces with little air movement, and quite a few scientists how are arguing all the screens that have been erected make the situation worse as it just taps the air.
What frustrated me was the lack of differentiation or nuance in the policy.
Sure, if you're going on the train to London or to be in Ikea for 2 hours, wear a mask. But if you're nipping for a pint of milk in the corner shop, really?
Blunt force legislating was very authoritarian in my mind; guidance would have been better.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
That article majors against the idea that the virus was genetically engineered, perhaps deliberately, by the Chinese.
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
Indeed but the part in there for me that swung it was that no staff at the lab tested positive for the virus or having antibodies against it. The only way to counter that is to say the Chinese fiddled the tests or results, which is an unfalsifiable proposition.
Christ. The Chinese would never lie about that, would they. Is that really the basis for your beliefs?
lol.
A million Uighurs wave and say Hi. Hong Kong sends you a postcard
On topic - one thing that the Lib Dems do not seem to have come to terms with is this. At their high point, going into the coalition, many of their voters were ex-Labour, disgusted by Iraq etc and using the Lib Dems as "Spare Labour"
When the Lib Dems went in coalition, those I knew were furious. From their point of view, the Lib Dems only existed as a junior partner to Labour. Something like the Greens in Scotland to the SNP - from the point of view of SNP voters.
The tuition fees was just the seed - something the ex-Labor voters could crystallise on as a betrayal and drop out of the Lib Dem... solution.
No amount of apologising for tuition fees etc will get those voters back.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
That article majors against the idea that the virus was genetically engineered, perhaps deliberately, by the Chinese.
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
Indeed but the part in there for me that swung it was that no staff at the lab tested positive for the virus or having antibodies against it. The only way to counter that is to say the Chinese fiddled the tests or results, which is an unfalsifiable proposition.
Since we already know the Chinese either suppressed the truth, or lied, about the virus early on, this doesn’t seem a stretch to me.
For me, the persuasive point is that the virus is very similar to a virus discovered in a cave in China’s Deep South which was...being studied by researchers at the Wuhan lab.
The mask thing was weird. Even JVT spun the line of no to masks. I can only presume they worried about a run on them like bog roll, but still why tell people as they did in the end "make your own".
Obviously some of us got ourselves N95 respirator masks without waiting.
I wonder what difference masks outside of clinical settings have made in the UK.
My experience is that everyone catching it has done so via people they lived with or work with (largely in offices before wfh); or in hospitals or care homes.
Well I think outside in the fresh air, very little, other than the exceptional situations with absolute huge crowds squashed together for hours.
What seems to cause issues is crowded indoor spaces with little air movement, and quite a few scientists how are arguing all the screens that have been erected make the situation worse as it just taps the air.
What frustrated me was the lack of differentiation or nuance in the policy.
Sure, if you're going on the train to London or to be in Ikea for 2 hours, wear a mask. But if you're nipping for a pint of milk in the corner shop, really?
Blunt force legislating was very authoritarian in my mind; guidance would have been better.
Intuitively, going to the shops might be the most important time to wear a mask from one's own point of view. Cutting down the amount of virus inhaled would help a lot in catchijng it at all and in the course of the result. And masks would make all the difference in the risk for a short exposure.
Long exposures, you might still accumulate an infectious dose willy nilly - though having everyone else wear one also cuts down the virus being emanated. And trains and planes are airconditioned to each seat.
So Priti Patel wasn't challenged on the Daniel Morgan report in spite of his family's public statement. I presume that was a precondition of her agreeing to be interviewed.
Cyclefree - perhaps. But remember it was Labour's Tom Watson who really went after that issue and the targets of the police investigation were the rich and powerful. Not quite sure what that means for Priti's 'values.'
He really went after the *Conservative politicians* who were named by that lying idiot.
Strangely, although a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet was allegedly also implicated and interviewed, that name has never been released, and the one report on it (in the Independent, FWIW) was taken down. Possibly they were told it wasn’t correct. But that didn’t stop Watson naming everyone else, all of whom appear to have been completely innocent.
Afaik he’s never apologised either.
It was party politics at its most brutal, and thoroughly unedifying. One of the more uncomfortable and concerning things among many in Labour’s antisemitism scandal was that it was so bad even Watson couldn’t stomach it. But truthfully he’s no loss to public life.
In passing, have you seen this? (just in case you have missed it)
Note the author. Who does not disclose her conflict of interest in promoting iSage arguments.
How can it be a conflict of interest? It's not a state or corporate body such as a political party or charity, but a grouping brought together to discuss just such arguments.
You’re happy that someone employed by an organisation presents herself as an objective reporter uncritically parroting its views?
Is she a paid employee?I thought she was simply a member. It's not illegal for me to write and publish an article on, say, PTSD in UK ex-servicemen if I also happen to be a member of Help for Heroes.
She's their media advisor. She's done nothing illegal but it's most certainly unethical.
All I do is to draw Ydoethur's attention to a piece which I think will interest him if he hasn't seen it - I don't express an opinion about it, not least because Ydoethur knows 100 times more than I do about pox and 1000 times about being a teacher. I'm absolutely neutral. And I get jumped on by PBTories for that. And for challenging the first one to jump on me for what seemed a genuinely odd reason to me.
All I did was draw your attention to the non-disclosure of the article author’s conflict of interest. What’s odd is you don’t see a repeatedly unreliable “journalist” once again being economical with the actualite as being worthy of comment.
Unlike you, I don't think I am as authoritative as Ydoethur when it comes to the pox in schools. So she may well be quite correct. How would I know? Not for me to comment, just point out something he might want to read.
I haven’t purported to have any authority on the pox in schools. All I have done is raise questions over the reliability of the report’s author. Which evidently embarrassed you, hence the evasion and deflection.
Can we agree that Carole is not, in general, a reliable source, and in this case may not only be unreliable, but conflicted in her reporting?
The mask thing was weird. Even JVT spun the line of no to masks. I can only presume they worried about a run on them like bog roll, but still why tell people as they did in the end "make your own".
Obviously some of us got ourselves N95 respirator masks without waiting.
I wonder what difference masks outside of clinical settings have made in the UK.
My experience is that everyone catching it has done so via people they lived with or work with (largely in offices before wfh); or in hospitals or care homes.
Well I think outside in the fresh air, very little, other than the exceptional situations with absolute huge crowds squashed together for hours.
What seems to cause issues is crowded indoor spaces with little air movement, and quite a few scientists how are arguing all the screens that have been erected make the situation worse as it just taps the air.
What frustrated me was the lack of differentiation or nuance in the policy.
Sure, if you're going on the train to London or to be in Ikea for 2 hours, wear a mask. But if you're nipping for a pint of milk in the corner shop, really?
Blunt force legislating was very authoritarian in my mind; guidance would have been better.
Authoritarianism is the very essence of the Conservative Party, Mr Mortimer.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
That article majors against the idea that the virus was genetically engineered, perhaps deliberately, by the Chinese.
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
Indeed but the part in there for me that swung it was that no staff at the lab tested positive for the virus or having antibodies against it. The only way to counter that is to say the Chinese fiddled the tests or results, which is an unfalsifiable proposition.
Since we already know the Chinese either suppressed the truth, or lied, about the virus early on, this doesn’t seem a stretch to me.
For me, the persuasive point is that the virus is very similar to a virus discovered in a cave in China’s Deep South which was...being studied by researchers at the Wuhan lab.
But imagine the HUGE conspiracy needed for China to deceive the West here
Wuhan scientist: the WHO is asking if any of our staff got the virus! What can we do???
The mask thing was weird. Even JVT spun the line of no to masks. I can only presume they worried about a run on them like bog roll, but still why tell people as they did in the end "make your own".
Obviously some of us got ourselves N95 respirator masks without waiting.
I wonder what difference masks outside of clinical settings have made in the UK.
My experience is that everyone catching it has done so via people they lived with or work with (largely in offices before wfh); or in hospitals or care homes.
Well I think outside in the fresh air, very little, other than the exceptional situations with absolute huge crowds squashed together for hours.
What seems to cause issues is crowded indoor spaces with little air movement, and quite a few scientists how are arguing all the screens that have been erected make the situation worse as it just taps the air.
What frustrated me was the lack of differentiation or nuance in the policy.
Sure, if you're going on the train to London or to be in Ikea for 2 hours, wear a mask. But if you're nipping for a pint of milk in the corner shop, really?
Blunt force legislating was very authoritarian in my mind; guidance would have been better.
Intuitively, going to the shops might be the most important time to wear a mask from one's own point of view. Cutting down the amount of virus inhaled would help a lot in catchijng it at all and in the course of the result. And masks would make all the difference in the risk for a short exposure.
Long exposures, you might still accumulate an infectious dose willy nilly - though having everyone else wear one also cuts down the virus being emanated. And trains and planes are airconditioned to each seat.
I remember in Italy last spring when people were still getting infected and dying despite a massive lockdown, and someone asked How and Where. The answer was: supermarkets
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
That article majors against the idea that the virus was genetically engineered, perhaps deliberately, by the Chinese.
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
Indeed but the part in there for me that swung it was that no staff at the lab tested positive for the virus or having antibodies against it. The only way to counter that is to say the Chinese fiddled the tests or results, which is an unfalsifiable proposition.
Since we already know the Chinese either suppressed the truth, or lied, about the virus early on, this doesn’t seem a stretch to me.
For me, the persuasive point is that the virus is very similar to a virus discovered in a cave in China’s Deep South which was...being studied by researchers at the Wuhan lab.
Sure. But Wuhan is a city larger than London and a significant transport hub - it's airport is the busiest in central China and right in the middle of the nation's airline network. 20m or so passengers transit through it a year. It is 16 miles from Wuhan city centre, the lab is 10 miles from the notorious wet market.
I'm not discounting the lab leak theory but to say it's a slam dunk ignores how interconnected Wuhan is. It's like saying the index case of a virus found in Brentford was certain to have come from a lab at Imperial that was studying something similar conveniently ignoring the nearby presence of Heathrow.
So Priti Patel wasn't challenged on the Daniel Morgan report in spite of his family's public statement. I presume that was a precondition of her agreeing to be interviewed.
Cyclefree - perhaps. But remember it was Labour's Tom Watson who really went after that issue and the targets of the police investigation were the rich and powerful. Not quite sure what that means for Priti's 'values.'
He really went after the *Conservative politicians* who were named by that lying idiot.
Strangely, although a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet was allegedly also implicated and interviewed, that name has never been released, and the one report on it (in the Independent, FWIW) was taken down. Possibly they were told it wasn’t correct. But that didn’t stop Watson naming everyone else, all of whom appear to have been completely innocent.
Afaik he’s never apologised either.
It was party politics at its most brutal, and thoroughly unedifying. One of the more uncomfortable and concerning things among many in Labour’s antisemitism scandal was that it was so bad even Watson couldn’t stomach it. But truthfully he’s no loss to public life.
In passing, have you seen this? (just in case you have missed it)
Note the author. Who does not disclose her conflict of interest in promoting iSage arguments.
How can it be a conflict of interest? It's not a state or corporate body such as a political party or charity, but a grouping brought together to discuss just such arguments.
You’re happy that someone employed by an organisation presents herself as an objective reporter uncritically parroting its views?
Is she a paid employee?I thought she was simply a member. It's not illegal for me to write and publish an article on, say, PTSD in UK ex-servicemen if I also happen to be a member of Help for Heroes.
She's their media advisor. She's done nothing illegal but it's most certainly unethical.
All I do is to draw Ydoethur's attention to a piece which I think will interest him if he hasn't seen it - I don't express an opinion about it, not least because Ydoethur knows 100 times more than I do about pox and 1000 times about being a teacher. I'm absolutely neutral. And I get jumped on by PBTories for that. And for challenging the first one to jump on me for what seemed a genuinely odd reason to me.
All I did was draw your attention to the non-disclosure of the article author’s conflict of interest. What’s odd is you don’t see a repeatedly unreliable “journalist” once again being economical with the actualite as being worthy of comment.
Unlike you, I don't think I am as authoritative as Ydoethur when it comes to the pox in schools. So she may well be quite correct. How would I know? Not for me to comment, just point out something he might want to read.
I haven’t purported to have any authority on the pox in schools. All I have done is raise questions over the reliability of the report’s author. Which evidently embarrassed you, hence the evasion and deflection.
Can we agree that Carole is not, in general, a reliable source, and in this case may not only be unreliable, but conflicted in her reporting?
Nonsense. I'm not recommending the report - just astounded you jump at me for the apparent crime of drawing Ydoethur's attention to it, given his specialist interest.
The mask thing was weird. Even JVT spun the line of no to masks. I can only presume they worried about a run on them like bog roll, but still why tell people as they did in the end "make your own".
Obviously some of us got ourselves N95 respirator masks without waiting.
I wonder what difference masks outside of clinical settings have made in the UK.
My experience is that everyone catching it has done so via people they lived with or work with (largely in offices before wfh); or in hospitals or care homes.
Well I think outside in the fresh air, very little, other than the exceptional situations with absolute huge crowds squashed together for hours.
What seems to cause issues is crowded indoor spaces with little air movement, and quite a few scientists how are arguing all the screens that have been erected make the situation worse as it just taps the air.
What frustrated me was the lack of differentiation or nuance in the policy.
Sure, if you're going on the train to London or to be in Ikea for 2 hours, wear a mask. But if you're nipping for a pint of milk in the corner shop, really?
Blunt force legislating was very authoritarian in my mind; guidance would have been better.
Intuitively, going to the shops might be the most important time to wear a mask from one's own point of view. Cutting down the amount of virus inhaled would help a lot in catchijng it at all and in the course of the result. And masks would make all the difference in the risk for a short exposure.
Long exposures, you might still accumulate an infectious dose willy nilly - though having everyone else wear one also cuts down the virus being emanated. And trains and planes are airconditioned to each seat.
Perhaps if 1/3 people were infected and out and about at any one time. But it was a tiny fraction of people.
GE campaign 2019 I had a really bad cough.
I caught it from a fellow activist. We had been in a car together for 3 hours delivering personally addressed letters to specific houses.
They were also office, on and off, with about 15 other people during the same few days including our candidate. No-one else caught it.
With all we know about proximity and length of exposure, it just doesn't make sense to me that many people at all were catching this going to the shops. If anything, the masks made more people more confident to go to shops. Felt like a way to coax people out rather than a way to suppress virus transmission.
The mask thing was weird. Even JVT spun the line of no to masks. I can only presume they worried about a run on them like bog roll, but still why tell people as they did in the end "make your own".
Obviously some of us got ourselves N95 respirator masks without waiting.
I wonder what difference masks outside of clinical settings have made in the UK.
My experience is that everyone catching it has done so via people they lived with or work with (largely in offices before wfh); or in hospitals or care homes.
Well I think outside in the fresh air, very little, other than the exceptional situations with absolute huge crowds squashed together for hours.
What seems to cause issues is crowded indoor spaces with little air movement, and quite a few scientists how are arguing all the screens that have been erected make the situation worse as it just taps the air.
What frustrated me was the lack of differentiation or nuance in the policy.
Sure, if you're going on the train to London or to be in Ikea for 2 hours, wear a mask. But if you're nipping for a pint of milk in the corner shop, really?
Blunt force legislating was very authoritarian in my mind; guidance would have been better.
Intuitively, going to the shops might be the most important time to wear a mask from one's own point of view. Cutting down the amount of virus inhaled would help a lot in catchijng it at all and in the course of the result. And masks would make all the difference in the risk for a short exposure.
Long exposures, you might still accumulate an infectious dose willy nilly - though having everyone else wear one also cuts down the virus being emanated. And trains and planes are airconditioned to each seat.
I remember in Italy last spring when people were still getting infected and dying despite a massive lockdown, and someone asked How and Where. The answer was: supermarkets
A personal favourite was the large groups that would gather outside the door of a popular coffee shop. Chatting away about 3 inches from each, and completely blocking the pavement.
Often loudly damning the government for not locking down harder.....
49/ Jenny Harries told us, the same week herd immunity was the official plan, masks are a 'BAD idea', 'we don't want to disrupt people’s lives’, acting ‘too early we will just pop up with another epidemic peak later’. So Whitehall has promoted her, obviously https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1396446748202225665
Critical as I am of the PM in all sorts of ways, it's vital to understand the disaster was not just his fault: the official plan was disastrously misconceived, DHSC/CABOFF did not understand this or why, & a PlanB had to be bodged amid total & utter chaos
I am getting the sense that Prof Big Dom when sitting in on the SAGE meeting as an observer will be claiming that he was not have been in full agreement with their claims.
"Critical as I am of the PM"? Has "Brittas" become PM and I didn't notice?
You are on my list of Johnson uber-loyalists, so Johnson can't be the PM of whom you are critical.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
That article majors against the idea that the virus was genetically engineered, perhaps deliberately, by the Chinese.
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
Indeed but the part in there for me that swung it was that no staff at the lab tested positive for the virus or having antibodies against it. The only way to counter that is to say the Chinese fiddled the tests or results, which is an unfalsifiable proposition.
Since we already know the Chinese either suppressed the truth, or lied, about the virus early on, this doesn’t seem a stretch to me.
For me, the persuasive point is that the virus is very similar to a virus discovered in a cave in China’s Deep South which was...being studied by researchers at the Wuhan lab.
Sure. But Wuhan is a city larger than London and a significant transport hub - it's airport is the busiest in central China and right in the middle of the nation's airline network. 20m or so passengers transit through it a year. It is 16 miles from Wuhan city centre, the lab is 10 miles from the notorious wet market.
I'm not discounting the lab leak theory but to say it's a slam dunk ignores how interconnected Wuhan is. It's like saying the index case of a virus found in Brentford was certain to have come from a lab at Imperial that was studying something similar conveniently ignoring the nearby presence of Heathrow.
The first case was not at the wet market
Incidentally I see that Dr Antony Fauci of the CDC has changed his mind, after dismissing the lab leak theory for a year. Suddenly it’s totes plausible
‘Fauci 'not convinced' COVID-19 developed naturally Fauci’s recent remarks show an evolution in the doctor's beliefs on coronavirus origins over the past year’
The mask thing was weird. Even JVT spun the line of no to masks. I can only presume they worried about a run on them like bog roll, but still why tell people as they did in the end "make your own".
Obviously some of us got ourselves N95 respirator masks without waiting.
No. Plenty of them really BELIEVED masks were useless, even dangerous. They had not grasped the basic fact that they stop transmission to others. They just thought about it from the perspective of the wearer. A notable failure of intelligence. JVT is one of these dolts
What really pissed me off was the constant conflating of masks and face coverings. Yes, leave medical grade masks for the NHS, but that didn't stop everyone wrapping a rag around their face. If that had been the instruction from Day 1 it would have prevented a lot of spread.
Note - these are guidelines only, not laws, and they can be ignored, but they are still ridiculous guidelines and appear to be the result of a personal domestic dispute involving a senior official. Which is pretty outrageous.
I’ve signed the petition and I would be grateful if others could too.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
That article majors against the idea that the virus was genetically engineered, perhaps deliberately, by the Chinese.
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
Indeed but the part in there for me that swung it was that no staff at the lab tested positive for the virus or having antibodies against it. The only way to counter that is to say the Chinese fiddled the tests or results, which is an unfalsifiable proposition.
Since we already know the Chinese either suppressed the truth, or lied, about the virus early on, this doesn’t seem a stretch to me.
For me, the persuasive point is that the virus is very similar to a virus discovered in a cave in China’s Deep South which was...being studied by researchers at the Wuhan lab.
Sure. But Wuhan is a city larger than London and a significant transport hub - it's airport is the busiest in central China and right in the middle of the nation's airline network. 20m or so passengers transit through it a year. It is 16 miles from Wuhan city centre, the lab is 10 miles from the notorious wet market.
I'm not discounting the lab leak theory but to say it's a slam dunk ignores how interconnected Wuhan is. It's like saying the index case of a virus found in Brentford was certain to have come from a lab at Imperial that was studying something similar conveniently ignoring the nearby presence of Heathrow.
The first case was not at the wet market
Incidentally I see that Dr Antony Fauci of the CDC has changed his mind, after dismissing the lab leak theory for a year. Suddenly it’s totes plausible
‘Fauci 'not convinced' COVID-19 developed naturally Fauci’s recent remarks show an evolution in the doctor's beliefs on coronavirus origins over the past year’
She is an equal opportunity hater- also included Alba in her scornful tweets. Mind you, if I had been soundly beaten in my party’s NEC elections only to be reinstated after defections, I’d be cock-a-hoop as well.
Scottish Indians hit out at Nicola Sturgeon yesterday after she renamed a strain of Covid-19 over fears it would lead to prejudice. They said the First Minister’s decision to start referring to the Indian variant of the killer bug as “April-02” was “silly”.
The Indian Council of Scotland accused Sturgeon of “playing to the galleries”. Neil Lal, president of the group which represents Scotland’s 33,000 Indians, said: “I’ve not heard from one Indian who has voiced any concern over a Covid strain being called the Indian variant. Not one.
VILNIUS, May 23 (Reuters) - Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda on Sunday demanded that Belarus releases Belarusian opposition activist Roman Protasevich who was on a plane headed for Vilnius but diverted to Minsk.
The Ryanair commercial flight was directed to land "by force", the president said in emailed statement.
"I call on NATO and EU allies to immediately react to the threat posed to international civil aviation by the Belarus regime. The international community must take immediate steps that this does not repeat," the president said.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
She is an equal opportunity hater- also included Alba in her scornful tweets. Mind you, if I had been soundly beaten in my party’s NEC elections only to be reinstated after defections, I’d be cock-a-hoop as well.
It seems curious that there has been little scrutiny of Independent Sage.
Its founder, Sir David King, was Chief Scientific Officer from October 2000 to 31 December 2007, under prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
So, his opinion was no doubt sought on the famous claims of Sadaam's all powerful, 45 minute WMDs, before we all headed off to war at Blair's and Bush's behest in the Middle East.
Somehow, when the moment was really ripe for Sir David King as Chief Scientific Officer of the Government to utter some words of scientific advice in defiance of the prevailing Government orthodoxy, he failed.
(It is true he later became critical of the Iraq War, but not AFAIK at the time).
Why would the Chief Scientist be in the loop for Saddam's WMDs?
He would not have been consulted particularly. JIC would have been the lead, and then the experts in the MOD and FCO working the UNSCOM file, particularly the CBW scientists at Porton and the MOD's missile experts. And they did reach out to the UN and former weapons inspectors prior to the decision.
Priti Patel tells #Marr the reputation of the BBC has been damaged. Says we are in “multi-media age” now, says this is the “Netflix generation”. “How relevant is the BBC?” she asks. https://twitter.com/SophiaSleigh/status/1396385830680281089
Interesting to see the fallout from the live streaming of the #Glastonbury event last night. People complain about the license fee but the BBC coverage of Glastonbury is always amazing. https://twitter.com/sallybogg/status/1396382996568084482
Was she challenged on the report she is sitting on that may indicate malpractice in News International?
Ms Patel is a most infuriating politician. I have a sneaking regard for her, despite everything. She is often awful. But every so often she has the right instincts and tries to do the right thing. For instance, she is now consulting Sir Richard Henriques, the judge, who wrote the excoriating report on what the police got wrong in Operation Midland, on what needs to be done to put matters right.
I hope she overcomes resistance from the Home Office and the police on this. The police need their arses kicked - and hard - on this.
I'm not a great fan of the Home Secretary but much of the flak directed her way seems personally rather than politically offensive: she is too short to see over the lectern; she drops her g's; her backside is too broad. Her critics play the woman, not the ball.
Ms Patel is hated because she has strayed off the left's plantation.
People of Asian descent are to be represented, and have their ambitions interpreted, exclusively by white middle class daughters of university lecturers or other senior public sector role occupiers.
Weirdly, Rishi doesn’t get the same treatment. Ergo; your theory is bollocks.
Patel is hated because she’s a nasty piece of work.
He absolutely has been....it has been called an uncle tom and no idea what it is really like to be an ethnic minority as he isn't a proper asian. Same with the likes of javid and Badenoch
Rishi Sunak ‘looks like Prince Charles in brownface’, says BBC guest sparking race row
There’s a certain section of the commentariat, who really dislike conservatives from ethnic minority backgrounds. It’s lazy racism, and needs to be called out as such.
You may be right, but equally there are sections of the commentariat who really dislike socialists from ethnic minority backgrounds. Diane Abbott has received more (racist) abuse than any other politician over the last 10 years. It's lazy racism, and needs to be called out as such.
Do you have a cite to demonstrate that "(racist) abuse" statement. I have never seen that researched, though am aware of a lot of media claims about DA as most abused female or BME MP.
If you look at the more mainstream academic research, it puts a huge question mark over that narrative. One thing missing is a relation to prominence, and also to what are current issues. There has been a group at Sheffield Uni studying this with longer periods and bigger datasets for some years. Plus of course categorisation varies.
Comments
Luckily the Saville and Bashir scandals fell on Johnson,'s and Patel's watch. I can't think of two politicians better placed to drain the swamp.
Curtains? What colour would you prefer? Israeli Foreign Policy? Official or unofficial?
The Indian Council of Scotland accused Sturgeon of “playing to the galleries”. Neil Lal, president of the group which represents Scotland’s 33,000 Indians, said: “I’ve not heard from one Indian who has voiced any concern over a Covid strain being called the Indian variant. Not one.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/scotland-now/scots-indians-say-nicola-sturgeons-24165455.amp
Like Brexiteers and Europe.
If Professor X is iSage's expert on nasal mucus, does he have to admit it every time he pbulishes?
My experience is that everyone catching it has done so via people they lived with or work with (largely in offices before wfh); or in hospitals or care homes.
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-Id-write-covid-the-thriller
Incidentally there is, now, disturbing evidence that the lady Chinese scientist at the heart of the lab is lying about her research
What seems to cause issues is crowded indoor spaces with little air movement, and quite a few scientists how are arguing all the screens that have been erected make the situation worse as it just taps the air.
In some of the US figures they are using over 16 as the definition, since they are vaccinating down to 16.
This councillors tweet is probably in jest.
Most nationalists are that way for honourable reasons but a sizeable minority are just out and out prejudiced.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/05/20/no-science-clearly-shows-that-covid-19-wasnt-leaked-from-a-wuhan-lab/?sh=98aefc558512
https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1396456131913035782?s=20
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/4/e01013-15
A couple of comments on the thread topic as an ex-LD member.
I've said on here many times the LDs never came up with a response to David Cameron.
When Cameron became leader, it stopped being easy for the Party and our lack of preparation for the road getting tougher was evident. Cameron (and Howard) had worked out the route back to power was through taking back those ex-Conservatives who had voted LD since the mid-90s and therefore making the Conservatives a viable alternative Government to post-Blair Labour.
Cameron's infamous "love-bombing" of the LDs in the autumn of 2005 was the beginning of the end for the Party in hindsight. It was always inevitable the Conservatives would stop their self-indulgence and become serious about wanting to be in Government again and the LDs just couldn't respond to Cameron in the same way as the Conservatives never got to grips with Blair and that cost them three GE defeats and a decade or more out of Government.
It's very hard for a party when your opponents start agreeing with you - the Greens will find this out once everybody starts being "environmental". It ought not to matter - if the policies you agree with are being enacted, the colour of the rosette of the Party enacting them shouldn't matter.
For the LDs to "break through" (as distinct from being a bit-part kingmaker under PR), you need one of the two main parties to schism. The 1981 SDP breakaway nearly worked and had it not been for the Falklands War, might well have done so. In the autumn of 2003, the Conservatives were on the brink - they might well have finished third in 2005 with IDS as leader.
Then we had 2019 and there was just a moment when the Conservatives faced an existential challenge from Farage's Brexit Party - could there have been a schism if there had been no Johnson to take over from the discredited May?
Once thing of which I'm certain there will be other "chances" for the re-alignment of politics of which I've heard so much in the past fifty years - perhaps the next one will be if and when Labour come to the conclusion they can't win an overall majority on their own and recognise the need to "work with" the SNP, LDs, Greens, PC and whoever else.
‘First, seriously considering this shocking, ill-founded accusation serves to further undermine the autonomy and academic freedom of researchers around the world who work in highly specialized fields.’
He doesn’t want us to even CONSIDER the lab leak Thesis. Maybe that sentence is so weak and evasive because it is badly translated from the original Mandarin
Furthermore, all his ‘evidence’ is aimed at the idea the virus was altered and weaponised in the lab and maybe deliberately leaked. Hardly anyone is saying that - yet. Far more likely is an accidental leak. They happen
I have a Brexton picnic hamper.
Decision on the crucial social distancing review is due this week - after more data on the Indian variant is available.
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1396458904700301314?s=20
Sure, if you're going on the train to London or to be in Ikea for 2 hours, wear a mask. But if you're nipping for a pint of milk in the corner shop, really?
Blunt force legislating was very authoritarian in my mind; guidance would have been better.
lol.
A million Uighurs wave and say Hi. Hong Kong sends you a postcard
When the Lib Dems went in coalition, those I knew were furious. From their point of view, the Lib Dems only existed as a junior partner to Labour. Something like the Greens in Scotland to the SNP - from the point of view of SNP voters.
The tuition fees was just the seed - something the ex-Labor voters could crystallise on as a betrayal and drop out of the Lib Dem... solution.
No amount of apologising for tuition fees etc will get those voters back.
For me, the persuasive point is that the virus is very similar to a virus discovered in a cave in China’s Deep South which was...being studied by researchers at the Wuhan lab.
Long exposures, you might still accumulate an infectious dose willy nilly - though having everyone else wear one also cuts down the virus being emanated. And trains and planes are airconditioned to each seat.
Can we agree that Carole is not, in general, a reliable source, and in this case may not only be unreliable, but conflicted in her reporting?
Wuhan scientist: the WHO is asking if any of our staff got the virus! What can we do???
Wuhan politician: Lie
Wuhan scientist: OK
https://twitter.com/MacaesBruno/status/1396463335747592196?s=20
I'm not discounting the lab leak theory but to say it's a slam dunk ignores how interconnected Wuhan is. It's like saying the index case of a virus found in Brentford was certain to have come from a lab at Imperial that was studying something similar conveniently ignoring the nearby presence of Heathrow.
GE campaign 2019 I had a really bad cough.
I caught it from a fellow activist. We had been in a car together for 3 hours delivering personally addressed letters to specific houses.
They were also office, on and off, with about 15 other people during the same few days including our candidate. No-one else caught it.
With all we know about proximity and length of exposure, it just doesn't make sense to me that many people at all were catching this going to the shops. If anything, the masks made more people more confident to go to shops. Felt like a way to coax people out rather than a way to suppress virus transmission.
Often loudly damning the government for not locking down harder.....
Incidentally I see that Dr Antony Fauci of the CDC has changed his mind, after dismissing the lab leak theory for a year. Suddenly it’s totes plausible
‘Fauci 'not convinced' COVID-19 developed naturally
Fauci’s recent remarks show an evolution in the doctor's beliefs on coronavirus origins over the past year’
How strange
https://twitter.com/foxnews/status/1396446141449973763?s=21
https://petition.parliament.uk/signatures/112779362/signed
Note - these are guidelines only, not laws, and they can be ignored, but they are still ridiculous guidelines and appear to be the result of a personal domestic dispute involving a senior official. Which is pretty outrageous.
I’ve signed the petition and I would be grateful if others could too.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200226004038/http://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-harmful-hunt-for-covid-19s-patient-zero
However, 27 people of a sample of 41 patients admitted to hospital in the early stages of the outbreak "had been exposed to the market.
Nicola Sturgeon says she no longer wishes to refer to Indian take-aways as such, says they should now be described as "hot, spicy food".
VILNIUS, May 23 (Reuters) - Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda on Sunday demanded that Belarus releases Belarusian opposition activist Roman Protasevich who was on a plane headed for Vilnius but diverted to Minsk.
The Ryanair commercial flight was directed to land "by force", the president said in emailed statement.
"I call on NATO and EU allies to immediately react to the threat posed to international civil aviation by the Belarus regime. The international community must take immediate steps that this does not repeat," the president said.
https://news.trust.org/item/20210523124428-waou9/
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
A lot of it is based on a very small Amnesty study of 6 weeks of abuse of female MPs on Twitter before the 2017 byelection eg in this Guardian piece - which afaics includes nothing about the 'racist' part of that claim, though it has stuff about 'most abused female MP', and simple claims about racist abuse:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/05/diane-abbott-more-abused-than-any-other-mps-during-election
If you look at the more mainstream academic research, it puts a huge question mark over that narrative. One thing missing is a relation to prominence, and also to what are current issues. There has been a group at Sheffield Uni studying this with longer periods and bigger datasets for some years. Plus of course categorisation varies.
Here is a BBC piece based on that research about 2019:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50687425
One graph from their paper about 2015 / 2017 below. Link: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/157728455.pdf
https://twitter.com/SteveRightNLeft/status/1396449618985168898?s=20