NICOLA Sturgeon has warned people not to follow the example set by Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie, who this week broke Covid rules to have a pint.
Mr Harvie and two other Green MSPs, co-leader Lorna Slater and Ross Greer, and a fourth person were caught breaking the three household limit in an Edinburgh bar on Tuesday.
This is a completely unbelievable story. 3 people want to have a pint with Patrick Harvie? I mean, come on.
The other thing that I find genuinely startling about that story is, err, what 3 household rule was that? We had the first beer club meeting in over a year when lockdown was eased. 5 of us were sitting outside, freezing our nuts off, in Edinburgh. 1 was a QC and 4 were advocates, one of whom sits as a Justice of the Peace. None of us had any idea that we were breaking a law nor was it suggested by the establishment. Was this because we were outside? Or is it simply an illustration of how our law has fallen into disrepute as a result of this nonsense?
The inside/outside distinction was key (in Scotland) according to earlier reports (which I can't be bothered to dredge up because who really cares about some minor politicians' borderline offences?).
NICOLA Sturgeon has warned people not to follow the example set by Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie, who this week broke Covid rules to have a pint.
Mr Harvie and two other Green MSPs, co-leader Lorna Slater and Ross Greer, and a fourth person were caught breaking the three household limit in an Edinburgh bar on Tuesday.
This is a completely unbelievable story. 3 people want to have a pint with Patrick Harvie? I mean, come on.
The other thing that I find genuinely startling about that story is, err, what 3 household rule was that? We had the first beer club meeting in over a year when lockdown was eased. 5 of us were sitting outside, freezing our nuts off, in Edinburgh. 1 was a QC and 4 were advocates, one of whom sits as a Justice of the Peace. None of us had any idea that we were breaking a law nor was it suggested by the establishment. Was this because we were outside? Or is it simply an illustration of how our law has fallen into disrepute as a result of this nonsense?
Italian police on Wednesday arrested three senior managers from the cable car operating company over Sunday’s tragedy. They are accused of deliberately deactivating the emergency brake that should have prevented the cable car from falling backwards when the cable snapped.
Grrr - Insurers now have to ensure existing customers get same quote as new customers. What happened to searching the market or challenging your existing supplier when they send out your renewal. I have never paid the renewal quote, yet don't often have to move.
Just subsidizing the lazy. Same thing with energy prices. We just need rules to prevent rip offs and exploitation of the vulnerable. The rest of us should be subject to the marketplace.
Surely you mean the lazy were subsidising you before and now they aren't
Yes it does. Not sure what your point is.
I am in favour of free markets with proper protection of the vulnerable. I don't want the state controlling what prices I sell stuff at. Loss leaders is normal commercial practice. It leads to a more efficient market if there is competition.
My point was that your claim the lazy were being subsidised is fallacious, they are now merely paying a fair price. You on the other hand have lost your subsidy and also having to pay the fair price for the product. No one is telling you what you have to charge just that you have to charge all people the same.
Unless you believe in communism that is nonsense. None of us pay the same price for the same thing. That is the point of the marketplace. It is competitive which drives prices down and or quality up.
Do you propose that all petrol stations sell petrol at the same price, or all supermarkets sell potatoes at the same price. Even the same supplier will not necessarily sell the same products at the same price. Most expensive items are negotiable.
What right have you got to tell me that I must charge everyone the same price. It is none of your business what I charge anyone. I ran a company and I charged what I thought was appropriate.
And that is how it should be with insurance. The price is negotiable or you can go elsewhere.
If you can't be arsed to negotiate a better price why should I subsidise you.
My only proviso is that for certain products and services there should be proper protection for the vulnerable and in certain cases the provision should be provided by the state via taxation (education, health, etc)
The point you fail to see though is that despite not being vulnerable many can't change supplier for example. For insurance and electric as well companies deliberately make it virtually impossible for a lot of people to work out which is best or cheapest using different tariff schedules, different levels of excess and similar ploys.
In addition no one is telling companies what they have to charge they are just telling you that you cant charge different customers different prices for the exact same product. For years you have been getting things on the cheap paid for by those who either can't or won't shop around. No one is saying every company has to charge the same price either. Insurer A is free to charge 250 and insurer B is free to charge 350.
However you carry on advocating for being a parasite on those that can't or won't.
This is just nonsense. Those that can't, should be protected. I object to be called a parasite. If you had read the earlier posts you would realise that I have been heavily and successfully involved in campaigns to provide such protection, entirely in my own time and at my own cost, regarding abuse by banks, insurance companies, telco and energy companies and those campaigns in each case took years to be successful and I put in a huge amount of time in doing so. Can you claim the same thing? Maybe you should think again before calling someone a parasite?
However why on earth do you want to protect those that can but wont shop around????? Why do people who can and won't hunt out a better deal need protecting from their own laziness.
When I ran my business I provided a service which was potentially identical to all my customer (it depended upon how much they used it). I gave discounts to charities, I charged big organisations more because they got a larger benefit so they were willing to pay (even though the service from me was the same). What I charged is none of your or anyone else's business.
Where do you want to draw the line on this price protection? Do we all have to submit our price list to the Govt?
Utilities, as is necessary, have totally different regulations to other businesses.
The change is needed. Too many people are taken advantage of by these businesses.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
Italian police on Wednesday arrested three senior managers from the cable car operating company over Sunday’s tragedy. They are accused of deliberately deactivating the emergency brake that should have prevented the cable car from falling backwards when the cable snapped.
The wider lesson might be to be extremely careful about bringing back into use assets that have lain idle for months during the pandemic, and whose current state is therefore uncertain.
Paging @contrarian as it seems only fair to toss him/her one of the few tentative pieces of evidence of eternal lockdown. Seems nuts to me, but presumably there's some kind of insurance angle or the council have some other reason for axing it (maybe the year off has inspired them to look at other options).
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
That might make sense if the distribution of protests were even, so that 1/26th of all protests were about M. But I'll fix it for you.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
Now suppose there's 25 more protests. All about M.
Now suppose that next week there'll be 26 protests. All about M.
Imagine that every weekend there's protests. All about M.
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is happening here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs. Would that happen? No, because the hypocrites don't protest that.
Can you justify that?
I sense not.
My position is straightforward enough.
LOL. POTD. You need to get in touch with your subconscious.
Grrr - Insurers now have to ensure existing customers get same quote as new customers. What happened to searching the market or challenging your existing supplier when they send out your renewal. I have never paid the renewal quote, yet don't often have to move.
Just subsidizing the lazy. Same thing with energy prices. We just need rules to prevent rip offs and exploitation of the vulnerable. The rest of us should be subject to the marketplace.
Surely you mean the lazy were subsidising you before and now they aren't
Yes it does. Not sure what your point is.
I am in favour of free markets with proper protection of the vulnerable. I don't want the state controlling what prices I sell stuff at. Loss leaders is normal commercial practice. It leads to a more efficient market if there is competition.
My point was that your claim the lazy were being subsidised is fallacious, they are now merely paying a fair price. You on the other hand have lost your subsidy and also having to pay the fair price for the product. No one is telling you what you have to charge just that you have to charge all people the same.
Unless you believe in communism that is nonsense. None of us pay the same price for the same thing. That is the point of the marketplace. It is competitive which drives prices down and or quality up.
Do you propose that all petrol stations sell petrol at the same price, or all supermarkets sell potatoes at the same price. Even the same supplier will not necessarily sell the same products at the same price. Most expensive items are negotiable.
What right have you got to tell me that I must charge everyone the same price. It is none of your business what I charge anyone. I ran a company and I charged what I thought was appropriate.
And that is how it should be with insurance. The price is negotiable or you can go elsewhere.
If you can't be arsed to negotiate a better price why should I subsidise you.
My only proviso is that for certain products and services there should be proper protection for the vulnerable and in certain cases the provision should be provided by the state via taxation (education, health, etc)
The point you fail to see though is that despite not being vulnerable many can't change supplier for example. For insurance and electric as well companies deliberately make it virtually impossible for a lot of people to work out which is best or cheapest using different tariff schedules, different levels of excess and similar ploys.
In addition no one is telling companies what they have to charge they are just telling you that you cant charge different customers different prices for the exact same product. For years you have been getting things on the cheap paid for by those who either can't or won't shop around. No one is saying every company has to charge the same price either. Insurer A is free to charge 250 and insurer B is free to charge 350.
However you carry on advocating for being a parasite on those that can't or won't.
This is just nonsense. Those that can't, should be protected. I object to be called a parasite. If you had read the earlier posts you would realise that I have been heavily and successfully involved in campaigns to provide such protection, entirely in my own time and at my own cost, regarding abuse by banks, insurance companies, telco and energy companies and those campaigns in each case took years to be successful and I put in a huge amount of time in doing so. Can you claim the same thing? Maybe you should think again before calling someone a parasite?
However why on earth do you want to protect those that can but wont shop around????? Why do people who can and won't hunt out a better deal need protecting from their own laziness.
When I ran my business I provided a service which was potentially identical to all my customer (it depended upon how much they used it). I gave discounts to charities, I charged big organisations more because they got a larger benefit so they were willing to pay (even though the service from me was the same). What I charged is none of your or anyone else's business.
Where do you want to draw the line on this price protection? Do we all have to submit our price list to the Govt?
Utilities, as is necessary, have totally different regulations to other businesses.
The change is needed. Too many people are taken advantage of by these businesses.
Yes they are, but it is the wrong solution - see my previous posts. Each solution is piecemeal (it only impacts one scenario), it takes years before it is solved (3 campaigns I was involved in took years of banging ones head against a brick wall before rules were changed) and the solution is usually anti competitive as is the one being discussed today.
Yes. Am I supposed to be upset that people wish to protest?
I think that is a Star of David with LUS inside it (Luton Something Synagogue?) and the message is that the area will be unsafe for Jews.
Yep, saw that. Does that mean the Muslim Council should abandon their protest?
And there is the problem of right to protest. Freedom and Libertarianism gone mad.
Is it the right to simply walk down a street?
Or your right to get in peoples faces and make them feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
And on this the British government is always going to struggle, partitioning part of another country and claiming it as their own?
Unsafe, no. Uncomfortable, sure.
Perhaps the Luton Jewish Council should indeed be made uncomfortable about the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians. Perhaps all of us should.
Jesus! You really think some British citizens should be made to feel uncomfortable about what a foreign state does. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Let's see how far this goes: should we go to Chinese restaurants in Soho and berate their owners and workers for what is happening to the Uighurs?
It is the point of protest to discomfort; otherwise it is largely a waste of time.
To turn to your example, are the Muslim Council in Luton planning to protest outside synagogues and berate the owners of Jewish delis?
No, I thought not.
The problem is that we get into
1) the intentions of some of the organisers 2) the intentions of other of the organisers 3) the intentions of some of those planning to attend 4) the intentions of some fuckwits planning to start something
Which is the complex situation that the police etc find themselves in when banning/not banning demos
One metric is "What is likely to happen?"
I agree.
But no one on here is putting forward evidence that bad things will happen.
This was originally posted as a kind of sub-Daily Mail comments board “Look what the police are enabling now...” by @isam.
Then others have rushed in to make rather stupid, bad faith arguments.
Guilty as charged. I got if off the far right site twitter from some Qanon nutter called David Herdson
BREAKING: Lord Geidt finds the Trust Boris Johnson wanted to set up to pay for Downing Street refurb "was not subjected to a scheme of rigorous project management by officials".
It also says that he accepts that all relevant declarations were made, that they were made timeously and that there was no conflict of interest.
Since it is clear that millions of Brits have yet to overcome their fit of the vapours about this might Boris expect a bounce from his already giddy heights in being cleared in this way? Or, more likely, did the great British public in their considerable wisdom never give a damn about this in the first place?
Well, the report basically says that it might have looked like CCHQ and Lord Brownlow were bunging the Prime Minister but realistically, they are all on the same side anyway so they were not trying to buy influence. Job's a good'un.
Paging @contrarian as it seems only fair to toss him/her one of the few tentative pieces of evidence of eternal lockdown. Seems nuts to me, but presumably there's some kind of insurance angle or the council have some other reason for axing it (maybe the year off has inspired them to look at other options).
It's going to be one of those "health and safety" get outs when people can do anything almost always for not that reason, under that pretext.
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
As it happens, a peaceful protest outside a relevant nations embassy would not, in reality be a problem. However any protests that end in motorcades calling for mass rape (as did the recent one in London) is bringing a foreign war to this country. It must not be tolerated. It is essentially an act of war against the United Kingdom.
Well no defence from me of any of that. Not sure about "act of war against the UK", but certainly it was sordid criminality that should be prosecuted. Protests have to be against the government of Israel not against Jews generally. So long as they are, I don't see a problem, and this applies regardless of whether the protesters are active for other causes. Protesting in public against the Israeli oppression of Palestinians but not against other atrocities might be a signal of possible antisemitism but you need more evidence than that to make such an accusation. It's important to say this otherwise antisemitism can end up being used as a way of shutting down negative commentary on Israel.
Do you not find it a little suspicious that the middle east conflict is such a cause celebre for so many people, particularly those on the far left? The behaviour of Israel is often atrocious, and though it doesn't excuse them, there are probably hundreds of regimes around the world who are considerably worse.
My suspicion is that a lot of the obsession the far left has with Israel is more to do with the perceived link between Jews and capitalism. Jews=capitalism. Anti-Semitism is the one form of racism the far left secretly condones.
Yes. Palestine is a touchstone cause for parts of the left. The driver for that is anti-imperialism but if you tag on an Israel = Jew equivalence, embrace of conspiracy theories about Capitalism = Jew, and Israel/Jews as global puppetmaster, etc, you have antisemitism. I think the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents but it wasn't fabricated. Far from it.
Good vaccine numbers today! We have 10 more days to do another 3m first doses. Let's see if we can get there.
Where does 3m take us to?
How many more to do, to get to everybody (besides refuseniks)
Don't know where the 3m coms from, but from my back of an envelope calculations:
There are 52,680,000 Adults, of which opinion pols suggest 90% have had or intend to have vaccine,
Therefor 47,412,000 total wish to have vaccine.
8,798,000 still to have there first jab.
26,636,000 still to have there second jab.
We are giving 595,000 jabs a day on average over the last week,
Based on when people had there first jab and a 12 week delay, (I know these are not always 12 weeks) there are 8 million ish who are expecting a second jab in next 3 weeks which leaves about 4 million for first jabs.
After that point the number who need a second jab comes down dramatically, at least if we keep to 12 weeks, therefore half a million first jabs a day! we could have had everybody who wishes to have one, in about a month,
Mrs Stodge and I have recently returned from our second vaccinations - to clarify, I had my second vaccination and she had hers.
We were told Excel is closing as a mass vaccination centre - presumably the owners are hoping they can have exhibitions and conferences after 21/6. The new vaccination centre will be at Westfield which sounds like it will be marketed as "shop and jab" (which isn't the current meaning of that term in our part of London). The thinking is the young hip, cool dudes (no, I've no idea either) will want to combine eating/drinking/shopping with a vaccination.
Currently, the 150,000 population in Newham over 40 splits neatly into three - one third have had both vaccinations, one third has had one vaccination and one third has had no vaccination. I've always said 20% of the over-70s haven't been vaccinated and a refusal of up to one third of the over-40 population sounds less than a runaway success for the vaccination programme. To be fair, Newham, long with Tower Hamlets, may well end up having the highest refusal levels in the country.
Mask observance on tubes and DLR 90% - enforcement 0%. As I said last night, you either have laws or you don't. If you have laws, they should be enforced with the appropriate penalties for transgressions. Obviously, 20 years jail for not wearing a mask on the DLR would be a tad draconian but instead we have the namby-pamby, wishy-washy, cancel-culture, woke Conservatives all wringing their hands about whether mask wearing is a good idea or not.
As usual, if you want a bit of sharp authoritarianism, leave it to the liberals.
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Wanna see some decent footage of something interesting. I can make fuzzy dots move around fast on a screen or (with a laser pointer off ebay) round the sky, and I'm not excited by talk of flir and 100gs.
I bet the June info dump will be a heavily redacted damp squib.
Grrr - Insurers now have to ensure existing customers get same quote as new customers. What happened to searching the market or challenging your existing supplier when they send out your renewal. I have never paid the renewal quote, yet don't often have to move.
Just subsidizing the lazy. Same thing with energy prices. We just need rules to prevent rip offs and exploitation of the vulnerable. The rest of us should be subject to the marketplace.
Surely you mean the lazy were subsidising you before and now they aren't
Yes it does. Not sure what your point is.
I am in favour of free markets with proper protection of the vulnerable. I don't want the state controlling what prices I sell stuff at. Loss leaders is normal commercial practice. It leads to a more efficient market if there is competition.
My point was that your claim the lazy were being subsidised is fallacious, they are now merely paying a fair price. You on the other hand have lost your subsidy and also having to pay the fair price for the product. No one is telling you what you have to charge just that you have to charge all people the same.
Unless you believe in communism that is nonsense. None of us pay the same price for the same thing. That is the point of the marketplace. It is competitive which drives prices down and or quality up.
Do you propose that all petrol stations sell petrol at the same price, or all supermarkets sell potatoes at the same price. Even the same supplier will not necessarily sell the same products at the same price. Most expensive items are negotiable.
What right have you got to tell me that I must charge everyone the same price. It is none of your business what I charge anyone. I ran a company and I charged what I thought was appropriate.
And that is how it should be with insurance. The price is negotiable or you can go elsewhere.
If you can't be arsed to negotiate a better price why should I subsidise you.
My only proviso is that for certain products and services there should be proper protection for the vulnerable and in certain cases the provision should be provided by the state via taxation (education, health, etc)
The point you fail to see though is that despite not being vulnerable many can't change supplier for example. For insurance and electric as well companies deliberately make it virtually impossible for a lot of people to work out which is best or cheapest using different tariff schedules, different levels of excess and similar ploys.
In addition no one is telling companies what they have to charge they are just telling you that you cant charge different customers different prices for the exact same product. For years you have been getting things on the cheap paid for by those who either can't or won't shop around. No one is saying every company has to charge the same price either. Insurer A is free to charge 250 and insurer B is free to charge 350.
However you carry on advocating for being a parasite on those that can't or won't.
This is just nonsense. Those that can't, should be protected. I object to be called a parasite. If you had read the earlier posts you would realise that I have been heavily and successfully involved in campaigns to provide such protection, entirely in my own time and at my own cost, regarding abuse by banks, insurance companies, telco and energy companies and those campaigns in each case took years to be successful and I put in a huge amount of time in doing so. Can you claim the same thing? Maybe you should think again before calling someone a parasite?
However why on earth do you want to protect those that can but wont shop around????? Why do people who can and won't hunt out a better deal need protecting from their own laziness.
When I ran my business I provided a service which was potentially identical to all my customer (it depended upon how much they used it). I gave discounts to charities, I charged big organisations more because they got a larger benefit so they were willing to pay (even though the service from me was the same). What I charged is none of your or anyone else's business.
Where do you want to draw the line on this price protection? Do we all have to submit our price list to the Govt?
Utilities, as is necessary, have totally different regulations to other businesses.
The change is needed. Too many people are taken advantage of by these businesses.
Yes they are, but it is the wrong solution - see my previous posts. Each solution is piecemeal (it only impacts one scenario), it takes years before it is solved (3 campaigns I was involved in took years of banging ones head against a brick wall before rules were changed) and the solution is usually anti competitive as is the one being discussed today.
Is it anti-competitive? The earlier comparison with petrol stations and supermarkets surely fails because they do not charge my neighbour and me different amounts for our cornflakes (and indeed they reward regular customers with loyalty cards). These new rules will not stop different insurance companies competing with each other on price.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
It is worth pointing out that .... Scotland and Wales could easily do this themselves, if it were so very vital.
Drakeford could close the English-Welsh border (preventing people reaching Wales from international airports in England). He has done it before, with police on the main roads into Wales. He could do it again.
He could also easily prevent the only international airport in Wales (Rhoose) from accepting incoming international flights, as the WG actually own the airport.
Similarly, if the Scottish Government were so minded they could easily quarantine all international travel into/out of Scotland, and monitor crossing of the English/Scottish border (easier to do than the English/Welsh border).
Of course, all 3 governments don't .... because there would be an outcry from those inconvenienced.
BREAKING: Lord Geidt finds the Trust Boris Johnson wanted to set up to pay for Downing Street refurb "was not subjected to a scheme of rigorous project management by officials".
It also says that he accepts that all relevant declarations were made, that they were made timeously and that there was no conflict of interest.
Since it is clear that millions of Brits have yet to overcome their fit of the vapours about this might Boris expect a bounce from his already giddy heights in being cleared in this way? Or, more likely, did the great British public in their considerable wisdom never give a damn about this in the first place?
Boris’s poll lead is fuelled by the tears of Remainers
Grrr - Insurers now have to ensure existing customers get same quote as new customers. What happened to searching the market or challenging your existing supplier when they send out your renewal. I have never paid the renewal quote, yet don't often have to move.
Just subsidizing the lazy. Same thing with energy prices. We just need rules to prevent rip offs and exploitation of the vulnerable. The rest of us should be subject to the marketplace.
Surely you mean the lazy were subsidising you before and now they aren't
Yes it does. Not sure what your point is.
I am in favour of free markets with proper protection of the vulnerable. I don't want the state controlling what prices I sell stuff at. Loss leaders is normal commercial practice. It leads to a more efficient market if there is competition.
My point was that your claim the lazy were being subsidised is fallacious, they are now merely paying a fair price. You on the other hand have lost your subsidy and also having to pay the fair price for the product. No one is telling you what you have to charge just that you have to charge all people the same.
Unless you believe in communism that is nonsense. None of us pay the same price for the same thing. That is the point of the marketplace. It is competitive which drives prices down and or quality up.
Do you propose that all petrol stations sell petrol at the same price, or all supermarkets sell potatoes at the same price. Even the same supplier will not necessarily sell the same products at the same price. Most expensive items are negotiable.
What right have you got to tell me that I must charge everyone the same price. It is none of your business what I charge anyone. I ran a company and I charged what I thought was appropriate.
And that is how it should be with insurance. The price is negotiable or you can go elsewhere.
If you can't be arsed to negotiate a better price why should I subsidise you.
My only proviso is that for certain products and services there should be proper protection for the vulnerable and in certain cases the provision should be provided by the state via taxation (education, health, etc)
The point you fail to see though is that despite not being vulnerable many can't change supplier for example. For insurance and electric as well companies deliberately make it virtually impossible for a lot of people to work out which is best or cheapest using different tariff schedules, different levels of excess and similar ploys.
In addition no one is telling companies what they have to charge they are just telling you that you cant charge different customers different prices for the exact same product. For years you have been getting things on the cheap paid for by those who either can't or won't shop around. No one is saying every company has to charge the same price either. Insurer A is free to charge 250 and insurer B is free to charge 350.
However you carry on advocating for being a parasite on those that can't or won't.
This is just nonsense. Those that can't, should be protected. I object to be called a parasite. If you had read the earlier posts you would realise that I have been heavily and successfully involved in campaigns to provide such protection, entirely in my own time and at my own cost, regarding abuse by banks, insurance companies, telco and energy companies and those campaigns in each case took years to be successful and I put in a huge amount of time in doing so. Can you claim the same thing? Maybe you should think again before calling someone a parasite?
However why on earth do you want to protect those that can but wont shop around????? Why do people who can and won't hunt out a better deal need protecting from their own laziness.
When I ran my business I provided a service which was potentially identical to all my customer (it depended upon how much they used it). I gave discounts to charities, I charged big organisations more because they got a larger benefit so they were willing to pay (even though the service from me was the same). What I charged is none of your or anyone else's business.
Where do you want to draw the line on this price protection? Do we all have to submit our price list to the Govt?
Utilities, as is necessary, have totally different regulations to other businesses.
The change is needed. Too many people are taken advantage of by these businesses.
Yes they are, but it is the wrong solution - see my previous posts. Each solution is piecemeal (it only impacts one scenario), it takes years before it is solved (3 campaigns I was involved in took years of banging ones head against a brick wall before rules were changed) and the solution is usually anti competitive as is the one being discussed today.
Is it anti-competitive? The earlier comparison with petrol stations and supermarkets surely fails because they do not charge my neighbour and me different amounts for our cornflakes (and indeed they reward regular customers with loyalty cards). These new rules will not stop different insurance companies competing with each other on price.
Its also especially needed as companies are developing tie ins to put obstacles in way of you changing
In the case of driving insurance for example the increasing encouragement to fit the company sanction black box into your car for cheaper rates
In the case of electric smart meters which stop working when you switch
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
That might make sense if the distribution of protests were even, so that 1/26th of all protests were about M. But I'll fix it for you.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
Now suppose there's 25 more protests. All about M.
Now suppose that next week there'll be 26 protests. All about M.
Imagine that every weekend there's protests. All about M.
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is happening here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs. Would that happen? No, because the hypocrites don't protest that.
Can you justify that?
I sense not.
My position is straightforward enough.
LOL. POTD. You need to get in touch with your subconscious.
Oh dear oh dear. Doing this now, are we.
Why do I bug you so, Captain Topping? Is it cos I don't shine my boots till I can see my own reflection in them?
Yes. Am I supposed to be upset that people wish to protest?
I think that is a Star of David with LUS inside it (Luton Something Synagogue?) and the message is that the area will be unsafe for Jews.
Yep, saw that. Does that mean the Muslim Council should abandon their protest?
And there is the problem of right to protest. Freedom and Libertarianism gone mad.
Is it the right to simply walk down a street?
Or your right to get in peoples faces and make them feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
And on this the British government is always going to struggle, partitioning part of another country and claiming it as their own?
Unsafe, no. Uncomfortable, sure.
Perhaps the Luton Jewish Council should indeed be made uncomfortable about the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians. Perhaps all of us should.
Jesus! You really think some British citizens should be made to feel uncomfortable about what a foreign state does. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Let's see how far this goes: should we go to Chinese restaurants in Soho and berate their owners and workers for what is happening to the Uighurs?
It is the point of protest to discomfort; otherwise it is largely a waste of time.
To turn to your example, are the Muslim Council in Luton planning to protest outside synagogues and berate the owners of Jewish delis?
No, I thought not.
The problem is that we get into
1) the intentions of some of the organisers 2) the intentions of other of the organisers 3) the intentions of some of those planning to attend 4) the intentions of some fuckwits planning to start something
Which is the complex situation that the police etc find themselves in when banning/not banning demos
One metric is "What is likely to happen?"
I agree.
But no one on here is putting forward evidence that bad things will happen.
This was originally posted as a kind of sub-Daily Mail comments board “Look what the police are enabling now...” by @isam.
Then others have rushed in to make rather stupid, bad faith arguments.
Guilty as charged. I got if off the far right site twitter from some Qanon nutter called David Herdson
It isn't that it's on the internet-all kinds of stuff is-what gave it it's slant was that it was posted by you a self confessed admirer of Enoch Powell. I watched a chilling documentary on the Soho Nail bomber last night and his dismal legacy was all over it
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
That might make sense if the distribution of protests were even, so that 1/26th of all protests were about M. But I'll fix it for you.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
Now suppose there's 25 more protests. All about M.
Now suppose that next week there'll be 26 protests. All about M.
Imagine that every weekend there's protests. All about M.
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is happening here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs. Would that happen? No, because the hypocrites don't protest that.
Can you justify that?
I sense not.
My position is straightforward enough.
LOL. POTD. You need to get in touch with your subconscious.
Oh dear oh dear. Doing this now, are we.
Why do I bug you so, Captain Topping? Is it cos I don't shine my boots till I can see my own reflection in them?
Trying to help and all I get is abuse. Makes me wonder why I bother.
Good vaccine numbers today! We have 10 more days to do another 3m first doses. Let's see if we can get there.
Where does 3m take us to?
How many more to do, to get to everybody (besides refuseniks)
Gets us to 80% of all adults with some immunity at final unlockdown. We need to do around 9m first doses to get to 90% of all adults with a first dose, which looks like our finishing point.
For completion of the programme we need to do ~34m first and second doses. That's about 50-55 days at the current rate of vaccination but it should be a bit faster as the second dose programme is still accelerating.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
It is worth pointing out that .... Scotland and Wales could easily do this themselves, if it were so very vital.
Drakeford could close the English-Welsh border (preventing people reaching Wales from international airports in England). He has done it before, with police on the main roads into Wales. He could do it again.
He could also easily prevent the only international airport in Wales (Rhoose) from accepting incoming international flights, as the WG actually own the airport.
Similarly, if the Scottish Government were so minded they could easily quarantine all international travel into/out of Scotland, and monitor crossing of the English/Scottish border (easier to do than the English/Welsh border).
Of course, all 3 governments don't .... because there would be an outcry from those inconvenienced.
So, add two more to the "Spineless List" then, but in reality, policing a land border is a lot harder than policing a sea / air border. Ask the RUC who spent 30 or 40 years trying to stop terrorists from crossing back and forth between NI and the RoI
Good vaccine numbers today! We have 10 more days to do another 3m first doses. Let's see if we can get there.
Where does 3m take us to?
How many more to do, to get to everybody (besides refuseniks)
Don't know where the 3m coms from, but from my back of an envelope calculations:
There are 52,680,000 Adults, of which opinion pols suggest 90% have had or intend to have vaccine,
Therefor 47,412,000 total wish to have vaccine.
8,798,000 still to have there first jab.
26,636,000 still to have there second jab.
We are giving 595,000 jabs a day on average over the last week,
Based on when people had there first jab and a 12 week delay, (I know these are not always 12 weeks) there are 8 million ish who are expecting a second jab in next 3 weeks which leaves about 4 million for first jabs.
After that point the number who need a second jab comes down dramatically, at least if we keep to 12 weeks, therefore half a million first jabs a day! we could have had everybody who wishes to have one, in about a month,
I reckon we'll get to 41 million / 28.5 million or thereabouts by the time we get to 7/6 and a reasonable chance of protection kicking in.
44 million/34 million or thereabouts by the time 21/6 rolls around, perhaps. Above that would be good going.
Yes. Am I supposed to be upset that people wish to protest?
I think that is a Star of David with LUS inside it (Luton Something Synagogue?) and the message is that the area will be unsafe for Jews.
Yep, saw that. Does that mean the Muslim Council should abandon their protest?
And there is the problem of right to protest. Freedom and Libertarianism gone mad.
Is it the right to simply walk down a street?
Or your right to get in peoples faces and make them feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
And on this the British government is always going to struggle, partitioning part of another country and claiming it as their own?
Unsafe, no. Uncomfortable, sure.
Perhaps the Luton Jewish Council should indeed be made uncomfortable about the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians. Perhaps all of us should.
Jesus! You really think some British citizens should be made to feel uncomfortable about what a foreign state does. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Let's see how far this goes: should we go to Chinese restaurants in Soho and berate their owners and workers for what is happening to the Uighurs?
It is the point of protest to discomfort; otherwise it is largely a waste of time.
To turn to your example, are the Muslim Council in Luton planning to protest outside synagogues and berate the owners of Jewish delis?
No, I thought not.
The problem is that we get into
1) the intentions of some of the organisers 2) the intentions of other of the organisers 3) the intentions of some of those planning to attend 4) the intentions of some fuckwits planning to start something
Which is the complex situation that the police etc find themselves in when banning/not banning demos
One metric is "What is likely to happen?"
I agree.
But no one on here is putting forward evidence that bad things will happen.
This was originally posted as a kind of sub-Daily Mail comments board “Look what the police are enabling now...” by @isam.
Then others have rushed in to make rather stupid, bad faith arguments.
Guilty as charged. I got if off the far right site twitter from some Qanon nutter called David Herdson
It isn't that it's on the internet-all kinds of stuff is-what gave it it's slant was that it was posted by you a self confessed admirer of Enoch Powell. I watched a chilling documentary on the Soho Nail bomber last night and his dismal legacy was all over it
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
whataboutery is what you are looking for.
Yes. Whataboutery to discredit a protest. That seems to be what's happening in places.
Good vaccine numbers today! We have 10 more days to do another 3m first doses. Let's see if we can get there.
Where does 3m take us to?
How many more to do, to get to everybody (besides refuseniks)
Gets us to 80% of all adults with some immunity at final unlockdown. We need to do around 9m first doses to get to 90% of all adults with a first dose, which looks like our finishing point.
For completion of the programme we need to do ~34m first and second doses. That's about 50-55 days at the current rate of vaccination but it should be a bit faster as the second dose programme is still accelerating.
Wales is actually slightly behind rUK on 2nd doses now. But they'll be through 85% of adults with a first dose shortly.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
No.
As I said a couple of nights ago, one of three things will happen to Boris Johnson.
1) He will either be thrown out of office by a vengeful electorate.
2) He will be thrown out of office by those in his party scared their chance of being at the top table is going to pass them by if they stay attached to his coattails or if he becomes an electoral liability and they have a ready-made popular successor in Rishi Sunak who will save the seats and jobs of backbenchers by the dozen.
3) He will leave on his own terms to much fanfare and then watch impotently as his reputation is trashed in the following years by an ungrateful electorate and Party.
Grrr - Insurers now have to ensure existing customers get same quote as new customers. What happened to searching the market or challenging your existing supplier when they send out your renewal. I have never paid the renewal quote, yet don't often have to move.
Just subsidizing the lazy. Same thing with energy prices. We just need rules to prevent rip offs and exploitation of the vulnerable. The rest of us should be subject to the marketplace.
Surely you mean the lazy were subsidising you before and now they aren't
Yes it does. Not sure what your point is.
I am in favour of free markets with proper protection of the vulnerable. I don't want the state controlling what prices I sell stuff at. Loss leaders is normal commercial practice. It leads to a more efficient market if there is competition.
My point was that your claim the lazy were being subsidised is fallacious, they are now merely paying a fair price. You on the other hand have lost your subsidy and also having to pay the fair price for the product. No one is telling you what you have to charge just that you have to charge all people the same.
Unless you believe in communism that is nonsense. None of us pay the same price for the same thing. That is the point of the marketplace. It is competitive which drives prices down and or quality up.
Do you propose that all petrol stations sell petrol at the same price, or all supermarkets sell potatoes at the same price. Even the same supplier will not necessarily sell the same products at the same price. Most expensive items are negotiable.
What right have you got to tell me that I must charge everyone the same price. It is none of your business what I charge anyone. I ran a company and I charged what I thought was appropriate.
And that is how it should be with insurance. The price is negotiable or you can go elsewhere.
If you can't be arsed to negotiate a better price why should I subsidise you.
My only proviso is that for certain products and services there should be proper protection for the vulnerable and in certain cases the provision should be provided by the state via taxation (education, health, etc)
The point you fail to see though is that despite not being vulnerable many can't change supplier for example. For insurance and electric as well companies deliberately make it virtually impossible for a lot of people to work out which is best or cheapest using different tariff schedules, different levels of excess and similar ploys.
In addition no one is telling companies what they have to charge they are just telling you that you cant charge different customers different prices for the exact same product. For years you have been getting things on the cheap paid for by those who either can't or won't shop around. No one is saying every company has to charge the same price either. Insurer A is free to charge 250 and insurer B is free to charge 350.
However you carry on advocating for being a parasite on those that can't or won't.
This is just nonsense. Those that can't, should be protected. I object to be called a parasite. If you had read the earlier posts you would realise that I have been heavily and successfully involved in campaigns to provide such protection, entirely in my own time and at my own cost, regarding abuse by banks, insurance companies, telco and energy companies and those campaigns in each case took years to be successful and I put in a huge amount of time in doing so. Can you claim the same thing? Maybe you should think again before calling someone a parasite?
However why on earth do you want to protect those that can but wont shop around????? Why do people who can and won't hunt out a better deal need protecting from their own laziness.
When I ran my business I provided a service which was potentially identical to all my customer (it depended upon how much they used it). I gave discounts to charities, I charged big organisations more because they got a larger benefit so they were willing to pay (even though the service from me was the same). What I charged is none of your or anyone else's business.
Where do you want to draw the line on this price protection? Do we all have to submit our price list to the Govt?
Utilities, as is necessary, have totally different regulations to other businesses.
The change is needed. Too many people are taken advantage of by these businesses.
Yes they are, but it is the wrong solution - see my previous posts. Each solution is piecemeal (it only impacts one scenario), it takes years before it is solved (3 campaigns I was involved in took years of banging ones head against a brick wall before rules were changed) and the solution is usually anti competitive as is the one being discussed today.
Is it anti-competitive? The earlier comparison with petrol stations and supermarkets surely fails because they do not charge my neighbour and me different amounts for our cornflakes (and indeed they reward regular customers with loyalty cards). These new rules will not stop different insurance companies competing with each other on price.
No they don't but as I also pointed out suppliers charge different prices for the same thing all the time. Any high priced item is negotiated. Also the same supermarket and petrol company will charge different prices in different locations. Two Shell garages close by are likely to have different prices if they think they can do it (eg more traffic). It is only the practicality of the nature of many businesses that makes identical pricing the norm. In any other scenario the price isn't usually fixed.
I charged different prices for my services because they were more valuable to some than others even though it was the same service. I never pay the asked for price for insurance, I negotiate with tradesmen on any large scale item, etc etc. But clearly I don't try and negotiate my Sainsburys shop as to do so would be pointless.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
Good afternoon, everyone. I disagree; I have heard nothing 'down the pub' or elsewhere to suggest that control of entry during a pandemic would not be popular. Indeed, I would suggest that the opposite is the case.
I'd also suggest that 'Good Ol' Boris' used up a significant chunk of his local goodwill by NOT imposing controls on entry from India, however popular it might have been with Modi.
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
whataboutery is what you are looking for.
Yes. Whataboutery to discredit a protest. That seems to be what's happening in places.
No, that's not it. The protestors will most likely discredit themselves, based on past performance, and if they didn't then there wouldn't be a problem.
It's just that I (and, thankfully, it seems, most sane people here) would prefer they weren't given the opportunity in the first place.
Mrs Stodge and I have recently returned from our second vaccinations - to clarify, I had my second vaccination and she had hers.
We were told Excel is closing as a mass vaccination centre - presumably the owners are hoping they can have exhibitions and conferences after 21/6. The new vaccination centre will be at Westfield which sounds like it will be marketed as "shop and jab" (which isn't the current meaning of that term in our part of London). The thinking is the young hip, cool dudes (no, I've no idea either) will want to combine eating/drinking/shopping with a vaccination.
Currently, the 150,000 population in Newham over 40 splits neatly into three - one third have had both vaccinations, one third has had one vaccination and one third has had no vaccination. I've always said 20% of the over-70s haven't been vaccinated and a refusal of up to one third of the over-40 population sounds less than a runaway success for the vaccination programme. To be fair, Newham, long with Tower Hamlets, may well end up having the highest refusal levels in the country.
Mask observance on tubes and DLR 90% - enforcement 0%. As I said last night, you either have laws or you don't. If you have laws, they should be enforced with the appropriate penalties for transgressions. Obviously, 20 years jail for not wearing a mask on the DLR would be a tad draconian but instead we have the namby-pamby, wishy-washy, cancel-culture, woke Conservatives all wringing their hands about whether mask wearing is a good idea or not.
As usual, if you want a bit of sharp authoritarianism, leave it to the liberals.
Mask wearing was 90% and yet you think we needed enforcement?
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
No.
As I said a couple of nights ago, one of three things will happen to Boris Johnson.
1) He will either be thrown out of office by a vengeful electorate.
2) He will be thrown out of office by those in his party scared their chance of being at the top table is going to pass them by if they stay attached to his coattails or if he becomes an electoral liability and they have a ready-made popular successor in Rishi Sunak who will save the seats and jobs of backbenchers by the dozen.
3) He will leave on his own terms to much fanfare and then watch impotently as his reputation is trashed in the following years by an ungrateful electorate and Party.
So you are saying that he will be treated just like any other prime minister?
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
It is worth pointing out that .... Scotland and Wales could easily do this themselves, if it were so very vital.
Drakeford could close the English-Welsh border (preventing people reaching Wales from international airports in England). He has done it before, with police on the main roads into Wales. He could do it again.
He could also easily prevent the only international airport in Wales (Rhoose) from accepting incoming international flights, as the WG actually own the airport.
Similarly, if the Scottish Government were so minded they could easily quarantine all international travel into/out of Scotland, and monitor crossing of the English/Scottish border (easier to do than the English/Welsh border).
Of course, all 3 governments don't .... because there would be an outcry from those inconvenienced.
So, add two more to the "Spineless List" then, but in reality, policing a land border is a lot harder than policing a sea / air border. Ask the RUC who spent 30 or 40 years trying to stop terrorists from crossing back and forth between NI and the RoI
I don't think policing the English/Welsh land border is difficult -- Drakeford did it pretty successfully earlier this year.
Recommend for sheer robustness. (The author could generally do with a slightly stronger editor for his books, but in this review every word is valuable).
As it happens, a peaceful protest outside a relevant nations embassy would not, in reality be a problem. However any protests that end in motorcades calling for mass rape (as did the recent one in London) is bringing a foreign war to this country. It must not be tolerated. It is essentially an act of war against the United Kingdom.
Well no defence from me of any of that. Not sure about "act of war against the UK", but certainly it was sordid criminality that should be prosecuted. Protests have to be against the government of Israel not against Jews generally. So long as they are, I don't see a problem, and this applies regardless of whether the protesters are active for other causes. Protesting in public against the Israeli oppression of Palestinians but not against other atrocities might be a signal of possible antisemitism but you need more evidence than that to make such an accusation. It's important to say this otherwise antisemitism can end up being used as a way of shutting down negative commentary on Israel.
Do you not find it a little suspicious that the middle east conflict is such a cause celebre for so many people, particularly those on the far left? The behaviour of Israel is often atrocious, and though it doesn't excuse them, there are probably hundreds of regimes around the world who are considerably worse.
My suspicion is that a lot of the obsession the far left has with Israel is more to do with the perceived link between Jews and capitalism. Jews=capitalism. Anti-Semitism is the one form of racism the far left secretly condones.
Yes. Palestine is a touchstone cause for parts of the left. The driver for that is anti-imperialism but if you tag on an Israel = Jew equivalence, embrace of conspiracy theories about Capitalism = Jew, and Israel/Jews as global puppetmaster, etc, you have antisemitism. I think the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents but it wasn't fabricated. Far from it.
I think there may be a grain of idealogical merit in what Mr Foreman proposes. Nonetheless, problems under Corbyn were exacerbated by the simple fact that he and his pals conflated expansionism and violence by the Netanyahu regime as representative of Jewish people across the world, particularly those in the Labour Party and more specifically those called Luciana Berger.
Grrr - Insurers now have to ensure existing customers get same quote as new customers. What happened to searching the market or challenging your existing supplier when they send out your renewal. I have never paid the renewal quote, yet don't often have to move.
Just subsidizing the lazy. Same thing with energy prices. We just need rules to prevent rip offs and exploitation of the vulnerable. The rest of us should be subject to the marketplace.
Surely you mean the lazy were subsidising you before and now they aren't
Yes it does. Not sure what your point is.
I am in favour of free markets with proper protection of the vulnerable. I don't want the state controlling what prices I sell stuff at. Loss leaders is normal commercial practice. It leads to a more efficient market if there is competition.
My point was that your claim the lazy were being subsidised is fallacious, they are now merely paying a fair price. You on the other hand have lost your subsidy and also having to pay the fair price for the product. No one is telling you what you have to charge just that you have to charge all people the same.
Unless you believe in communism that is nonsense. None of us pay the same price for the same thing. That is the point of the marketplace. It is competitive which drives prices down and or quality up.
Do you propose that all petrol stations sell petrol at the same price, or all supermarkets sell potatoes at the same price. Even the same supplier will not necessarily sell the same products at the same price. Most expensive items are negotiable.
What right have you got to tell me that I must charge everyone the same price. It is none of your business what I charge anyone. I ran a company and I charged what I thought was appropriate.
And that is how it should be with insurance. The price is negotiable or you can go elsewhere.
If you can't be arsed to negotiate a better price why should I subsidise you.
My only proviso is that for certain products and services there should be proper protection for the vulnerable and in certain cases the provision should be provided by the state via taxation (education, health, etc)
The point you fail to see though is that despite not being vulnerable many can't change supplier for example. For insurance and electric as well companies deliberately make it virtually impossible for a lot of people to work out which is best or cheapest using different tariff schedules, different levels of excess and similar ploys.
In addition no one is telling companies what they have to charge they are just telling you that you cant charge different customers different prices for the exact same product. For years you have been getting things on the cheap paid for by those who either can't or won't shop around. No one is saying every company has to charge the same price either. Insurer A is free to charge 250 and insurer B is free to charge 350.
However you carry on advocating for being a parasite on those that can't or won't.
This is just nonsense. Those that can't, should be protected. I object to be called a parasite. If you had read the earlier posts you would realise that I have been heavily and successfully involved in campaigns to provide such protection, entirely in my own time and at my own cost, regarding abuse by banks, insurance companies, telco and energy companies and those campaigns in each case took years to be successful and I put in a huge amount of time in doing so. Can you claim the same thing? Maybe you should think again before calling someone a parasite?
However why on earth do you want to protect those that can but wont shop around????? Why do people who can and won't hunt out a better deal need protecting from their own laziness.
When I ran my business I provided a service which was potentially identical to all my customer (it depended upon how much they used it). I gave discounts to charities, I charged big organisations more because they got a larger benefit so they were willing to pay (even though the service from me was the same). What I charged is none of your or anyone else's business.
Where do you want to draw the line on this price protection? Do we all have to submit our price list to the Govt?
Utilities, as is necessary, have totally different regulations to other businesses.
The change is needed. Too many people are taken advantage of by these businesses.
Yes they are, but it is the wrong solution - see my previous posts. Each solution is piecemeal (it only impacts one scenario), it takes years before it is solved (3 campaigns I was involved in took years of banging ones head against a brick wall before rules were changed) and the solution is usually anti competitive as is the one being discussed today.
Is it anti-competitive? The earlier comparison with petrol stations and supermarkets surely fails because they do not charge my neighbour and me different amounts for our cornflakes (and indeed they reward regular customers with loyalty cards). These new rules will not stop different insurance companies competing with each other on price.
No they don't but as I also pointed out suppliers charge different prices for the same thing all the time. Any high priced item is negotiated. Also the same supermarket and petrol company will charge different prices in different locations. Two Shell garages close by are likely to have different prices if they think they can do it (eg more traffic). It is only the practicality of the nature of many businesses that makes identical pricing the norm. In any other scenario the price isn't usually fixed.
I charged different prices for my services because they were more valuable to some than others even though it was the same service. I never pay the asked for price for insurance, I negotiate with tradesmen on any large scale item, etc etc. But clearly I don't try and negotiate my Sainsburys shop as to do so would be pointless.
In fact I hadn't thought of this before - If I hadn't charged different prices my business would not have been viable. If I had reduced the prices for my high end customers I would have had to put up the prices for my low end customers. For them to be profitable I needed a critical mass. I would have lost some of them if I had put up my low end prices and would have gone out of business.
Govts should not interfere in the pricing of private companies products. There are other ways of protecting individuals who use utilities and financial products.
As it happens, a peaceful protest outside a relevant nations embassy would not, in reality be a problem. However any protests that end in motorcades calling for mass rape (as did the recent one in London) is bringing a foreign war to this country. It must not be tolerated. It is essentially an act of war against the United Kingdom.
Well no defence from me of any of that. Not sure about "act of war against the UK", but certainly it was sordid criminality that should be prosecuted. Protests have to be against the government of Israel not against Jews generally. So long as they are, I don't see a problem, and this applies regardless of whether the protesters are active for other causes. Protesting in public against the Israeli oppression of Palestinians but not against other atrocities might be a signal of possible antisemitism but you need more evidence than that to make such an accusation. It's important to say this otherwise antisemitism can end up being used as a way of shutting down negative commentary on Israel.
Do you not find it a little suspicious that the middle east conflict is such a cause celebre for so many people, particularly those on the far left? The behaviour of Israel is often atrocious, and though it doesn't excuse them, there are probably hundreds of regimes around the world who are considerably worse.
My suspicion is that a lot of the obsession the far left has with Israel is more to do with the perceived link between Jews and capitalism. Jews=capitalism. Anti-Semitism is the one form of racism the far left secretly condones.
Yes. Palestine is a touchstone cause for parts of the left. The driver for that is anti-imperialism but if you tag on an Israel = Jew equivalence, embrace of conspiracy theories about Capitalism = Jew, and Israel/Jews as global puppetmaster, etc, you have antisemitism. I think the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents but it wasn't fabricated. Far from it.
I think there may be a grain of idealogical merit in what Mr Foreman proposes. Nonetheless, problems under Corbyn were exacerbated by the simple fact that he and his pals conflated expansionism and violence by the Netanyahu regime as representative of Jewish people across the world, particularly those in the Labour Party and more specifically those called Luciana Berger.
I am not sure what happened there. My post starts with "I think".
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
It is worth pointing out that .... Scotland and Wales could easily do this themselves, if it were so very vital.
The 3 Crown Dependencies all have had their own border control policies from the start - and continue to do so - though as we move out of lockdown Guernsey is looking to align with the UK traffic light system for international travel.
I had a "test on arrival" on Monday - got (negative) result back within 24 hours but also had phone calls from i) Public Health to make sure I had received my result text and didn't have any symptoms, ii) Border Force to make sure I understood the quarantine requirements (in my case, simple) and iii) Public Health to confirm date and location of my follow up test. These things can be done - it just takes work.
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
whataboutery is what you are looking for.
Yes. Whataboutery to discredit a protest. That seems to be what's happening in places.
No, that's not it. The protestors will most likely discredit themselves, based on past performance, and if they didn't then there wouldn't be a problem.
It's just that I (and, thankfully, it seems, most sane people here) would prefer they weren't given the opportunity in the first place.
If someone can't divine the hidden and nuanced meaning of "fuck the jews, rape their women, free palestine" then I think you are slightly wasting your time.
As I said a couple of nights ago, one of three things will happen to Boris Johnson.
1) He will either be thrown out of office by a vengeful electorate.
2) He will be thrown out of office by those in his party scared their chance of being at the top table is going to pass them by if they stay attached to his coattails or if he becomes an electoral liability and they have a ready-made popular successor in Rishi Sunak who will save the seats and jobs of backbenchers by the dozen.
3) He will leave on his own terms to much fanfare and then watch impotently as his reputation is trashed in the following years by an ungrateful electorate and Party.
So you are saying that he will be treated just like any other prime minister?
Er, yes.
I noted here the other day the four people who receive the most consistent vilification from all sides are Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
whataboutery is what you are looking for.
Yes. Whataboutery to discredit a protest. That seems to be what's happening in places.
No, that's not it. The protestors will most likely discredit themselves, based on past performance, and if they didn't then there wouldn't be a problem.
It's just that I (and, thankfully, it seems, most sane people here) would prefer they weren't given the opportunity in the first place.
What, you'd ban a protest in case there was unlawful behaviour?
Well today's case, death and healthcare figures don't look great, can't see that boding well for 21 June. I'm rapidly moving towards a Contrarian-esque view on all of this, except I'm getting vaccinated on Sunday.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
It is worth pointing out that .... Scotland and Wales could easily do this themselves, if it were so very vital.
Drakeford could close the English-Welsh border (preventing people reaching Wales from international airports in England). He has done it before, with police on the main roads into Wales. He could do it again.
He could also easily prevent the only international airport in Wales (Rhoose) from accepting incoming international flights, as the WG actually own the airport.
Similarly, if the Scottish Government were so minded they could easily quarantine all international travel into/out of Scotland, and monitor crossing of the English/Scottish border (easier to do than the English/Welsh border).
Of course, all 3 governments don't .... because there would be an outcry from those inconvenienced.
So, add two more to the "Spineless List" then, but in reality, policing a land border is a lot harder than policing a sea / air border. Ask the RUC who spent 30 or 40 years trying to stop terrorists from crossing back and forth between NI and the RoI
I don't think policing the English/Welsh land border is difficult -- Drakeford did it pretty successfully earlier this year.
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
As it happens, a peaceful protest outside a relevant nations embassy would not, in reality be a problem. However any protests that end in motorcades calling for mass rape (as did the recent one in London) is bringing a foreign war to this country. It must not be tolerated. It is essentially an act of war against the United Kingdom.
Well no defence from me of any of that. Not sure about "act of war against the UK", but certainly it was sordid criminality that should be prosecuted. Protests have to be against the government of Israel not against Jews generally. So long as they are, I don't see a problem, and this applies regardless of whether the protesters are active for other causes. Protesting in public against the Israeli oppression of Palestinians but not against other atrocities might be a signal of possible antisemitism but you need more evidence than that to make such an accusation. It's important to say this otherwise antisemitism can end up being used as a way of shutting down negative commentary on Israel.
Do you not find it a little suspicious that the middle east conflict is such a cause celebre for so many people, particularly those on the far left? The behaviour of Israel is often atrocious, and though it doesn't excuse them, there are probably hundreds of regimes around the world who are considerably worse.
My suspicion is that a lot of the obsession the far left has with Israel is more to do with the perceived link between Jews and capitalism. Jews=capitalism. Anti-Semitism is the one form of racism the far left secretly condones.
Yes. Palestine is a touchstone cause for parts of the left. The driver for that is anti-imperialism but if you tag on an Israel = Jew equivalence, embrace of conspiracy theories about Capitalism = Jew, and Israel/Jews as global puppetmaster, etc, you have antisemitism. I think the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents but it wasn't fabricated. Far from it.
A fair and balanced answer. I am not sure I agree that that the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated though. Certainly many Labour members who were Jewish didn't seem to think so. The strongest evidence that Corbyn is an Anti-Semite for me was the mural. I know that Corbyn wasn't the brightest ticket, but pretending that it did not depict Jews? Come on!
As I said a couple of nights ago, one of three things will happen to Boris Johnson.
1) He will either be thrown out of office by a vengeful electorate.
2) He will be thrown out of office by those in his party scared their chance of being at the top table is going to pass them by if they stay attached to his coattails or if he becomes an electoral liability and they have a ready-made popular successor in Rishi Sunak who will save the seats and jobs of backbenchers by the dozen.
3) He will leave on his own terms to much fanfare and then watch impotently as his reputation is trashed in the following years by an ungrateful electorate and Party.
So you are saying that he will be treated just like any other prime minister?
Er, yes.
I noted here the other day the four people who receive the most consistent vilification from all sides are Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.
Boris Johnson is and will be no different.
No to forget Margaret Thatcher. In fact John Major seems to be the only vaguely recent ex-PM that isn't hated on.
Well today's case, death and healthcare figures don't look great, can't see that boding well for 21 June. I'm rapidly moving towards a Contrarian-esque view on all of this, except I'm getting vaccinated on Sunday.
BBC Headline: "slight rise in cases"
Surely this was expected. Let's see what happens over the next few weeks.
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
whataboutery is what you are looking for.
Yes. Whataboutery to discredit a protest. That seems to be what's happening in places.
No, that's not it. The protestors will most likely discredit themselves, based on past performance, and if they didn't then there wouldn't be a problem.
It's just that I (and, thankfully, it seems, most sane people here) would prefer they weren't given the opportunity in the first place.
If someone can't divine the hidden and nuanced meaning of "fuck the jews, rape their women, free palestine" then I think you are slightly wasting your time.
I could say the same to you!
I live in hope. Kinabalu is clearly intelligent enough to get the point some day.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
Good afternoon, everyone. I disagree; I have heard nothing 'down the pub' or elsewhere to suggest that control of entry during a pandemic would not be popular. Indeed, I would suggest that the opposite is the case.
I'd also suggest that 'Good Ol' Boris' used up a significant chunk of his local goodwill by NOT imposing controls on entry from India, however popular it might have been with Modi.
I think you would find that when the person in the pub finds out that their holiday abroad means quarantine will apply to them and their family (including the bill of, IIRC, £1,700 per person) then Boris's popularity would be on the slide....
Recommend for sheer robustness. (The author could generally do with a slightly stronger editor for his books, but in this review every word is valuable).
The review talks about the author's real name being Andrew Scott, a journalist who continually bashes Brexit on Twitter. You don't think that could be our own @Scott_xP do you?
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Apologies to Chameleon, I was triggered by the tirade anyone normally gets here when they raise this issue. Yes it’s fascinating and quite hard to call which way it will go from here.
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Wanna see some decent footage of something interesting. I can make fuzzy dots move around fast on a screen or (with a laser pointer off ebay) round the sky, and I'm not excited by talk of flir and 100gs.
I bet the June info dump will be a heavily redacted damp squib.
Except you wouldn't be able to persuade Obama with your laser pointer off eBay
Well today's case, death and healthcare figures don't look great, can't see that boding well for 21 June. I'm rapidly moving towards a Contrarian-esque view on all of this, except I'm getting vaccinated on Sunday.
Your fears are rationally driven by death and health care figures, though, and the belief that the government will react rationally to them. The contrarian thesis is that the government wants to lock us all down anyway - which is a silly thing to think in view of Boris’s dicta about piling bodies high, who gves a toss about 80 year olds and so on.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
It is worth pointing out that .... Scotland and Wales could easily do this themselves, if it were so very vital.
Drakeford could close the English-Welsh border (preventing people reaching Wales from international airports in England). He has done it before, with police on the main roads into Wales. He could do it again.
He could also easily prevent the only international airport in Wales (Rhoose) from accepting incoming international flights, as the WG actually own the airport.
Similarly, if the Scottish Government were so minded they could easily quarantine all international travel into/out of Scotland, and monitor crossing of the English/Scottish border (easier to do than the English/Welsh border).
Of course, all 3 governments don't .... because there would be an outcry from those inconvenienced.
So, add two more to the "Spineless List" then, but in reality, policing a land border is a lot harder than policing a sea / air border. Ask the RUC who spent 30 or 40 years trying to stop terrorists from crossing back and forth between NI and the RoI
I don't think policing the English/Welsh land border is difficult -- Drakeford did it pretty successfully earlier this year.
Obviously the RUC should have employed Drakeford all those years ago....
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
whataboutery is what you are looking for.
Yes. Whataboutery to discredit a protest. That seems to be what's happening in places.
No, that's not it. The protestors will most likely discredit themselves, based on past performance, and if they didn't then there wouldn't be a problem.
It's just that I (and, thankfully, it seems, most sane people here) would prefer they weren't given the opportunity in the first place.
What, you'd ban a protest in case there was unlawful behaviour?
Hell yes.
More specifically, I'd ban protests where history has proven that the "protestors" are using their supposed cause as a front to commit unlawful behaviour.
Again, ask yourself why you are so keen to preserve this right to protest over the right of others not to be racially abused.
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Wanna see some decent footage of something interesting. I can make fuzzy dots move around fast on a screen or (with a laser pointer off ebay) round the sky, and I'm not excited by talk of flir and 100gs.
I bet the June info dump will be a heavily redacted damp squib.
Except you wouldn't be able to persuade Obama with your laser pointer off eBay
No, but I don't want things mediated by Obama, I want to put my hands in the actual wounds.
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
whataboutery is what you are looking for.
Yes. Whataboutery to discredit a protest. That seems to be what's happening in places.
No, that's not it. The protestors will most likely discredit themselves, based on past performance, and if they didn't then there wouldn't be a problem.
It's just that I (and, thankfully, it seems, most sane people here) would prefer they weren't given the opportunity in the first place.
If someone can't divine the hidden and nuanced meaning of "fuck the jews, rape their women, free palestine" then I think you are slightly wasting your time.
I could say the same to you!
I live in hope. Kinabalu is clearly intelligent enough to get the point some day.
LOL That is true!
He is very intelligent and it's just so frustrating - he is so confused about his own life story (working class northern lad made good now living a life of privelege) that he is unable to give that intelligence free rein as he is so used to having to live amongst what is supposed to be for someone of his background the enemy class. Except he is now a fully paid up member.
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
As it happens, a peaceful protest outside a relevant nations embassy would not, in reality be a problem. However any protests that end in motorcades calling for mass rape (as did the recent one in London) is bringing a foreign war to this country. It must not be tolerated. It is essentially an act of war against the United Kingdom.
Well no defence from me of any of that. Not sure about "act of war against the UK", but certainly it was sordid criminality that should be prosecuted. Protests have to be against the government of Israel not against Jews generally. So long as they are, I don't see a problem, and this applies regardless of whether the protesters are active for other causes. Protesting in public against the Israeli oppression of Palestinians but not against other atrocities might be a signal of possible antisemitism but you need more evidence than that to make such an accusation. It's important to say this otherwise antisemitism can end up being used as a way of shutting down negative commentary on Israel.
Do you not find it a little suspicious that the middle east conflict is such a cause celebre for so many people, particularly those on the far left? The behaviour of Israel is often atrocious, and though it doesn't excuse them, there are probably hundreds of regimes around the world who are considerably worse.
My suspicion is that a lot of the obsession the far left has with Israel is more to do with the perceived link between Jews and capitalism. Jews=capitalism. Anti-Semitism is the one form of racism the far left secretly condones.
Yes. Palestine is a touchstone cause for parts of the left. The driver for that is anti-imperialism but if you tag on an Israel = Jew equivalence, embrace of conspiracy theories about Capitalism = Jew, and Israel/Jews as global puppetmaster, etc, you have antisemitism. I think the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents but it wasn't fabricated. Far from it.
A fair and balanced answer. I am not sure I agree that that the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated though. Certainly many Labour members who were Jewish didn't seem to think so. The strongest evidence that Corbyn is an Anti-Semite for me was the mural. I know that Corbyn wasn't the brightest ticket, but pretending that it did not depict Jews? Come on!
As I said a couple of nights ago, one of three things will happen to Boris Johnson.
1) He will either be thrown out of office by a vengeful electorate.
2) He will be thrown out of office by those in his party scared their chance of being at the top table is going to pass them by if they stay attached to his coattails or if he becomes an electoral liability and they have a ready-made popular successor in Rishi Sunak who will save the seats and jobs of backbenchers by the dozen.
3) He will leave on his own terms to much fanfare and then watch impotently as his reputation is trashed in the following years by an ungrateful electorate and Party.
So you are saying that he will be treated just like any other prime minister?
Er, yes.
I noted here the other day the four people who receive the most consistent vilification from all sides are Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.
Boris Johnson is and will be no different.
No to forget Margaret Thatcher. In fact John Major seems to be the only vaguely recent ex-PM that isn't hated on.
Yet he got the biggest kicking from the electorate possible.
It's almost as though, having vented their spleen on him at the ballot box, the electorate are prepared to be more forgiving.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
It is worth pointing out that .... Scotland and Wales could easily do this themselves, if it were so very vital.
Drakeford could close the English-Welsh border (preventing people reaching Wales from international airports in England). He has done it before, with police on the main roads into Wales. He could do it again.
He could also easily prevent the only international airport in Wales (Rhoose) from accepting incoming international flights, as the WG actually own the airport.
Similarly, if the Scottish Government were so minded they could easily quarantine all international travel into/out of Scotland, and monitor crossing of the English/Scottish border (easier to do than the English/Welsh border).
Of course, all 3 governments don't .... because there would be an outcry from those inconvenienced.
So, add two more to the "Spineless List" then, but in reality, policing a land border is a lot harder than policing a sea / air border. Ask the RUC who spent 30 or 40 years trying to stop terrorists from crossing back and forth between NI and the RoI
I don't think policing the English/Welsh land border is difficult -- Drakeford did it pretty successfully earlier this year.
Did he?
I came and went as I pleased.
But, your car has a CYM registration plate, no?
Certainly, on the main roads into North Wales, Gog Plod were stopping incoming cars with English reg plates.
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
That might make sense if the distribution of protests were even, so that 1/26th of all protests were about M. But I'll fix it for you.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
Now suppose there's 25 more protests. All about M.
Now suppose that next week there'll be 26 protests. All about M.
Imagine that every weekend there's protests. All about M.
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is happening here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs. Would that happen? No, because the hypocrites don't protest that.
Can you justify that?
I sense not.
My position is straightforward enough.
LOL. POTD. You need to get in touch with your subconscious.
Oh dear oh dear. Doing this now, are we.
Why do I bug you so, Captain Topping? Is it cos I don't shine my boots till I can see my own reflection in them?
Trying to help and all I get is abuse. Makes me wonder why I bother.
Hmm. Well the clock now stands at umpteen weeks since you've spoken to me with anything but facetiousness and bizarre attempted put downs.
You have your reasons, I'm sure, and each to his own, but it does seem odd.
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Apologies to Chameleon, I was triggered by the tirade anyone normally gets here when they raise this issue. Yes it’s fascinating and quite hard to call which way it will go from here.
Remarkable number of people here don't understand that the story is the Us military and intel REACTION, not the grainy footage itself
To wit:
"Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp discuss 2019 radar & video evidence of UFOs swarming a carrier battle group, which US Navy has acknowledged as genuine. Why r Navy officials leaking evidence & then corroborating it? Navy is driving the UFO disclosure process!"
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
It is worth pointing out that .... Scotland and Wales could easily do this themselves, if it were so very vital.
Drakeford could close the English-Welsh border (preventing people reaching Wales from international airports in England). He has done it before, with police on the main roads into Wales. He could do it again.
He could also easily prevent the only international airport in Wales (Rhoose) from accepting incoming international flights, as the WG actually own the airport.
Similarly, if the Scottish Government were so minded they could easily quarantine all international travel into/out of Scotland, and monitor crossing of the English/Scottish border (easier to do than the English/Welsh border).
Of course, all 3 governments don't .... because there would be an outcry from those inconvenienced.
So, add two more to the "Spineless List" then, but in reality, policing a land border is a lot harder than policing a sea / air border. Ask the RUC who spent 30 or 40 years trying to stop terrorists from crossing back and forth between NI and the RoI
I don't think policing the English/Welsh land border is difficult -- Drakeford did it pretty successfully earlier this year.
Did he?
I came and went as I pleased.
But, your car has a CYM registration plate, no?
Certainly, on the main roads into North Wales, Gog Plod were stopping incoming cars with English reg plates.
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Wanna see some decent footage of something interesting. I can make fuzzy dots move around fast on a screen or (with a laser pointer off ebay) round the sky, and I'm not excited by talk of flir and 100gs.
I bet the June info dump will be a heavily redacted damp squib.
Except you wouldn't be able to persuade Obama with your laser pointer off eBay
Ishmael is right about one thing though, the June report is highly unlikely to shed much light. At best it will be a waypoint to a more comprehensive report later. Unless that is, Biden knows the answer is exotic and decides to lay his cards.
Looks unlikely, given the dirty tricks they’re using against Elizondo. The latest FOI request has ended with the Pentagon admitting it has deleted all of Elizondo’s emails with no backup. Doesn’t sound much like standard protocol but I’m sure Philip can explain why they’d have done that.
As it happens, a peaceful protest outside a relevant nations embassy would not, in reality be a problem. However any protests that end in motorcades calling for mass rape (as did the recent one in London) is bringing a foreign war to this country. It must not be tolerated. It is essentially an act of war against the United Kingdom.
Well no defence from me of any of that. Not sure about "act of war against the UK", but certainly it was sordid criminality that should be prosecuted. Protests have to be against the government of Israel not against Jews generally. So long as they are, I don't see a problem, and this applies regardless of whether the protesters are active for other causes. Protesting in public against the Israeli oppression of Palestinians but not against other atrocities might be a signal of possible antisemitism but you need more evidence than that to make such an accusation. It's important to say this otherwise antisemitism can end up being used as a way of shutting down negative commentary on Israel.
Do you not find it a little suspicious that the middle east conflict is such a cause celebre for so many people, particularly those on the far left? The behaviour of Israel is often atrocious, and though it doesn't excuse them, there are probably hundreds of regimes around the world who are considerably worse.
My suspicion is that a lot of the obsession the far left has with Israel is more to do with the perceived link between Jews and capitalism. Jews=capitalism. Anti-Semitism is the one form of racism the far left secretly condones.
Yes. Palestine is a touchstone cause for parts of the left. The driver for that is anti-imperialism but if you tag on an Israel = Jew equivalence, embrace of conspiracy theories about Capitalism = Jew, and Israel/Jews as global puppetmaster, etc, you have antisemitism. I think the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents but it wasn't fabricated. Far from it.
I think there may be a grain of idealogical merit in what Mr Foreman proposes. Nonetheless, problems under Corbyn were exacerbated by the simple fact that he and his pals conflated expansionism and violence by the Netanyahu regime as representative of Jewish people across the world, particularly those in the Labour Party and more specifically those called Luciana Berger.
I am not sure what happened there. My post starts with "I think".
THIS IS WHERE MY RESPONSE STARTS -
Part of the problem is that far too many on the Left identify automatically with whoever they think is less powerful and are automatically hostile to the more powerful party, without necessarily knowing anything about any particular situation. It is silly because right and wrong does not automatically track power relations. The weak are not automatically in the right nor are the more powerful automatically in the wrong.
But that sort of lazy shorthand is all too common and results in people imposing an ignorant view on complex situations and casting people or groups as victims, regardless of what they do or any evidence to the contrary.
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
Good afternoon, everyone. I disagree; I have heard nothing 'down the pub' or elsewhere to suggest that control of entry during a pandemic would not be popular. Indeed, I would suggest that the opposite is the case.
I'd also suggest that 'Good Ol' Boris' used up a significant chunk of his local goodwill by NOT imposing controls on entry from India, however popular it might have been with Modi.
I think you would find that when the person in the pub finds out that their holiday abroad means quarantine will apply to them and their family (including the bill of, IIRC, £1,700 per person) then Boris's popularity would be on the slide....
Most people with whom I converse, either virtually or literally, think an overseas holiday isn't a good idea ATM, although equally many of them would like to go on one.
As I said, people with whom I've discussed this, think NOT imposing controls when the Indian situation was identified was very foolish indeed.
As I said a couple of nights ago, one of three things will happen to Boris Johnson.
1) He will either be thrown out of office by a vengeful electorate.
2) He will be thrown out of office by those in his party scared their chance of being at the top table is going to pass them by if they stay attached to his coattails or if he becomes an electoral liability and they have a ready-made popular successor in Rishi Sunak who will save the seats and jobs of backbenchers by the dozen.
3) He will leave on his own terms to much fanfare and then watch impotently as his reputation is trashed in the following years by an ungrateful electorate and Party.
So you are saying that he will be treated just like any other prime minister?
Er, yes.
I noted here the other day the four people who receive the most consistent vilification from all sides are Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.
Boris Johnson is and will be no different.
No to forget Margaret Thatcher. In fact John Major seems to be the only vaguely recent ex-PM that isn't hated on.
Yet he got the biggest kicking from the electorate possible.
It's almost as though, having vented their spleen on him at the ballot box, the electorate are prepared to be more forgiving.
I think that the kicking was for the Conservative party, as it was at that point, not for Major.
As I said a couple of nights ago, one of three things will happen to Boris Johnson.
1) He will either be thrown out of office by a vengeful electorate.
2) He will be thrown out of office by those in his party scared their chance of being at the top table is going to pass them by if they stay attached to his coattails or if he becomes an electoral liability and they have a ready-made popular successor in Rishi Sunak who will save the seats and jobs of backbenchers by the dozen.
3) He will leave on his own terms to much fanfare and then watch impotently as his reputation is trashed in the following years by an ungrateful electorate and Party.
So you are saying that he will be treated just like any other prime minister?
Er, yes.
I noted here the other day the four people who receive the most consistent vilification from all sides are Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.
Boris Johnson is and will be no different.
No to forget Margaret Thatcher. In fact John Major seems to be the only vaguely recent ex-PM that isn't hated on.
Yet he got the biggest kicking from the electorate possible.
It's almost as though, having vented their spleen on him at the ballot box, the electorate are prepared to be more forgiving.
It is because fundamentally he is a nice guy. Hard to think of many other leading politicians who you could say the same of. John Smith perhaps, Malcolm Rifkind. Actually I have come round to Ed Balls recently. I still think Portillo is a pillock though
I think there may be a grain of idealogical merit in what Mr Foreman proposes. Nonetheless, problems under Corbyn were exacerbated by the simple fact that he and his pals conflated expansionism and violence by the Netanyahu regime as representative of Jewish people across the world, particularly those in the Labour Party and more specifically those called Luciana Berger.
The antisemites attacking Luciana Berger were not Corbyn's pals but the former Militant and SWP types who'd been thrown out by Kinnock and readmitted by Ed Miliband.
Corbyn himself does not seem to have been classically anti-Jewish but was anti-Israel. Is that antisemitic? Yes, it probably is, unless (as others have already suggested) other countries are similarly condemned alongside Israel. It is not just whataboutery.
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Apologies to Chameleon, I was triggered by the tirade anyone normally gets here when they raise this issue. Yes it’s fascinating and quite hard to call which way it will go from here.
Remarkable number of people here don't understand that the story is the Us military and intel REACTION, not the grainy footage itself
To wit:
"Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp discuss 2019 radar & video evidence of UFOs swarming a carrier battle group, which US Navy has acknowledged as genuine. Why r Navy officials leaking evidence & then corroborating it? Navy is driving the UFO disclosure process!"
Well today's case, death and healthcare figures don't look great, can't see that boding well for 21 June. I'm rapidly moving towards a Contrarian-esque view on all of this, except I'm getting vaccinated on Sunday.
Your fears are rationally driven by death and health care figures, though, and the belief that the government will react rationally to them. The contrarian thesis is that the government wants to lock us all down anyway - which is a silly thing to think in view of Boris’s dicta about piling bodies high, who gves a toss about 80 year olds and so on.
No I meant a Contrarian-esque view that under no circumstances should restrictions be accepted. I don't think there's a conspiracy, I do think that the noirmalisation of restrictions is something that has happened to a degree and their continuation would contribute to. I also think there's been a huge amount of goal post shifting about the purpose of restriction.
This is just nonsense. Those that can't, should be protected. I object to be called a parasite. If you had read the earlier posts you would realise that I have been heavily and successfully involved in campaigns to provide such protection, entirely in my own time and at my own cost, regarding abuse by banks, insurance companies, telco and energy companies and those campaigns in each case took years to be successful and I put in a huge amount of time in doing so. Can you claim the same thing? Maybe you should think again before calling someone a parasite?
However why on earth do you want to protect those that can but wont shop around????? Why do people who can and won't hunt out a better deal need protecting from their own laziness.
When I ran my business I provided a service which was potentially identical to all my customer (it depended upon how much they used it). I gave discounts to charities, I charged big organisations more because they got a larger benefit so they were willing to pay (even though the service from me was the same). What I charged is none of your or anyone else's business.
Where do you want to draw the line on this price protection? Do we all have to submit our price list to the Govt?
Not calling you anything, of course. But I don't think that expecting everyone to be hyper-paranoid about companies ripping them off is a good idea. Sure, it makes the market fractionally more efficient, but at the expense of countless hours wading through comparison websites. I'd like the competition authorities to discourage companies from exploiting people who don't frantically switch between umpteen effectively identical companies trying to get this week's best bargain.
I'd like to stay with the same providers unless someone makes a genuine advance in service, without having to worry that they're exploiting me, and I'm grateful for the competition authorities helping with that. In the same way, I like the supermarkets with price guarantees for branded products, and wouldn't like having to go to Tesco for milk and Sainsbury for cheese. I'm not especially lazy, but I've better things to do (like posting on PB).
Paging @contrarian as it seems only fair to toss him/her one of the few tentative pieces of evidence of eternal lockdown. Seems nuts to me, but presumably there's some kind of insurance angle or the council have some other reason for axing it (maybe the year off has inspired them to look at other options).
It's going to be one of those "health and safety" get outs when people can do anything almost always for not that reason, under that pretext.
The one time I went to this event (pre-COVID) I thought it was a bloody nightmare - hordes of people dithering about stalls full of Christmas tat and mulled wine, and impossible to move at more than a snail's pace. No loss, as far as I'm concerned....
This peaceful demonstration, planned for Sunday, is brought to you by the people responsible for the lovely little meeting in London a couple of weeks ago - Convoy4Palestine
When they say people of all backgrounds, they mean Sunni & Shia Muslims should unite against Israel
Regarding the Luton march. Am I alone in wondering why the fuck people are protesting in this country about the relations between two other countries?
No you won't be alone. There are a number of other ultra-parochials on here.
I don’t consider myself parochial at all. Indeed, in a previous employment I worked across the world. Sometimes mediating in international troublespots. I have lived in several other countries. Nothing about me is parochial.
I simply do not see why (presumably) U.K. citizens feel the need to bring foreign wars (for this is a war) to our country.
We have tons of protests here about bad stuff going on elsewhere. And many people see this more as a systematic oppression (akin to apartheid) rather than simply another foreign war.
You just don't like the cause, that's all. Which is fair enough, but that's a different argument.
How is it "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" than what is happening to the Kurds? Or the Uighur? Or the Tibetans? Or many more?
I'm not saying it's worse than other atrocities. I'm not doing a finely calibrated rating of one against the other.
And there's something else I don't do. When there happens to be a protest in the UK against something happening elsewhere I don't leap in and say either of the following -
That the people who feel strongly enough to join the protest have questions to answer if they are not also in the habit of protesting all and sundry other issues.
That a protest in the UK is inappropriate because it relates to things happening outside the UK.
What you're doing is imputing bad faith to a protest purely because you don't like the cause. It's no different to the negative stuff that gets said about BLM - although not by you in that case since there you DO like the cause.
You're the one who used the words "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)" so I think its fair to ask how that applies.
Just because people are protesting doesn't justify their protest. If people are protesting because they dislike oppression a la Kurds, Tibet, Uighur and Palestine etc consistently then I respect that.
If people are protesting because they dislike Jews, then that's no better than an EDL one.
I sense you get my point. Good.
No I don't get your point. You seem to want to justify this, without justifying it, because you know its unjustifiable.
Please can you say how it is "a more systematic oppression (akin to apartheid)", or please can you say that it isn't and those words were inappropriate?
Ah ok. Just the once more then. I have a few minutes.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
So now a common technique adopted by people who dislike and disagree with the protesters (against M) is to say the following -
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is what you're doing here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
Would you in that case be employing the "why aren't they protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z?" technique?
I sense not.
That might make sense if the distribution of protests were even, so that 1/26th of all protests were about M. But I'll fix it for you.
Assume there are 26 different atrocities going on in the world outside the UK - one for every letter of the alphabet, A to Z. And there's a protest going on in London about one of them. About M.
Now suppose there's 25 more protests. All about M.
Now suppose that next week there'll be 26 protests. All about M.
Imagine that every weekend there's protests. All about M.
"How come these people are not protesting against A thru L, and N thru Z? They're hypocrites!"
This is happening here. Where M = Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
Compare with if there were a protest where M = the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs. Would that happen? No, because the hypocrites don't protest that.
Can you justify that?
I sense not.
My position is straightforward enough.
LOL. POTD. You need to get in touch with your subconscious.
Oh dear oh dear. Doing this now, are we.
Why do I bug you so, Captain Topping? Is it cos I don't shine my boots till I can see my own reflection in them?
Trying to help and all I get is abuse. Makes me wonder why I bother.
Hmm. Well the clock now stands at umpteen weeks since you've spoken to me with anything but facetiousness and bizarre attempted put downs.
You have your reasons, I'm sure, and each to his own, but it does seem odd.
How dare you. Attempted indeed.
And not to worry about my reasons. You have yours and I have mine.
Recommend for sheer robustness. (The author could generally do with a slightly stronger editor for his books, but in this review every word is valuable).
The review talks about the author's real name being Andrew Scott, a journalist who continually bashes Brexit on Twitter. You don't think that could be our own @Scott_xP do you?
He'd have to be incredibly productive, to continually bash Brexit both on here and on Twitter
(Personally, I find I have to take breaks from debating on here when I notice someone being wrong elsewhere on the web, simply can't juggle that many plates at once)
As I said a couple of nights ago, one of three things will happen to Boris Johnson.
1) He will either be thrown out of office by a vengeful electorate.
2) He will be thrown out of office by those in his party scared their chance of being at the top table is going to pass them by if they stay attached to his coattails or if he becomes an electoral liability and they have a ready-made popular successor in Rishi Sunak who will save the seats and jobs of backbenchers by the dozen.
3) He will leave on his own terms to much fanfare and then watch impotently as his reputation is trashed in the following years by an ungrateful electorate and Party.
So you are saying that he will be treated just like any other prime minister?
Er, yes.
I noted here the other day the four people who receive the most consistent vilification from all sides are Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.
Boris Johnson is and will be no different.
No to forget Margaret Thatcher. In fact John Major seems to be the only vaguely recent ex-PM that isn't hated on.
I voted for Major. He always struck me as too decent for politics...
On topic: The simple fact is that Boris's desire not to be "The Bad Guy" is the problem here. He cannot make hard choices.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
It is worth pointing out that .... Scotland and Wales could easily do this themselves, if it were so very vital.
Drakeford could close the English-Welsh border (preventing people reaching Wales from international airports in England). He has done it before, with police on the main roads into Wales. He could do it again.
He could also easily prevent the only international airport in Wales (Rhoose) from accepting incoming international flights, as the WG actually own the airport.
Similarly, if the Scottish Government were so minded they could easily quarantine all international travel into/out of Scotland, and monitor crossing of the English/Scottish border (easier to do than the English/Welsh border).
Of course, all 3 governments don't .... because there would be an outcry from those inconvenienced.
So, add two more to the "Spineless List" then, but in reality, policing a land border is a lot harder than policing a sea / air border. Ask the RUC who spent 30 or 40 years trying to stop terrorists from crossing back and forth between NI and the RoI
I don't think policing the English/Welsh land border is difficult -- Drakeford did it pretty successfully earlier this year.
Obviously the RUC should have employed Drakeford all those years ago....
Ah ... but so it goes.
There are many organisations who should have employed Drakeford as the go-to big man and have lived to regret it ...
Manchester United FC, Marks & Spencer, Kodak Eastwood, Xerox, the UK Labour Party ... the RUC.
Let's just say it would not have been "nul points" at Eurovision if the singing had been entrusted to Drakeford ...
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Apologies to Chameleon, I was triggered by the tirade anyone normally gets here when they raise this issue. Yes it’s fascinating and quite hard to call which way it will go from here.
Remarkable number of people here don't understand that the story is the Us military and intel REACTION, not the grainy footage itself
To wit:
"Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp discuss 2019 radar & video evidence of UFOs swarming a carrier battle group, which US Navy has acknowledged as genuine. Why r Navy officials leaking evidence & then corroborating it? Navy is driving the UFO disclosure process!"
Yea it’s really bizarre how a bunch of seemingly smart people can have such a blind spot.
The radar footage was leaked yesterday to social media influencers who specialise in UFOs. Within a few hours, this:
"Gadi Schwartz @GadiNBC Just in from Pentagon spokesperson: “I can confirm that the video you sent was taken by Navy personnel, and that the UAPTF included it in their ongoing examinations. I have no further information on it for you.”"
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Apologies to Chameleon, I was triggered by the tirade anyone normally gets here when they raise this issue. Yes it’s fascinating and quite hard to call which way it will go from here.
I like a laugh as much as the next man, but try as I might I can't find a rich seam of humour in the public's indifference to government screw ups on coronavirus.
That's the thing about the public - they're on an altogether different level to you. I find that highly amusing.
You're chuckling about the public being on a different level to ME? I don't think you were. I didn't feature. Here's the sequence -
Cummings comes out and describes the chaos & complacency of much of the government's response to Covid.
Poll comes out showing no impact on public opinion.
Italian police on Wednesday arrested three senior managers from the cable car operating company over Sunday’s tragedy. They are accused of deliberately deactivating the emergency brake that should have prevented the cable car from falling backwards when the cable snapped.
The wider lesson might be to be extremely careful about bringing back into use assets that have lain idle for months during the pandemic, and whose current state is therefore uncertain.
With a faulty emergency brake, they should have taken it out of service. But if course, with the tourist season in full swing and the industry desperate to recoup earnings, they chose to keep it going and disable the brake.
The J&J vaccine is less efficacious than Moderna or Pfizer, and (like AZ) takes time to be fully effective. The US is largely stepping back from J&J as well.
I'm surprised the EU is continuing to go down the J&J path, because I thought they'd pretty much entirely committed to Pfizer (with a little Moderna on the side) going forward
The J&J vaccine is less efficacious than Moderna or Pfizer, and (like AZ) takes time to be fully effective. The US is largely stepping back from J&J as well.
I'm surprised the EU is continuing to go down the J&J path, because I thought they'd pretty much entirely committed to Pfizer (with a little Moderna on the side) going forward
For us I am expecting it to become our pre-winter booster shot.
ANY explanation of the UFO story would now be the biggest security story in 70 years
The more outrageous explanation would be the biggest story EVER, and still it is a contender
Wanna see some decent footage of something interesting. I can make fuzzy dots move around fast on a screen or (with a laser pointer off ebay) round the sky, and I'm not excited by talk of flir and 100gs.
I bet the June info dump will be a heavily redacted damp squib.
Except you wouldn't be able to persuade Obama with your laser pointer off eBay
Ishmael is right about one thing though, the June report is highly unlikely to shed much light. At best it will be a waypoint to a more comprehensive report later. Unless that is, Biden knows the answer is exotic and decides to lay his cards.
Looks unlikely, given the dirty tricks they’re using against Elizondo. The latest FOI request has ended with the Pentagon admitting it has deleted all of Elizondo’s emails with no backup. Doesn’t sound much like standard protocol but I’m sure Philip can explain why they’d have done that.
Yes, I don't expect much from the report. A holding position
However they have gone beyond the point where they can put the ET genie back in the you're-a-nutter lamp
Comments
The change is needed. Too many people are taken advantage of by these businesses.
Every time he has an opportunity to get ahead of the virus he throws it away by failing to restrict travel in and out of the UK.
We are an island. How hard can it be? Everyone has to come in through a Port of Entry and now that we have Brexited that means Europeans as well.
Everyone entering should be quarantined and tested. Everyone. It is not hard.
But it would not be popular and there is Boris's Achilles' heel.
His legacy will be that he managed to get the vaccine program going and then wasted the gains made by it. History will remember him as a spineless fool and possibly in the running to depose Lord North from his spot as the "Worst PM ever"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-57282780
Paging @contrarian as it seems only fair to toss him/her one of the few tentative pieces of evidence of eternal lockdown. Seems nuts to me, but presumably there's some kind of insurance angle or the council have some other reason for axing it (maybe the year off has inspired them to look at other options).
There are 52,680,000 Adults, of which opinion pols suggest 90% have had or intend to have vaccine,
Therefor 47,412,000 total wish to have vaccine.
8,798,000 still to have there first jab.
26,636,000 still to have there second jab.
We are giving 595,000 jabs a day on average over the last week,
Based on when people had there first jab and a 12 week delay, (I know these are not always 12 weeks) there are 8 million ish who are expecting a second jab in next 3 weeks which leaves about 4 million for first jabs.
After that point the number who need a second jab comes down dramatically, at least if we keep to 12 weeks, therefore half a million first jabs a day! we could have had everybody who wishes to have one, in about a month,
Mrs Stodge and I have recently returned from our second vaccinations - to clarify, I had my second vaccination and she had hers.
We were told Excel is closing as a mass vaccination centre - presumably the owners are hoping they can have exhibitions and conferences after 21/6. The new vaccination centre will be at Westfield which sounds like it will be marketed as "shop and jab" (which isn't the current meaning of that term in our part of London). The thinking is the young hip, cool dudes (no, I've no idea either) will want to combine eating/drinking/shopping with a vaccination.
Currently, the 150,000 population in Newham over 40 splits neatly into three - one third have had both vaccinations, one third has had one vaccination and one third has had no vaccination. I've always said 20% of the over-70s haven't been vaccinated and a refusal of up to one third of the over-40 population sounds less than a runaway success for the vaccination programme. To be fair, Newham, long with Tower Hamlets, may well end up having the highest refusal levels in the country.
Mask observance on tubes and DLR 90% - enforcement 0%. As I said last night, you either have laws or you don't. If you have laws, they should be enforced with the appropriate penalties for transgressions. Obviously, 20 years jail for not wearing a mask on the DLR would be a tad draconian but instead we have the namby-pamby, wishy-washy, cancel-culture, woke Conservatives all wringing their hands about whether mask wearing is a good idea or not.
As usual, if you want a bit of sharp authoritarianism, leave it to the liberals.
I bet the June info dump will be a heavily redacted damp squib.
Drakeford could close the English-Welsh border (preventing people reaching Wales from international airports in England). He has done it before, with police on the main roads into Wales. He could do it again.
He could also easily prevent the only international airport in Wales (Rhoose) from accepting incoming international flights, as the WG actually own the airport.
Similarly, if the Scottish Government were so minded they could easily quarantine all international travel into/out of Scotland, and monitor crossing of the English/Scottish border (easier to do than the English/Welsh border).
Of course, all 3 governments don't .... because there would be an outcry from those inconvenienced.
In the case of driving insurance for example the increasing encouragement to fit the company sanction black box into your car for cheaper rates
In the case of electric smart meters which stop working when you switch
Why do I bug you so, Captain Topping? Is it cos I don't shine my boots till I can see my own reflection in them?
For completion of the programme we need to do ~34m first and second doses. That's about 50-55 days at the current rate of vaccination but it should be a bit faster as the second dose programme is still accelerating.
44 million/34 million or thereabouts by the time 21/6 rolls around, perhaps. Above that would be good going.
As I said a couple of nights ago, one of three things will happen to Boris Johnson.
1) He will either be thrown out of office by a vengeful electorate.
2) He will be thrown out of office by those in his party scared their chance of being at the top table is going to pass them by if they stay attached to his coattails or if he becomes an electoral liability and they have a ready-made popular successor in Rishi Sunak who will save the seats and jobs of backbenchers by the dozen.
3) He will leave on his own terms to much fanfare and then watch impotently as his reputation is trashed in the following years by an ungrateful electorate and Party.
I charged different prices for my services because they were more valuable to some than others even though it was the same service. I never pay the asked for price for insurance, I negotiate with tradesmen on any large scale item, etc etc. But clearly I don't try and negotiate my Sainsburys shop as to do so would be pointless.
I disagree; I have heard nothing 'down the pub' or elsewhere to suggest that control of entry during a pandemic would not be popular. Indeed, I would suggest that the opposite is the case.
I'd also suggest that 'Good Ol' Boris' used up a significant chunk of his local goodwill by NOT imposing controls on entry from India, however popular it might have been with Modi.
It's just that I (and, thankfully, it seems, most sane people here) would prefer they weren't given the opportunity in the first place.
Recommend for sheer robustness. (The author could generally do with a slightly stronger editor for his books, but in this review every word is valuable).
As it happens, a peaceful protest outside a relevant nations embassy would not, in reality be a problem. However any protests that end in motorcades calling for mass rape (as did the recent one in London) is bringing a foreign war to this country. It must not be tolerated. It is essentially an act of war against the United Kingdom.
Well no defence from me of any of that. Not sure about "act of war against the UK", but certainly it was sordid criminality that should be prosecuted. Protests have to be against the government of Israel not against Jews generally. So long as they are, I don't see a problem, and this applies regardless of whether the protesters are active for other causes. Protesting in public against the Israeli oppression of Palestinians but not against other atrocities might be a signal of possible antisemitism but you need more evidence than that to make such an accusation. It's important to say this otherwise antisemitism can end up being used as a way of shutting down negative commentary on Israel.
Do you not find it a little suspicious that the middle east conflict is such a cause celebre for so many people, particularly those on the far left? The behaviour of Israel is often atrocious, and though it doesn't excuse them, there are probably hundreds of regimes around the world who are considerably worse.
My suspicion is that a lot of the obsession the far left has with Israel is more to do with the perceived link between Jews and capitalism. Jews=capitalism. Anti-Semitism is the one form of racism the far left secretly condones.
Yes. Palestine is a touchstone cause for parts of the left. The driver for that is anti-imperialism but if you tag on an Israel = Jew equivalence, embrace of conspiracy theories about Capitalism = Jew, and Israel/Jews as global puppetmaster, etc, you have antisemitism. I think the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents but it wasn't fabricated. Far from it.
I think there may be a grain of idealogical merit in what Mr Foreman proposes. Nonetheless, problems under Corbyn were exacerbated by the simple fact that he and his pals conflated expansionism and violence by the Netanyahu regime as representative of Jewish people across the world, particularly those in the Labour Party and more specifically those called Luciana Berger.
Govts should not interfere in the pricing of private companies products. There are other ways of protecting individuals who use utilities and financial products.
Do you not find it a little suspicious that the middle east conflict is such a cause celebre for so many people, particularly those on the far left? The behaviour of Israel is often atrocious, and though it doesn't excuse them, there are probably hundreds of regimes around the world who are considerably worse.
My suspicion is that a lot of the obsession the far left has with Israel is more to do with the perceived link between Jews and capitalism. Jews=capitalism. Anti-Semitism is the one form of racism the far left secretly condones.
Yes. Palestine is a touchstone cause for parts of the left. The driver for that is anti-imperialism but if you tag on an Israel = Jew equivalence, embrace of conspiracy theories about Capitalism = Jew, and Israel/Jews as global puppetmaster, etc, you have antisemitism. I think the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents but it wasn't fabricated. Far from it.
I think there may be a grain of idealogical merit in what Mr Foreman proposes. Nonetheless, problems under Corbyn were exacerbated by the simple fact that he and his pals conflated expansionism and violence by the Netanyahu regime as representative of Jewish people across the world, particularly those in the Labour Party and more specifically those called Luciana Berger.
I am not sure what happened there. My post starts with "I think".
I had a "test on arrival" on Monday - got (negative) result back within 24 hours but also had phone calls from i) Public Health to make sure I had received my result text and didn't have any symptoms, ii) Border Force to make sure I understood the quarantine requirements (in my case, simple) and iii) Public Health to confirm date and location of my follow up test. These things can be done - it just takes work.
I noted here the other day the four people who receive the most consistent vilification from all sides are Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.
Boris Johnson is and will be no different.
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1398283038644178944?s=19
And this
https://twitter.com/LabourCult/status/1398291779976376328?s=19
I came and went as I pleased.
Pretty good for techies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_pru8U2RmM
Surely this was expected. Let's see what happens over the next few weeks.
I live in hope. Kinabalu is clearly intelligent enough to get the point some day.
Nothing to do with me guv'
https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1398293118345224193?s=21
https://twitter.com/Mij_Europe/status/1398294940971569155?s=20
The Prime Minister raised his significant concerns about human rights in Hungary, including gender equality, LGBT rights and media freedom
https://twitter.com/BBCBusiness/status/1398295657174253578?s=20
More specifically, I'd ban protests where history has proven that the "protestors" are using their supposed cause as a front to commit unlawful behaviour.
Again, ask yourself why you are so keen to preserve this right to protest over the right of others not to be racially abused.
He is very intelligent and it's just so frustrating - he is so confused about his own life story (working class northern lad made good now living a life of privelege) that he is unable to give that intelligence free rein as he is so used to having to live amongst what is supposed to be for someone of his background the enemy class. Except he is now a fully paid up member.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_for_Humanity
“New poll, from NCP. Con lead of +12.
Fourteenth consecutive poll with a Con lead of +8 or more, in a sequence dating back to 4-5 May.”
https://twitter.com/davidherdson/status/1398248357810802688?s=21
It's almost as though, having vented their spleen on him at the ballot box, the electorate are prepared to be more forgiving.
Certainly, on the main roads into North Wales, Gog Plod were stopping incoming cars with English reg plates.
You have your reasons, I'm sure, and each to his own, but it does seem odd.
To wit:
"Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp discuss 2019 radar & video evidence of UFOs swarming a carrier battle group, which US Navy has acknowledged as genuine. Why r Navy officials leaking evidence & then corroborating it? Navy is driving the UFO disclosure process!"
https://twitter.com/MichaelSalla/status/1398278691029872642
Looks unlikely, given the dirty tricks they’re using against Elizondo. The latest FOI request has ended with the Pentagon admitting it has deleted all of Elizondo’s emails with no backup. Doesn’t sound much like standard protocol but I’m sure Philip can explain why they’d have done that.
My suspicion is that a lot of the obsession the far left has with Israel is more to do with the perceived link between Jews and capitalism. Jews=capitalism. Anti-Semitism is the one form of racism the far left secretly condones.
Yes. Palestine is a touchstone cause for parts of the left. The driver for that is anti-imperialism but if you tag on an Israel = Jew equivalence, embrace of conspiracy theories about Capitalism = Jew, and Israel/Jews as global puppetmaster, etc, you have antisemitism. I think the problem under Corbyn was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents but it wasn't fabricated. Far from it.
I think there may be a grain of idealogical merit in what Mr Foreman proposes. Nonetheless, problems under Corbyn were exacerbated by the simple fact that he and his pals conflated expansionism and violence by the Netanyahu regime as representative of Jewish people across the world, particularly those in the Labour Party and more specifically those called Luciana Berger.
I am not sure what happened there. My post starts with "I think".
THIS IS WHERE MY RESPONSE STARTS -
Part of the problem is that far too many on the Left identify automatically with whoever they think is less powerful and are automatically hostile to the more powerful party, without necessarily knowing anything about any particular situation. It is silly because right and wrong does not automatically track power relations. The weak are not automatically in the right nor are the more powerful automatically in the wrong.
But that sort of lazy shorthand is all too common and results in people imposing an ignorant view on complex situations and casting people or groups as victims, regardless of what they do or any evidence to the contrary.
As I said, people with whom I've discussed this, think NOT imposing controls when the Indian situation was identified was very foolish indeed.
Corbyn himself does not seem to have been classically anti-Jewish but was anti-Israel. Is that antisemitic? Yes, it probably is, unless (as others have already suggested) other countries are similarly condemned alongside Israel. It is not just whataboutery.
I'd like to stay with the same providers unless someone makes a genuine advance in service, without having to worry that they're exploiting me, and I'm grateful for the competition authorities helping with that. In the same way, I like the supermarkets with price guarantees for branded products, and wouldn't like having to go to Tesco for milk and Sainsbury for cheese. I'm not especially lazy, but I've better things to do (like posting on PB).
When they say people of all backgrounds, they mean Sunni & Shia Muslims should unite against Israel
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/participants-in-antisemitic-car-convoy-travelled-to-london-from-across-uk/
And not to worry about my reasons. You have yours and I have mine.
That's the fun of it.
(Personally, I find I have to take breaks from debating on here when I notice someone being wrong elsewhere on the web, simply can't juggle that many plates at once)
There are many organisations who should have employed Drakeford as the go-to big man and have lived to regret it ...
Manchester United FC, Marks & Spencer, Kodak Eastwood, Xerox, the UK Labour Party ... the RUC.
Let's just say it would not have been "nul points" at Eurovision if the singing had been entrusted to Drakeford ...
"Gadi Schwartz
@GadiNBC
Just in from Pentagon spokesperson: “I can confirm that the video you sent was taken by Navy personnel, and that the UAPTF included it in their ongoing examinations. I have no further information on it for you.”"
https://twitter.com/GadiNBC/status/1398047184117927936?s=20
The Pentagon/US Navy knew the video had been leaked, they even had a statement ready to go, giving confirmation, and verifying the vid.
This is all done quite deliberately. An agenda. Slow disclosure of information.
So what is going on?
1. Either some massive US psy-ops on the entire world, maybe aimed at enemies
2. They are panicked about incredible Chinese tech and want to alert complacent politicians?
3. We are being habituated to the idea that ET has landed. Probably in the ocean
The U.K. has ordered 30 million doses of J&J's vaccine, but reduced its order to 20 million Friday. The EU has secured up to 400 million doses.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-oks-jj-coronavirus-vaccine/
Do we know how many of the new cases are the 'Indian variant' and how many of the other variants?
As in are the number of non Indian variants still dropping? I suspect this is so, but have not seen it reported.
Cummings comes out and describes the chaos & complacency of much of the government's response to Covid.
Poll comes out showing no impact on public opinion.
Felix falls off his chair.
I'm surprised the EU is continuing to go down the J&J path, because I thought they'd pretty much entirely committed to Pfizer (with a little Moderna on the side) going forward
However they have gone beyond the point where they can put the ET genie back in the you're-a-nutter lamp