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The odds on Starmer for next PM move to a point where he’s now a value bet – politicalbetting.com

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  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    "Oxfam staff rage at ‘whiteness survey’

    Oxfam has defined “whiteness” as “the overarching preservation of power and domination for the benefit of white people” in a survey on racial justice that has caused upset among staff. The survey was circulated to Oxfam’s 1,800 staff in Britain — 88 per cent of whom are white — and describes racism as “a power construct created by white nations for the benefit of white people”." (£)

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/oxfam-staff-rage-at-whiteness-survey-fw7h6dl3w
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,704
    Andy_JS said:

    "Wearing face masks and social distancing should continue after July 19, a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert has warned.

    Dr David Nabarro, Special Envoy on Covid-19 for the WHO, said while he accepts keeping the restrictions will make people angry, his advice is to keep restrictions in place.

    He told the BBC's Radio 4 PM programme: "We do have to be prepared for the inevitability that viruses will continue to be a problem for us. We're going to have to really seriously contemplate continuing to practise some degree of physical distancing, some degree of mask wearing, some degree of hygiene, some degree of protecting those who are most at risk, as long as there are these nasty viruses around, whether or not we're vaccinated.

    "It makes people very angry because they want to be able to stop being careful but it's my advice, and it's just based on studying these things over the years, is that it is not a cool thing just to ditch our preventative measures on a particular date because we hope that's going to be associated with less risks - the risks are going to stay."

    The issue is likely to split politicians and scientists. The experts have said it will ultimately be a political decision, and many ministers have pointed out that they cannot wait to ditch their masks."

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-covid-vaccine-lockdown-scotland-school-cases/

    Screw the experts. It's not happening.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    eek said:

    Cookie said:

    eek said:

    Cookie said:

    Completely new lines Liverpool to Manchester and Manchester-Bradford-Leeds does not sound small beer.

    If they happen. But the point is that RP said that NPR was already under construction. Which it is, but also rather ignores the fact that the definition of NPR has radically changed (and for the better, IMO).

    HS2 is a set project: to build a new high-speed rail line from London to just north of Birmingham (phase1/1a), and to Manchester/Leeds (phase 2). Much other work needs doing, but it's all directed to that core.

    NPR is a set of related and unrelated projects to enhance connectivity and services in the north, including electrification schemes, reducing bottlenecks, and adding new lines. Some of that work is ongoing; others are barely specified, let alone been through planning or funded. NPR is a very different, and in many ways more complex, project.
    I was being truthful and sarcastic in equal measure. The extension of the knitting from Colton Junction to Church Fenton is absolutely an HS2B/3 scheme. And like so many of the rump motorway stubs left up and down the country I expect that is the last we will see of it.

    Lets understand the issue. The Pennines are bloody lumpy and have towns and villages all over their eastern foothills. A ruddy great base tunnel is doable at a price and has been proposed since at least the 1860s. Its where it goes at either end that is the problem.

    The brutal problem for HS3/NPR is this: its purpose is to speed people between Manchester and Leeds quickly. For other towns like Huddersfield or even cities like Bradford they can offer as many different route options as they like, serving these places is expensive both in terms of land and construction costs and journey time loss.

    The plan is to upgrade the existing route via Standege - and decent time savings can be realised - AND to build the new route via Bradford. I just can't see the latter ever getting through the planning hell to come and then the budgeting hell that follows that. Not when cash has already been spent on upgrades to the existing route - "Isn't that good enough" is an easy cop-out.

    Likewise the Liverpool to Manchester bit is already now good enough.

    Liverpool to Manchester is fine. But like HS2, the primary issue is not the speed in getting from A to B but the capacity this eats up. A mix of fast and slow trains results in much lower track capacity than simply sending down train after train at the same speed, as a moments' thought will demonstrate. So although we can go reasonably fast between Manchester and Liverpool, doing so inhibits the number of suburban trains we can run to Urmston and Allerton and Eccles and Huyton. And the number of freight trains we can run.
    That said, the potential upside in speed for Mcr/Lpl in relation to what we already have is rather more significant than that between Manchester and London for HS2, creating a genuine two-city city-region.
    Also, HS2 will create a much better connection between Liverpool and Manchester Airport, cutting journey times from about an hour to about 15 minutes.

    All the above arguments can also be applied to Manchester-Leeds, with the added bonus that we tie Bradford properly into the high speed network. At present, trains to Bradford are a bit pedestrian. By giving a sub-half-hour connection between Bradford and Manchester, we connect a massive labour pool (Bradford's bigger than most people think) with a massive jobs market.

    Yes, it's a major engineering challenge to do it. But what we have at present in terms of a whole network isn't good enough.
    But this is the thing - the story is always about Journey time when the far more important story should really be about capacity. The great unknown for that argument though is what capacity is required in the post Covid world.
    Given that the sketch line on early NPR iterations from Liverpool to Manchester via Manchester Airport now looks to be confirmed, the new Manchester-Bradford-Leeds schematic is interesting and head scratching at the same time. In earlier iterations I had understood that Manchester-Leeds would be via a massive, disruptive upgrade of the currently less strategic Calder Valley line and that the overall fast Liverpool-Leeds route would be an exaggerated S, swinging out first to the airport, then via the Ordsall Chord, then up to Todmorden. Many more miles than at current but compensated by fast trains.

    The schematic line now seems to follow the current Tame valley line before diverging towards Bradford somewhere between the upper Tame and upper Colne. Given the terrain of any direct link across that route to cut over to Bradford would be an interesting one. I have some doubts whether that has credibility as being the ultimate route chosen, but, on the other hand, how lines are drawn on schematics do tend to reflect a strand of thinking somewhere.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Sean_F said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Nigelb said:


    Not at all - in Persuasion, Wentworth's fortune is founded on prizes taken in the Napoleonic wars.
    Austen's access to and interest in detailed accounts of the conflict were, of course, somewhat limited.

    Can I pick a Nugget out of this - the impact of the Naval Prize System?

    Does anyone know of any books / research material on this?

    I wonder how many country mansions were built on the back of it? I've had an itch about that for a time.

    Quite significant sums involved eg here it mentions an extreme case of capturing a Spanish frigate (with treasure) in 1762, where all crew members received at least £485. The average wage in 1762 was around £12-15 afaics.

    The two captains involved got £65k each, or about 4000x the average wage. Which is nice to have.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20080621024038/http://www.hms.org.uk/nelsonsnavyprize.htm
    https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/ukearncpi/earnstudyx.pdf
    Another nugget is that the Admiralty paid rewards for freeing slaves:

    "Between 1807 and 1811, 1,991 slaves were freed through the Vice-Admiralty Court of Sierra Leone, and between 1807 and mid-1815, HM Treasury paid Royal Navy personnel 191,100 pounds in prize money for slaves freed in West Africa. "
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize_money
    Every single fictional Naval hero (Hornblower included) was involved with a particular, later treasure fleet capture. Where the prize money was complicated by whether war was declared or not.

    They also paid prize money for captured slave ships. Once they realised that the slavers were buying them back at auction, the prizes were broken up or burnt. But the price still paid as prize money.

    With the end of the Napoleonic wars, the prize money from fighting slavery was a massive pull for the best and brightest in the RN
    I have just read a biography of Pellew and come away thinking how closely the fiction matches the reality. Pellew did very very nicely as a frigate captain out of prize money but really cleaned up as admiral with the Indian ocean command, coming home with the equivalent of #30m gained as far as I can tell from corrupt practices.
    Funnily enough, I'll be reading through a bundle of his letters tomorrow as part of my MA.
    Lucky you! Is that the Exmouth family collection?

    There's a brilliant letter from his wife responding to one from him saying he has decided to give up wine - she tells him not to do anything so patently silly and unhealthy, and never to let his intake fall below 2 or 3 glasses a day.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013

    Scott_xP said:

    Do you mean in one Waitrose, or in all Waitroses?

    There were empty shelves in the one I was in, but the staff said that was due to driver shortages which will affect all branches to some degree
    Maybe you should see if Aldi are better at paying their drivers and have stock in their shelves, if Waitrose don't?
    Shortages are both patchy and universal. There isn't a blanket "this area has a problem this one doesn't" issue nor a "Waitrose has a problem and Aldi doesn't" issue.

    A shortage of drivers hits everyone until more drivers can be either trained or allowed to work again. A big spike in wages has fixed the "driven away by IR35" issue. Which still leaves a big shortage of drivers as (a) not enough Brits want to do the work hence EU drivers and (b) no training during Covid.

    Unless we let EU drivers come back in then shortages are going to get worse before they get better. A crash course in HGV driving is 6-8 weeks assuming you have sufficient instructors and testers and candidates to fill all the holes. Which we don't.
    6 to 8 weeks isn't very long.

    Its not like saying you need to spend 3+ years at University being charged £9k per year to do so.

    Pay people enough and they'll take 6 weeks to train. I'm pretty sure you and eek were complaining about this more than 8 weeks ago so the training could have been done by now.
    As always your expertise and wisdom is invaluable.

    The industry has been begging the government to listen. A multi-point plan is asked for:
    1 Step up training and testing parked by Covid. Around 30,000 new driver tests have been lost thanks to Covid
    2. Allow more flexibility on driver hours and potentially even on shared loads (against competition law but waived at the height of Covid) as sticking plaster solutions
    3. Put truck drivers on the skilled worker shortage list to allow EU drivers in

    We're short of 65k drivers and the shortage increases every week thanks to an ageing driver pool. Despite the Wizard of Wazza pronouncing "pay them more" there just aren't the bodies available to drive all the trucks that need to be driven.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    MattW said:


    Scott_xP said:

    Do you mean in one Waitrose, or in all Waitroses?

    There were empty shelves in the one I was in, but the staff said that was due to driver shortages which will affect all branches to some degree
    Maybe you should see if Aldi are better at paying their drivers and have stock in their shelves, if Waitrose don't?
    Shortages are both patchy and universal. There isn't a blanket "this area has a problem this one doesn't" issue nor a "Waitrose has a problem and Aldi doesn't" issue.

    A shortage of drivers hits everyone until more drivers can be either trained or allowed to work again. A big spike in wages has fixed the "driven away by IR35" issue. Which still leaves a big shortage of drivers as (a) not enough Brits want to do the work hence EU drivers and (b) no training during Covid.

    Unless we let EU drivers come back in then shortages are going to get worse before they get better. A crash course in HGV driving is 6-8 weeks assuming you have sufficient instructors and testers and candidates to fill all the holes. Which we don't.
    I wonder how big a pool there is of former drivers?
    We're short by 65k and growing every week. Most former drivers are former having retired - no idea how many are out there with a still valid license who can be tempted back with cash, but cash has already been waved in large amounts by increasingly desperate hauliers. If it was a solution it would already have happened.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    NEW Belfast court dismisses legal challenge to Brexit Northern Ireland protocol
    Set back for DUP and others who tried to get a judicial review. Judge rules that "much constitutional water has passed under the bridge” since 1800 Act of Union

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/30/belfast-court-dismisses-legal-challenge-to-brexit-northern-ireland-protocol
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,612
    Foxy said:

    darkage said:

    DavidL said:

    TOPPING said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    Good morning, everyone.

    Mr. Pioneers, I've heard that non-white people also get to have lots of money. And lots of white people don't have much money.

    White privilege is a bloody stupid term.

    Of course its a stupid term. It is far more nuanced than that. But it quite evidently is there. As is the other massive divider - class. WWC kids and their parents don't feel white privilege and I absolutely understand why. Then again they can't see it from the other side of the race divide where their kids are far less likely to be harassed by the police, suffer from abuse and discrimination because of the colour of their skin or even their name etc etc.

    Where the WWC get discriminated against is class. Posh whitey sending their kids to fee paying schools don't want to spend their money on the WWC. So they vote in MPs who vote against feeding hungry white kids in massively poor areas who then bemoan the poor educational attainment of kids they voted to keep hungry. And then use this as proof that there is no white privilege such as having a spare £32k to spend on school fees per child.

    Are such schools exclusively white? Of course not! But look how hard it is for non-white parents to be in that position compared to white parents. It does happen, but in tiny numbers. And when its a tiny percentage of the population in a position to spend that kind of cash on school fees, its a truly tiny percentage of non-whites.

    Schools like that cannot pretend they are ordinary, that their students are ordinary. All of them are massively and extraordinarily privileged to a level that most kids can barely conceive of. Teaching them that - and that with privilege comes responsibility - is surely a basic. I do with my kids and their level of privilege is nothing compared to Charles et al
    I do have to wonder how much actual experience of these schools you have.
    My kids went to Dundee HS for the last 20 years in total. When my eldest started the school was very white, as, in fairness, was middle class Dundee.
    At my sons leaving ceremony last week the majority of his class was white Scots but only just. There is a very large minority of Asians , mainly Indian but a reasonable number of Chinese and fewer Africans. What is significant is that the proportion of both Indians and Chinese is much, much higher than they are in the city.
    This seems to reflect 2 things. Firstly, the social economic success of those communities (lots of doctors) and , secondly, societal values that put much greater value on education than many indigenous Scots today.
    The result is that the child of an Indian doctor or Chinese scientist is far more likely to be privileged with a decent education than the child of white Scottish parents.
    Really don’t see where white privilege comes into this.
    Well the evidence is that despite class privilege they don't do as well as their white peers after university.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/black-graduates-university-race-b1818967.html

    This featured in the much derided and since ignored government report into race earlier this year.
    “Black” is too wide a generality. Both Indians and Chinese earn more on average than whites. Other groups do less well. Some of the reasons they do afflict our poor whites too. Disrupted families, poor role models, poor housing etc.
    This is a broader and more general point that certainly needs a lot more attention than it is getting if we are to maximise the potential of our society but my point was much narrower: the cliche that private schools are bastions of white privilege is simply wrong.
    I wonder what happens if you control for British children in private schools.
    Private schools are more of a bastion of privilege in our society than ever because they have lifted their game at the same time as general standards in education have declined. Don’t dispute that for a second. It’s just not white privilege, at least not anymore.
    I say that (respectfully) I know little about the private school sector. Suspect that not all fee paying schools are the same though. How many of your doctor examples could afford £32k a year? How many local Lairds can?

    The issue in education is class, not race. The monied class don't want to pay anything to bring up the poorest from their low levels of attainment. That the monied are very largely (though not exclusively) white is a side note.
    I can only speak from experience. The only reason to send my son to private school is to get him away from the local criminal underclass. Thats why all the parents I know do it, it is like a £15k per annum tax just for this reason. Looking at the private school parents around this provincial part of England, a lot of them seem like dodgy businesspeople, a lot of inherited property wealth and conspicuous consumption - hardly an elite club that is worth joining.

    In terms of educational attainment there is almost nothing in it, the final results etc look to be pretty similar, the university outcomes are not that great for our local private schools, £180k is a lot to spend for your child to end up at a middle ranking ex poly doing some woke degree.
    So join the criminal overclass rather than the underclass?

    One of the many advantages of comprehensive education is being exposed to the "local criminal underclass" to use your terms. Being able to deal with these people is essential learning for life.

    In my experience the criminal overclass has slightly nicer table manners...

    At the local free school, a young chap from the local.... estate invited his peers for a birthday party. Since the free school has attracted quite a few upper middle class (ha!) types, a convoy of rather expensive vehicles delivered his friends.

    Apparently everyone on the estate (according to him) is convinced he is in a very impressive gang.

    Perhaps he is?
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    Foxy said:

    darkage said:

    DavidL said:

    TOPPING said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    Good morning, everyone.

    Mr. Pioneers, I've heard that non-white people also get to have lots of money. And lots of white people don't have much money.

    White privilege is a bloody stupid term.

    Of course its a stupid term. It is far more nuanced than that. But it quite evidently is there. As is the other massive divider - class. WWC kids and their parents don't feel white privilege and I absolutely understand why. Then again they can't see it from the other side of the race divide where their kids are far less likely to be harassed by the police, suffer from abuse and discrimination because of the colour of their skin or even their name etc etc.

    Where the WWC get discriminated against is class. Posh whitey sending their kids to fee paying schools don't want to spend their money on the WWC. So they vote in MPs who vote against feeding hungry white kids in massively poor areas who then bemoan the poor educational attainment of kids they voted to keep hungry. And then use this as proof that there is no white privilege such as having a spare £32k to spend on school fees per child.

    Are such schools exclusively white? Of course not! But look how hard it is for non-white parents to be in that position compared to white parents. It does happen, but in tiny numbers. And when its a tiny percentage of the population in a position to spend that kind of cash on school fees, its a truly tiny percentage of non-whites.

    Schools like that cannot pretend they are ordinary, that their students are ordinary. All of them are massively and extraordinarily privileged to a level that most kids can barely conceive of. Teaching them that - and that with privilege comes responsibility - is surely a basic. I do with my kids and their level of privilege is nothing compared to Charles et al
    I do have to wonder how much actual experience of these schools you have.
    My kids went to Dundee HS for the last 20 years in total. When my eldest started the school was very white, as, in fairness, was middle class Dundee.
    At my sons leaving ceremony last week the majority of his class was white Scots but only just. There is a very large minority of Asians , mainly Indian but a reasonable number of Chinese and fewer Africans. What is significant is that the proportion of both Indians and Chinese is much, much higher than they are in the city.
    This seems to reflect 2 things. Firstly, the social economic success of those communities (lots of doctors) and , secondly, societal values that put much greater value on education than many indigenous Scots today.
    The result is that the child of an Indian doctor or Chinese scientist is far more likely to be privileged with a decent education than the child of white Scottish parents.
    Really don’t see where white privilege comes into this.
    Well the evidence is that despite class privilege they don't do as well as their white peers after university.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/black-graduates-university-race-b1818967.html

    This featured in the much derided and since ignored government report into race earlier this year.
    “Black” is too wide a generality. Both Indians and Chinese earn more on average than whites. Other groups do less well. Some of the reasons they do afflict our poor whites too. Disrupted families, poor role models, poor housing etc.
    This is a broader and more general point that certainly needs a lot more attention than it is getting if we are to maximise the potential of our society but my point was much narrower: the cliche that private schools are bastions of white privilege is simply wrong.
    I wonder what happens if you control for British children in private schools.
    Private schools are more of a bastion of privilege in our society than ever because they have lifted their game at the same time as general standards in education have declined. Don’t dispute that for a second. It’s just not white privilege, at least not anymore.
    I say that (respectfully) I know little about the private school sector. Suspect that not all fee paying schools are the same though. How many of your doctor examples could afford £32k a year? How many local Lairds can?

    The issue in education is class, not race. The monied class don't want to pay anything to bring up the poorest from their low levels of attainment. That the monied are very largely (though not exclusively) white is a side note.
    I can only speak from experience. The only reason to send my son to private school is to get him away from the local criminal underclass. Thats why all the parents I know do it, it is like a £15k per annum tax just for this reason. Looking at the private school parents around this provincial part of England, a lot of them seem like dodgy businesspeople, a lot of inherited property wealth and conspicuous consumption - hardly an elite club that is worth joining.

    In terms of educational attainment there is almost nothing in it, the final results etc look to be pretty similar, the university outcomes are not that great for our local private schools, £180k is a lot to spend for your child to end up at a middle ranking ex poly doing some woke degree.
    So join the criminal overclass rather than the underclass?

    One of the many advantages of comprehensive education is being exposed to the "local criminal underclass" to use your terms. Being able to deal with these people is essential learning for life.

    At an English public school you get "a lifetime's training in knavery" according to Rudi von Starnberg.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    edited June 2021
    IshmaelZ said:

    Sean_F said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Nigelb said:


    Not at all - in Persuasion, Wentworth's fortune is founded on prizes taken in the Napoleonic wars.
    Austen's access to and interest in detailed accounts of the conflict were, of course, somewhat limited.

    Can I pick a Nugget out of this - the impact of the Naval Prize System?

    Does anyone know of any books / research material on this?

    I wonder how many country mansions were built on the back of it? I've had an itch about that for a time.

    Quite significant sums involved eg here it mentions an extreme case of capturing a Spanish frigate (with treasure) in 1762, where all crew members received at least £485. The average wage in 1762 was around £12-15 afaics.

    The two captains involved got £65k each, or about 4000x the average wage. Which is nice to have.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20080621024038/http://www.hms.org.uk/nelsonsnavyprize.htm
    https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/ukearncpi/earnstudyx.pdf
    Another nugget is that the Admiralty paid rewards for freeing slaves:

    "Between 1807 and 1811, 1,991 slaves were freed through the Vice-Admiralty Court of Sierra Leone, and between 1807 and mid-1815, HM Treasury paid Royal Navy personnel 191,100 pounds in prize money for slaves freed in West Africa. "
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize_money
    Every single fictional Naval hero (Hornblower included) was involved with a particular, later treasure fleet capture. Where the prize money was complicated by whether war was declared or not.

    They also paid prize money for captured slave ships. Once they realised that the slavers were buying them back at auction, the prizes were broken up or burnt. But the price still paid as prize money.

    With the end of the Napoleonic wars, the prize money from fighting slavery was a massive pull for the best and brightest in the RN
    I have just read a biography of Pellew and come away thinking how closely the fiction matches the reality. Pellew did very very nicely as a frigate captain out of prize money but really cleaned up as admiral with the Indian ocean command, coming home with the equivalent of #30m gained as far as I can tell from corrupt practices.
    Funnily enough, I'll be reading through a bundle of his letters tomorrow as part of my MA.
    Lucky you! Is that the Exmouth family collection?

    There's a brilliant letter from his wife responding to one from him saying he has decided to give up wine - she tells him not to do anything so patently silly and unhealthy, and never to let his intake fall below 2 or 3 glasses a day.
    They're letters that he wrote to Sir William Henry Clinton, regarding combined land/sea operations in Spain in 1812/13. They're held at the extremely beautiful John Rylands library in Manchester.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Floater said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    People may remember we decided to move our daughter to a different school recently. This is why:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9739259/Indoctrination-generation-Racially-segregated-clubs-white-pupils-told-theyre-oppressors.html

    Have I got this right? You were sending your daughter to the £32k a year (Jeeeesus...) American School London and pulled her out because they were teaching students about white privilege?

    £32k a year on school fees might be seen as the literal embodiment of white privilege to many. Even to those of us who are white who don't have a spare £32k a year for school fees.
    Quite the opposite to me Rochdale!

    £32k a year on school fees might be seen as the literal embodiment of money privilege to many. It has nothing to do with skin colour.

    I would not be remotely surprised that many of those able to afford to send their kids to the school would be non-white and the notion that a white kid from Rochdale, or Birkenhead, or Hartlepool etc is "privileged" while a kid going to the ASL school because their parents can afford to pay £32k per year isn't due to their skin colour rather shows what is wrong with this ridiculous idea.
    I'm not intending to disappear down this particular cul-de-sac and have already posted that class has as much to do with it as race. Its just that most of the people who manage to get into the stratified upper atmosphere of A+++ are white.

    The real outrage about "white privilege" shouldn't be that it self-evidently is there for a tiny minority, it should be that those people then work very hard to keep the WWC in the gutter.

    We saw the ludicrous situation last week of "concerned" Tories unhappy that poor white kids do so badly in school. The same Tories consistently vote to cut schools budgets, cut council services budgets and even not to feed them in the holidays and then wonder why their kids do so badly in school...
    Why do you think the taxpayer should feed children instead of their parents?
    Says the chap who can afford £32k pa per child for school fees. Are you against Free School Meals for poor families, Charles? Presumably you are, as that is the taxpayer feeding children instead of their parents.
    I’m actually a huge fan of breakfast clubs in particular. Good nutrition is a key part of education. Free school meals are a bit of a blunt instrument but they serve a role.

    However:

    - feeding kids during holidays as well represents a massive erosion of the concept of parental responsibility. If you think benefits are not enough then stand up and argue for an increase in benefits
    - I really dislike the “why do you want kids to go hungry” line of argument if you oppose extension. It’s manipulative bullshit.
    If the parents had the money they would feed their kids. They don't. And thats not because they are are crackheads as that Tory MP suggested. So the choice is either direct application of service provision or they go hungry.

    Either way they are going to do shit at school because you don't want to pay. Hence the need to spin it as anything other than what it is.
    I thought we had a welfare state to help people with things like money for children's food?
    In case you didn't notice we've had more than a decade of austerity, as a result benefits have been frozen and recipients have to find money for council tax and rent from the payments that should pay for food (and other essentials like electricity), because housing benefit and council tax benefit have been cut.
    My son (on benefits) is moving to a bigger place but will be sharing.

    The housing benefits people will pay his deposit , the cost of the move and will not be discounting his housing benefits even though he is moving to a 3 bed place with his girlfriend.

    I was very surprised by how helpful and accommodating they were - on the other hand other parts of the benefits system have been awful and if mum and dad couldn't have lent a hand I have no idea how he could have got by the last year.
    That certainly was not my experience in 2016-17.

    Perhaps it's a pandemic-inspired change? I hope it remains.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Andy_JS said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    People may remember we decided to move our daughter to a different school recently. This is why:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9739259/Indoctrination-generation-Racially-segregated-clubs-white-pupils-told-theyre-oppressors.html

    Have I got this right? You were sending your daughter to the £32k a year (Jeeeesus...) American School London and pulled her out because they were teaching students about white privilege?

    £32k a year on school fees might be seen as the literal embodiment of white privilege to many. Even to those of us who are white who don't have a spare £32k a year for school fees.
    Quite the opposite to me Rochdale!

    £32k a year on school fees might be seen as the literal embodiment of money privilege to many. It has nothing to do with skin colour.

    I would not be remotely surprised that many of those able to afford to send their kids to the school would be non-white and the notion that a white kid from Rochdale, or Birkenhead, or Hartlepool etc is "privileged" while a kid going to the ASL school because their parents can afford to pay £32k per year isn't due to their skin colour rather shows what is wrong with this ridiculous idea.
    I'm not intending to disappear down this particular cul-de-sac and have already posted that class has as much to do with it as race. Its just that most of the people who manage to get into the stratified upper atmosphere of A+++ are white.

    The real outrage about "white privilege" shouldn't be that it self-evidently is there for a tiny minority, it should be that those people then work very hard to keep the WWC in the gutter.

    We saw the ludicrous situation last week of "concerned" Tories unhappy that poor white kids do so badly in school. The same Tories consistently vote to cut schools budgets, cut council services budgets and even not to feed them in the holidays and then wonder why their kids do so badly in school...
    Why do you think the taxpayer should feed children instead of their parents?
    Says the chap who can afford £32k pa per child for school fees. Are you against Free School Meals for poor families, Charles? Presumably you are, as that is the taxpayer feeding children instead of their parents.
    I’m actually a huge fan of breakfast clubs in particular. Good nutrition is a key part of education. Free school meals are a bit of a blunt instrument but they serve a role.

    However:

    - feeding kids during holidays as well represents a massive erosion of the concept of parental responsibility. If you think benefits are not enough then stand up and argue for an increase in benefits
    - I really dislike the “why do you want kids to go hungry” line of argument if you oppose extension. It’s manipulative bullshit.
    If the parents had the money they would feed their kids. They don't. And thats not because they are are crackheads as that Tory MP suggested. So the choice is either direct application of service provision or they go hungry.

    Either way they are going to do shit at school because you don't want to pay. Hence the need to spin it as anything other than what it is.
    I thought we had a welfare state to help people with things like money for children's food?
    In theory, yes. In practice...
    The killer is that for 39 weeks a year, school-aged children can be sure of one solid meal a day at school, two once you have breakfast provision as well. Then, during the school holidays, those things stop, but families don't get any extra cash to replace them. And if we're thinking about relatively chaotic lifestyles and households where there isn't huge amounts of spare cash, that is often going to end badly.

    And yes, getting decent food into children is a massive benefit for education and society. At the struggling northern WWC school where I was a governor for a while, teachers were buying packets of digestive biscuits for their classes on that basis, and the homework club I helped set up was (in part) about getting fruit and milk into bellies at the end of the day.

    There's a genuine dilemma here. One of the positive aims of the IDS benefit reforms was to shift responsibility for life management back to benefit recipients. Admirable, but it doesn't always work. And when parental mistakes or deliberate failures end up harming children...
    I'd go further and point out that IDS was a malevolent bastard seemingly fixated on punishing the poor for their sins just like his Victoria supposedly Christian counterparts. The principle of UC is fine, the deliberate way it is run to further impoverish the poor sods stuck in its clutches is not.

    I know that Thatcha comes in for a lot of grief from the left. She was never as wilfully nasty as this lot have been because she came from a different background than the government by toffs we have now.
    One problem is that in the past attitudes were either you got married and had kids "when you could afford it" or you accepted that if poor people had kids, the family would be poor. Now it's seen as some sort of human right, to be paid for by the State. Of course accidents happen, but I really don't understand why more people don't look at their income and circumstances and just decide they can't afford it.
    People have kids when they can afford it - and then their circumstances change. What should they do? Hand the kids back?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,054
    Cyclefree said:

    Anyway all this talk about white privilege etc is very interesting.

    I look forward to an equally interesting discussion about male privilege.

    At some point.

    Until then the day beckons .....


    Some interesting thoughts from Trans-men on male privilege here, and a few thoughts on what is lost too, perhaps considered as female privilege.

    https://time.com/transgender-men-sexism/

    I haven't heard sexist talk about women myself in my place of work, but it does seem such locker room stuff happens elsewhere.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    kinabalu said:

    Cyclefree said:

    isam said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Floater said:

    Bloody hell

    Watching a Telegraph piece on YouTube about Bately and Spen

    A Muslim says to camera "Starmer lost Muslim votes when he said Israel had a right to defend itself"

    "to defend itself" .......

    How can Labour keep its disparate wings together ....

    Labour have taken its BAME voters for granted, and part of that issue is not engaging with (as an example) the British Pakistani communities that such attitudes are not acceptable. The other observations that get hurled as abuse of Labour like voter fraud often come out of practices such as a family patriarch voting for the whole family.

    Anti-semitism is the acceptable form of racism apparently. We need to stamp it out wherever it comes from, and that means Labour expelling the anti-semites still riddling their ranks and telling certain BAME voters that their views are reprehensible.

    Better for Labour to have told it straight to this group of voters and lose with dignity than crawl in Galloway's gutter and still lose.
    The problem is a very high percentage of Labour seats today have large Muslim populations, so it would be difficult for the party to use that sort of blunt language without risking maybe 20% of their constituencies.
    That's what having principles and values mean. Sometimes using blunt language to those who don't share them or are opposed to them.
    Who will these Muslims vote for when Labour make it clear they don’t want them? I think I’d rather see Labour keep them on board, win power, Sir Keir become PM and rejoin the EU than risk the consequences of what might happen
    If Labour becomes homophobic, anti-Semitic and misogynistic to keep such voters on board, why would that be better? What would be the point of voting Labour then? And wouldn't it risk losing loads of other voters who think that one of the points of Labour is not to display or appease such ghastly views?
    It's the same challenge as we have for white working class leavers with reactionary social views.

    There's a respectable way to appeal to them - a clear, left of centre economic vision centred on devolving wealth and power (to them). And an unrespectable way - pander to the reactionary social views.

    Ditto here. Respectable way to court Muslim voters - pro Palestine, serious about islamophobia. Unrespectable way - dog whistle antisemitism, pull punches on homophobia and misogyny.

    There's more risk of us pandering to the 1st group than to the 2nd imo.
    Arguably though that's just the 'respectable' end of the same spectrum - by treating Muslim voters as a block whose primary interest is that they're Muslim and have a set of identifiable 'Muslim' interests which are to be advanced at the expense of other interests, you take the first step down the path of splitting people into mutually hostile groups defined by identity rather than interests, the outcome of which can be seen in B&S. You get sectoral interests seen as valid overriding all others, and teachers who offend the sectoral group, and particularly toxic by-elections.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Scott_xP said:

    Do you mean in one Waitrose, or in all Waitroses?

    There were empty shelves in the one I was in, but the staff said that was due to driver shortages which will affect all branches to some degree
    Maybe you should see if Aldi are better at paying their drivers and have stock in their shelves, if Waitrose don't?
    Shortages are both patchy and universal. There isn't a blanket "this area has a problem this one doesn't" issue nor a "Waitrose has a problem and Aldi doesn't" issue.

    A shortage of drivers hits everyone until more drivers can be either trained or allowed to work again. A big spike in wages has fixed the "driven away by IR35" issue. Which still leaves a big shortage of drivers as (a) not enough Brits want to do the work hence EU drivers and (b) no training during Covid.

    Unless we let EU drivers come back in then shortages are going to get worse before they get better. A crash course in HGV driving is 6-8 weeks assuming you have sufficient instructors and testers and candidates to fill all the holes. Which we don't.
    6 to 8 weeks isn't very long.

    Its not like saying you need to spend 3+ years at University being charged £9k per year to do so.

    Pay people enough and they'll take 6 weeks to train. I'm pretty sure you and eek were complaining about this more than 8 weeks ago so the training could have been done by now.
    As always your expertise and wisdom is invaluable.

    The industry has been begging the government to listen. A multi-point plan is asked for:
    1 Step up training and testing parked by Covid. Around 30,000 new driver tests have been lost thanks to Covid
    2. Allow more flexibility on driver hours and potentially even on shared loads (against competition law but waived at the height of Covid) as sticking plaster solutions
    3. Put truck drivers on the skilled worker shortage list to allow EU drivers in

    We're short of 65k drivers and the shortage increases every week thanks to an ageing driver pool. Despite the Wizard of Wazza pronouncing "pay them more" there just aren't the bodies available to drive all the trucks that need to be driven.
    #1 and #2 are reasonable fixes. If the state is getting in the way of drivers doing their job (#2) or getting qualified (#1) then the state should stop being the problem.

    #3 is not. 6 to 8 weeks training is not especially long.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089
    edited June 2021

    Andy_JS said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    People may remember we decided to move our daughter to a different school recently. This is why:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9739259/Indoctrination-generation-Racially-segregated-clubs-white-pupils-told-theyre-oppressors.html

    Have I got this right? You were sending your daughter to the £32k a year (Jeeeesus...) American School London and pulled her out because they were teaching students about white privilege?

    £32k a year on school fees might be seen as the literal embodiment of white privilege to many. Even to those of us who are white who don't have a spare £32k a year for school fees.
    Quite the opposite to me Rochdale!

    £32k a year on school fees might be seen as the literal embodiment of money privilege to many. It has nothing to do with skin colour.

    I would not be remotely surprised that many of those able to afford to send their kids to the school would be non-white and the notion that a white kid from Rochdale, or Birkenhead, or Hartlepool etc is "privileged" while a kid going to the ASL school because their parents can afford to pay £32k per year isn't due to their skin colour rather shows what is wrong with this ridiculous idea.
    I'm not intending to disappear down this particular cul-de-sac and have already posted that class has as much to do with it as race. Its just that most of the people who manage to get into the stratified upper atmosphere of A+++ are white.

    The real outrage about "white privilege" shouldn't be that it self-evidently is there for a tiny minority, it should be that those people then work very hard to keep the WWC in the gutter.

    We saw the ludicrous situation last week of "concerned" Tories unhappy that poor white kids do so badly in school. The same Tories consistently vote to cut schools budgets, cut council services budgets and even not to feed them in the holidays and then wonder why their kids do so badly in school...
    Why do you think the taxpayer should feed children instead of their parents?
    Says the chap who can afford £32k pa per child for school fees. Are you against Free School Meals for poor families, Charles? Presumably you are, as that is the taxpayer feeding children instead of their parents.
    I’m actually a huge fan of breakfast clubs in particular. Good nutrition is a key part of education. Free school meals are a bit of a blunt instrument but they serve a role.

    However:

    - feeding kids during holidays as well represents a massive erosion of the concept of parental responsibility. If you think benefits are not enough then stand up and argue for an increase in benefits
    - I really dislike the “why do you want kids to go hungry” line of argument if you oppose extension. It’s manipulative bullshit.
    If the parents had the money they would feed their kids. They don't. And thats not because they are are crackheads as that Tory MP suggested. So the choice is either direct application of service provision or they go hungry.

    Either way they are going to do shit at school because you don't want to pay. Hence the need to spin it as anything other than what it is.
    I thought we had a welfare state to help people with things like money for children's food?
    In theory, yes. In practice...
    The killer is that for 39 weeks a year, school-aged children can be sure of one solid meal a day at school, two once you have breakfast provision as well. Then, during the school holidays, those things stop, but families don't get any extra cash to replace them. And if we're thinking about relatively chaotic lifestyles and households where there isn't huge amounts of spare cash, that is often going to end badly.

    And yes, getting decent food into children is a massive benefit for education and society. At the struggling northern WWC school where I was a governor for a while, teachers were buying packets of digestive biscuits for their classes on that basis, and the homework club I helped set up was (in part) about getting fruit and milk into bellies at the end of the day.

    There's a genuine dilemma here. One of the positive aims of the IDS benefit reforms was to shift responsibility for life management back to benefit recipients. Admirable, but it doesn't always work. And when parental mistakes or deliberate failures end up harming children...
    I'd go further and point out that IDS was a malevolent bastard seemingly fixated on punishing the poor for their sins just like his Victoria supposedly Christian counterparts. The principle of UC is fine, the deliberate way it is run to further impoverish the poor sods stuck in its clutches is not.

    I know that Thatcha comes in for a lot of grief from the left. She was never as wilfully nasty as this lot have been because she came from a different background than the government by toffs we have now.
    One problem is that in the past attitudes were either you got married and had kids "when you could afford it" or you accepted that if poor people had kids, the family would be poor. Now it's seen as some sort of human right, to be paid for by the State. Of course accidents happen, but I really don't understand why more people don't look at their income and circumstances and just decide they can't afford it.
    People have kids when they can afford it - and then their circumstances change. What should they do? Hand the kids back?
    Also, most people can never "afford" to have kids. It's unbelievably expensive. Most people "manage". If you apply an affordability test, hardly anyone would reproduce.

    ETA: Average cost of a single child is £10,200/year and median income is £29,500.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    Cookie said:

    eek said:

    Cookie said:

    Completely new lines Liverpool to Manchester and Manchester-Bradford-Leeds does not sound small beer.

    If they happen. But the point is that RP said that NPR was already under construction. Which it is, but also rather ignores the fact that the definition of NPR has radically changed (and for the better, IMO).

    HS2 is a set project: to build a new high-speed rail line from London to just north of Birmingham (phase1/1a), and to Manchester/Leeds (phase 2). Much other work needs doing, but it's all directed to that core.

    NPR is a set of related and unrelated projects to enhance connectivity and services in the north, including electrification schemes, reducing bottlenecks, and adding new lines. Some of that work is ongoing; others are barely specified, let alone been through planning or funded. NPR is a very different, and in many ways more complex, project.
    I was being truthful and sarcastic in equal measure. The extension of the knitting from Colton Junction to Church Fenton is absolutely an HS2B/3 scheme. And like so many of the rump motorway stubs left up and down the country I expect that is the last we will see of it.

    Lets understand the issue. The Pennines are bloody lumpy and have towns and villages all over their eastern foothills. A ruddy great base tunnel is doable at a price and has been proposed since at least the 1860s. Its where it goes at either end that is the problem.

    The brutal problem for HS3/NPR is this: its purpose is to speed people between Manchester and Leeds quickly. For other towns like Huddersfield or even cities like Bradford they can offer as many different route options as they like, serving these places is expensive both in terms of land and construction costs and journey time loss.

    The plan is to upgrade the existing route via Standege - and decent time savings can be realised - AND to build the new route via Bradford. I just can't see the latter ever getting through the planning hell to come and then the budgeting hell that follows that. Not when cash has already been spent on upgrades to the existing route - "Isn't that good enough" is an easy cop-out.

    Likewise the Liverpool to Manchester bit is already now good enough.

    Liverpool to Manchester is fine. But like HS2, the primary issue is not the speed in getting from A to B but the capacity this eats up. A mix of fast and slow trains results in much lower track capacity than simply sending down train after train at the same speed, as a moments' thought will demonstrate. So although we can go reasonably fast between Manchester and Liverpool, doing so inhibits the number of suburban trains we can run to Urmston and Allerton and Eccles and Huyton. And the number of freight trains we can run.
    That said, the potential upside in speed for Mcr/Lpl in relation to what we already have is rather more significant than that between Manchester and London for HS2, creating a genuine two-city city-region.
    Also, HS2 will create a much better connection between Liverpool and Manchester Airport, cutting journey times from about an hour to about 15 minutes.

    All the above arguments can also be applied to Manchester-Leeds, with the added bonus that we tie Bradford properly into the high speed network. At present, trains to Bradford are a bit pedestrian. By giving a sub-half-hour connection between Bradford and Manchester, we connect a massive labour pool (Bradford's bigger than most people think) with a massive jobs market.

    Yes, it's a major engineering challenge to do it. But what we have at present in terms of a whole network isn't good enough.
    Indeed, depending on which statistics you ask Bradford and Leeds are both bigger by population than either Manchester or Liverpool.

    eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715

    Andy_JS said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    People may remember we decided to move our daughter to a different school recently. This is why:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9739259/Indoctrination-generation-Racially-segregated-clubs-white-pupils-told-theyre-oppressors.html

    Have I got this right? You were sending your daughter to the £32k a year (Jeeeesus...) American School London and pulled her out because they were teaching students about white privilege?

    £32k a year on school fees might be seen as the literal embodiment of white privilege to many. Even to those of us who are white who don't have a spare £32k a year for school fees.
    Quite the opposite to me Rochdale!

    £32k a year on school fees might be seen as the literal embodiment of money privilege to many. It has nothing to do with skin colour.

    I would not be remotely surprised that many of those able to afford to send their kids to the school would be non-white and the notion that a white kid from Rochdale, or Birkenhead, or Hartlepool etc is "privileged" while a kid going to the ASL school because their parents can afford to pay £32k per year isn't due to their skin colour rather shows what is wrong with this ridiculous idea.
    I'm not intending to disappear down this particular cul-de-sac and have already posted that class has as much to do with it as race. Its just that most of the people who manage to get into the stratified upper atmosphere of A+++ are white.

    The real outrage about "white privilege" shouldn't be that it self-evidently is there for a tiny minority, it should be that those people then work very hard to keep the WWC in the gutter.

    We saw the ludicrous situation last week of "concerned" Tories unhappy that poor white kids do so badly in school. The same Tories consistently vote to cut schools budgets, cut council services budgets and even not to feed them in the holidays and then wonder why their kids do so badly in school...
    Why do you think the taxpayer should feed children instead of their parents?
    Says the chap who can afford £32k pa per child for school fees. Are you against Free School Meals for poor families, Charles? Presumably you are, as that is the taxpayer feeding children instead of their parents.
    I’m actually a huge fan of breakfast clubs in particular. Good nutrition is a key part of education. Free school meals are a bit of a blunt instrument but they serve a role.

    However:

    - feeding kids during holidays as well represents a massive erosion of the concept of parental responsibility. If you think benefits are not enough then stand up and argue for an increase in benefits
    - I really dislike the “why do you want kids to go hungry” line of argument if you oppose extension. It’s manipulative bullshit.
    If the parents had the money they would feed their kids. They don't. And thats not because they are are crackheads as that Tory MP suggested. So the choice is either direct application of service provision or they go hungry.

    Either way they are going to do shit at school because you don't want to pay. Hence the need to spin it as anything other than what it is.
    I thought we had a welfare state to help people with things like money for children's food?
    In theory, yes. In practice...
    The killer is that for 39 weeks a year, school-aged children can be sure of one solid meal a day at school, two once you have breakfast provision as well. Then, during the school holidays, those things stop, but families don't get any extra cash to replace them. And if we're thinking about relatively chaotic lifestyles and households where there isn't huge amounts of spare cash, that is often going to end badly.

    And yes, getting decent food into children is a massive benefit for education and society. At the struggling northern WWC school where I was a governor for a while, teachers were buying packets of digestive biscuits for their classes on that basis, and the homework club I helped set up was (in part) about getting fruit and milk into bellies at the end of the day.

    There's a genuine dilemma here. One of the positive aims of the IDS benefit reforms was to shift responsibility for life management back to benefit recipients. Admirable, but it doesn't always work. And when parental mistakes or deliberate failures end up harming children...
    I'd go further and point out that IDS was a malevolent bastard seemingly fixated on punishing the poor for their sins just like his Victoria supposedly Christian counterparts. The principle of UC is fine, the deliberate way it is run to further impoverish the poor sods stuck in its clutches is not.

    I know that Thatcha comes in for a lot of grief from the left. She was never as wilfully nasty as this lot have been because she came from a different background than the government by toffs we have now.
    One problem is that in the past attitudes were either you got married and had kids "when you could afford it" or you accepted that if poor people had kids, the family would be poor. Now it's seen as some sort of human right, to be paid for by the State. Of course accidents happen, but I really don't understand why more people don't look at their income and circumstances and just decide they can't afford it.
    People have kids when they can afford it - and then their circumstances change. What should they do? Hand the kids back?
    We did think, back in the 60's that the advent of free, or almost free, contraception would alleviate the situation.Doesn't seem to have done so, although the percentage of teenage mothers fell significantly when Young People's Family Planning services became widespread.
    Gather they've been cut back now.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,849

    White privilege remains a dumb term.

    A little lexicological experiment, Morris.

    Dumb terms (sample):

    White privilege
    The Patriarchy
    Institutional racism
    Lived experience
    Microaggressions
    Islamophobia
    Black lives matter

    Not Dumb terms (sample):

    Wokerati
    Antisemitism
    Social justice warriors
    Grievance narrative
    Race card
    Cultural marxism
    Cabal

    Would that be about right? :smile:
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Scott_xP said:

    Do you mean in one Waitrose, or in all Waitroses?

    There were empty shelves in the one I was in, but the staff said that was due to driver shortages which will affect all branches to some degree
    Maybe you should see if Aldi are better at paying their drivers and have stock in their shelves, if Waitrose don't?
    Shortages are both patchy and universal. There isn't a blanket "this area has a problem this one doesn't" issue nor a "Waitrose has a problem and Aldi doesn't" issue.

    A shortage of drivers hits everyone until more drivers can be either trained or allowed to work again. A big spike in wages has fixed the "driven away by IR35" issue. Which still leaves a big shortage of drivers as (a) not enough Brits want to do the work hence EU drivers and (b) no training during Covid.

    Unless we let EU drivers come back in then shortages are going to get worse before they get better. A crash course in HGV driving is 6-8 weeks assuming you have sufficient instructors and testers and candidates to fill all the holes. Which we don't.
    6 to 8 weeks isn't very long.

    Its not like saying you need to spend 3+ years at University being charged £9k per year to do so.

    Pay people enough and they'll take 6 weeks to train. I'm pretty sure you and eek were complaining about this more than 8 weeks ago so the training could have been done by now.
    As always your expertise and wisdom is invaluable.

    The industry has been begging the government to listen. A multi-point plan is asked for:
    1 Step up training and testing parked by Covid. Around 30,000 new driver tests have been lost thanks to Covid
    2. Allow more flexibility on driver hours and potentially even on shared loads (against competition law but waived at the height of Covid) as sticking plaster solutions
    3. Put truck drivers on the skilled worker shortage list to allow EU drivers in

    We're short of 65k drivers and the shortage increases every week thanks to an ageing driver pool. Despite the Wizard of Wazza pronouncing "pay them more" there just aren't the bodies available to drive all the trucks that need to be driven.
    #1 and #2 are reasonable fixes. If the state is getting in the way of drivers doing their job (#2) or getting qualified (#1) then the state should stop being the problem.

    #3 is not. 6 to 8 weeks training is not especially long.
    3 is a short term fix for the next 2 to 3 years.

    We are down 65,000 drivers. There are 70,000 HGV tests a year of which 40,000 or so pass (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/large-goods-vehicle-driving-test-data-by-test-centre). So we both need to increase the number of tests and deal with a shortfall that is going to take at least 2 years to fill and that's before you look at the numbers retiring.


  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    Pro_Rata said:

    Given that the sketch line on early NPR iterations from Liverpool to Manchester via Manchester Airport now looks to be confirmed, the new Manchester-Bradford-Leeds schematic is interesting and head scratching at the same time. In earlier iterations I had understood that Manchester-Leeds would be via a massive, disruptive upgrade of the currently less strategic Calder Valley line and that the overall fast Liverpool-Leeds route would be an exaggerated S, swinging out first to the airport, then via the Ordsall Chord, then up to Todmorden. Many more miles than at current but compensated by fast trains.

    The schematic line now seems to follow the current Tame valley line before diverging towards Bradford somewhere between the upper Tame and upper Colne. Given the terrain of any direct link across that route to cut over to Bradford would be an interesting one. I have some doubts whether that has credibility as being the ultimate route chosen, but, on the other hand, how lines are drawn on schematics do tend to reflect a strand of thinking somewhere.

    As we're now in the "lets build high speed rail" mood some 40 years after they started elsewhere in Europe, that is now the fixation. There are very few places where high speed could be built alongside existing lines due to topography and buildings which makes any route a super-heavy investment into a lot of tunnels.

    As you suggest, the Calder Valley route has been suggested as a halfway house. The route is fast and flat (for a Pennine crossing) with plenty of space for 4 tracking on the Lancashire side until the (originally proposed by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway) Pennine base tunnel to cut off the Todmorden section. This then flows into the existing route which is already being upgraded with a 2nd tunnel section to bypass Dewsbury and Morley and feed into the Leeds HS3 Station approaches.

    But we can't do that as we need new shiny shiny. So they'll end up with very little.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cyclefree said:

    isam said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Floater said:

    Bloody hell

    Watching a Telegraph piece on YouTube about Bately and Spen

    A Muslim says to camera "Starmer lost Muslim votes when he said Israel had a right to defend itself"

    "to defend itself" .......

    How can Labour keep its disparate wings together ....

    Labour have taken its BAME voters for granted, and part of that issue is not engaging with (as an example) the British Pakistani communities that such attitudes are not acceptable. The other observations that get hurled as abuse of Labour like voter fraud often come out of practices such as a family patriarch voting for the whole family.

    Anti-semitism is the acceptable form of racism apparently. We need to stamp it out wherever it comes from, and that means Labour expelling the anti-semites still riddling their ranks and telling certain BAME voters that their views are reprehensible.

    Better for Labour to have told it straight to this group of voters and lose with dignity than crawl in Galloway's gutter and still lose.
    The problem is a very high percentage of Labour seats today have large Muslim populations, so it would be difficult for the party to use that sort of blunt language without risking maybe 20% of their constituencies.
    That's what having principles and values mean. Sometimes using blunt language to those who don't share them or are opposed to them.
    Who will these Muslims vote for when Labour make it clear they don’t want them? I think I’d rather see Labour keep them on board, win power, Sir Keir become PM and rejoin the EU than risk the consequences of what might happen
    If Labour becomes homophobic, anti-Semitic and misogynistic to keep such voters on board, why would that be better? What would be the point of voting Labour then? And wouldn't it risk losing loads of other voters who think that one of the points of Labour is not to display or appease such ghastly views?
    It's the same challenge as we have for white working class leavers with reactionary social views.

    There's a respectable way to appeal to them - a clear, left of centre economic vision centred on devolving wealth and power (to them). And an unrespectable way - pander to the reactionary social views.

    Ditto here. Respectable way to court Muslim voters - pro Palestine, serious about islamophobia. Unrespectable way - dog whistle antisemitism, pull punches on homophobia and misogyny.

    There's more risk of us pandering to the 1st group than to the 2nd imo.
    Arguably though that's just the 'respectable' end of the same spectrum - by treating Muslim voters as a block whose primary interest is that they're Muslim and have a set of identifiable 'Muslim' interests which are to be advanced at the expense of other interests, you take the first step down the path of splitting people into mutually hostile groups defined by identity rather than interests, the outcome of which can be seen in B&S. You get sectoral interests seen as valid overriding all others, and teachers who offend the sectoral group, and particularly toxic by-elections.
    Irregular verb, isn't it:

    A Tory microtargets
    A Lib Dem engages in NIMBYism
    A Labourite descends into Identity Politics.

    So, which did the Tories do when suggesting to South Asians during Brexit that the restriction of immigration rights to Europeans could be used to increase South Asian* immigration?

    * my terminology us somewhat generic here - I don't recall if the targeting was to Indians, Pakistanis or both.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    'On Friday PM said case was closed. On Monday he tried to take credit for the Health Secretary resigning. In a minute he'll be telling us he scored the winner last night'
    - @Keir_Starmer

    #PMQs

    https://twitter.com/paul__johnson/status/1410193934861623297
  • RattersRatters Posts: 756
    One thought on July 19th...

    If cases continue to rise at a rapid pace then we could be at a point where hundreds of thousands are testing positive per week. All of these are presumably being told to self isolate along with their households, plus those notified under the track and trace system.

    Is there a point at which the self isolation requirements start to have a significant impact on things, even if legally everything is open? Both in terms of numbers isolating and people avoiding very crowded placed for fear of then needing to isolate subsequently.

    We need to make an honest choice: are we trying to control the virus any more or not? If not, the mass testing, track and trace, and isolation are no longer necessary outside of areas such as health and social care workers. Albeit we should continue the excellent work on monitoring variants, but that could be done via the ONS surveys.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013

    Scott_xP said:

    Do you mean in one Waitrose, or in all Waitroses?

    There were empty shelves in the one I was in, but the staff said that was due to driver shortages which will affect all branches to some degree
    Maybe you should see if Aldi are better at paying their drivers and have stock in their shelves, if Waitrose don't?
    Shortages are both patchy and universal. There isn't a blanket "this area has a problem this one doesn't" issue nor a "Waitrose has a problem and Aldi doesn't" issue.

    A shortage of drivers hits everyone until more drivers can be either trained or allowed to work again. A big spike in wages has fixed the "driven away by IR35" issue. Which still leaves a big shortage of drivers as (a) not enough Brits want to do the work hence EU drivers and (b) no training during Covid.

    Unless we let EU drivers come back in then shortages are going to get worse before they get better. A crash course in HGV driving is 6-8 weeks assuming you have sufficient instructors and testers and candidates to fill all the holes. Which we don't.
    6 to 8 weeks isn't very long.

    Its not like saying you need to spend 3+ years at University being charged £9k per year to do so.

    Pay people enough and they'll take 6 weeks to train. I'm pretty sure you and eek were complaining about this more than 8 weeks ago so the training could have been done by now.
    As always your expertise and wisdom is invaluable.

    The industry has been begging the government to listen. A multi-point plan is asked for:
    1 Step up training and testing parked by Covid. Around 30,000 new driver tests have been lost thanks to Covid
    2. Allow more flexibility on driver hours and potentially even on shared loads (against competition law but waived at the height of Covid) as sticking plaster solutions
    3. Put truck drivers on the skilled worker shortage list to allow EU drivers in

    We're short of 65k drivers and the shortage increases every week thanks to an ageing driver pool. Despite the Wizard of Wazza pronouncing "pay them more" there just aren't the bodies available to drive all the trucks that need to be driven.
    #1 and #2 are reasonable fixes. If the state is getting in the way of drivers doing their job (#2) or getting qualified (#1) then the state should stop being the problem.

    #3 is not. 6 to 8 weeks training is not especially long.
    And thats why there won't be a fix. Not enough driver candidates out there. Unless you fancy it?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,569
    How to deal with woke educationalists, Hungarian style.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/world/europe/hungary-orban-university.html
  • GnudGnud Posts: 298
    edited June 2021
    My sister reports that in her street in Dundee the Yessers have now replaced their German flags with blue and yellow Ukrainian ones.

    Such a positive programme they have to offer! Not xenophobic against Scotland's largest ethnic minority at all. They love the ethnic minority in question! And if anyone in the ethnic minority disagrees, or feels oppressed, that's what those types would say, isn't it? Can't trust what people like them will say if it differs from the view of the ethnic majority whose ancestors were walking these glens in the halcyon days prior to inside toilets and mass literacy.

    There remains the earnestly-debated matter of whether or not a "free at last" Scotland would have as its main trading partners the EU or Norway and Iceland. Tar and feathers for anyone who suggests an alternative.

    Who said it's 12-0 to Unionism so far this century in Scotland-wide votes (6 Westminster, 5 Holyrood, 1 referendum)? Fake news! That's all the fault of the "London media". The partei that controls much of local government (if not the police or security forces) is ontologically identical with the people.

    I remain of the view that English victories in major international sporting competitions are precisely what the Scottish separatist movement requires. Every English kick of the ball into the back of the net is a punch in the stomach for Scotland, and therefore capable of stimulating collective resistance to the outrage that is colonialism!

    "They never let us stop hearing about 1966" is a whinge I've heard from Mr and Mrs Mc Shoulder-Chip more times than I can count.

    How they'd love a 2021 to put with their 1966. It would prove them right about everything.

    No apologies for the sarcasm - for many it really is this sick.

    PS Big up to any SNP activist who responds to this by condemning the flying of those flags. Double big up if they admit they've heard "They never let us stop hearing about 1966" many times.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,054

    Wow 5.6 million of the 3 million EU citizens living in the UK have now applied for Settled Status.

    Or pre-settled.

    Though I know quite a few who have acquired settled status and left, so as to keep options to return. Another Portuguese Nurse yesterday who has been twenty years in country, but back off to Portugal for good next week.

    The census will be interesting in establishing some more robust figures.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Scott_xP said:

    Do you mean in one Waitrose, or in all Waitroses?

    There were empty shelves in the one I was in, but the staff said that was due to driver shortages which will affect all branches to some degree
    Maybe you should see if Aldi are better at paying their drivers and have stock in their shelves, if Waitrose don't?
    Shortages are both patchy and universal. There isn't a blanket "this area has a problem this one doesn't" issue nor a "Waitrose has a problem and Aldi doesn't" issue.

    A shortage of drivers hits everyone until more drivers can be either trained or allowed to work again. A big spike in wages has fixed the "driven away by IR35" issue. Which still leaves a big shortage of drivers as (a) not enough Brits want to do the work hence EU drivers and (b) no training during Covid.

    Unless we let EU drivers come back in then shortages are going to get worse before they get better. A crash course in HGV driving is 6-8 weeks assuming you have sufficient instructors and testers and candidates to fill all the holes. Which we don't.
    6 to 8 weeks isn't very long.

    Its not like saying you need to spend 3+ years at University being charged £9k per year to do so.

    Pay people enough and they'll take 6 weeks to train. I'm pretty sure you and eek were complaining about this more than 8 weeks ago so the training could have been done by now.
    As always your expertise and wisdom is invaluable.

    The industry has been begging the government to listen. A multi-point plan is asked for:
    1 Step up training and testing parked by Covid. Around 30,000 new driver tests have been lost thanks to Covid
    2. Allow more flexibility on driver hours and potentially even on shared loads (against competition law but waived at the height of Covid) as sticking plaster solutions
    3. Put truck drivers on the skilled worker shortage list to allow EU drivers in

    We're short of 65k drivers and the shortage increases every week thanks to an ageing driver pool. Despite the Wizard of Wazza pronouncing "pay them more" there just aren't the bodies available to drive all the trucks that need to be driven.
    #1 and #2 are reasonable fixes. If the state is getting in the way of drivers doing their job (#2) or getting qualified (#1) then the state should stop being the problem.

    #3 is not. 6 to 8 weeks training is not especially long.
    And thats why there won't be a fix. Not enough driver candidates out there. Unless you fancy it?
    If there's not enough candidates, try offering more cash. That's how a free market works.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,569
    edited June 2021
    This is cool.

    31,600-year-old human virus genomes support a Pleistocene origin for common childhood infections
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450199v1
    The origins of viral pathogens and the age of their association with humans remains largely elusive. To date, there is no direct evidence about the diversity of viral infections in early modern humans pre-dating the Holocene. We recovered two near-complete genomes (5.2X and 0.7X) of human adenovirus C (HAdV-C), as well as low-coverage genomes from four distinct species of human herpesvirus obtained from two 31,630-year-old milk teeth excavated at Yana, in northeastern Siberia. Phylogenetic analysis of the two HAdV-C genomes suggests an evolutionary origin around 700,000 years ago consistent with a common evolutionary history with hominin hosts. Our findings push back the earliest direct molecular evidence for human viral infections by ~25,000 years, and demonstrate that viral species causing common childhood viral infections today have been in circulation in humans at least since the Pleistocene...

    (edit)
    Twitter thread by one of the authors.
    https://twitter.com/DrCJ_Houldcroft/status/1409917542152523776
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,722
    Most impressive i have seen from SKS

    Final question about defending rule breakers and one rule for them one rule for everyone else was excellent
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    PM soaring to new heights of answering a different question today.
    Noticeably less background roaring.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,569
    One for @moonshine ...

    Alien bias towards English speaking populations.
    https://twitter.com/rpancost/status/1409256757424275458
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Gnud said:

    My sister reports that in her street in Dundee the Yessers have now replaced their German flags with blue and yellow Ukrainian ones.

    Such a positive programme they have to offer! Not xenophobic against Scotland's largest ethnic minority at all. They love the ethnic minority in question! And if anyone in the ethnic minority disagrees, or feels oppressed, that's what those types would say, isn't it? Can't trust what people like them will say if it differs from the view of the ethnic majority whose ancestors were walking these glens in the halcyon days prior to inside toilets and mass literacy.

    There remains the earnestly-debated matter of whether or not a "free at last" Scotland would have as its main trading partners the EU or Norway and Iceland. Tar and feathers for anyone who suggests an alternative.

    Who said it's 12-0 to Unionism so far this century in Scotland-wide votes (6 Westminster, 5 Holyrood, 1 referendum)? Fake news! That's all the fault of the "London media". The partei that controls much of local government (if not the police or security forces) is ontologically identical with the people.

    I remain of the view that English victories in major international sporting competitions are precisely what the Scottish separatist movement requires. Every English kick of the ball into the back of the net is a punch in the stomach for Scotland, and therefore capable of stimulating collective resistance to the outrage that is colonialism!

    "They never let us stop hearing about 1966" is a whinge I've heard from Mr and Mrs Mc Shoulder-Chip more times than I can count.

    How they'd love a 2021 to put with their 1966. It would prove them right about everything.

    No apologies for the sarcasm - for many it really is this sick.

    PS Big up to any SNP activist who responds to this by condemning the flying of those flags. Double big up if they admit they've heard "They never let us stop hearing about 1966" many times.

    If Scotland always did better than England however that would make the case for independence even more, as it would show that Scotland was stronger without England.

    However regardless as Gove has correctly made clear the government will refuse a legal indyref2 before the next general election
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    Most impressive i have seen from SKS

    Final question about defending rule breakers and one rule for them one rule for everyone else was excellent

    It would be so much more effective if Labour were opposed to lockdown.

    As I pointed out previously, I wasn’t annoyed by Cummings or Sturgeon breaking the rules. I was obeying the rules because I didn’t want to catch COVID.

    But now my life is being restricted by the government. And Labour supports it.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    TOPPING said:

    XK.

    Holy fuck.

    Get a paint matched Alpine White OBD2 scanner because you're going to need it.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    Pippa Crerar
    @PippaCrerar
    ·
    8m
    Keir Starmer silences Commons with moving story of Olly who was unable to have his family by his side when he died of leukaemia because of Covid rules.

    Boris Johnson accuses Labour leader of "focusing on stuff that's going on in the Westminster bubble".

    Tone deaf.

    #PMQs
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,849
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cyclefree said:

    isam said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Floater said:

    Bloody hell

    Watching a Telegraph piece on YouTube about Bately and Spen

    A Muslim says to camera "Starmer lost Muslim votes when he said Israel had a right to defend itself"

    "to defend itself" .......

    How can Labour keep its disparate wings together ....

    Labour have taken its BAME voters for granted, and part of that issue is not engaging with (as an example) the British Pakistani communities that such attitudes are not acceptable. The other observations that get hurled as abuse of Labour like voter fraud often come out of practices such as a family patriarch voting for the whole family.

    Anti-semitism is the acceptable form of racism apparently. We need to stamp it out wherever it comes from, and that means Labour expelling the anti-semites still riddling their ranks and telling certain BAME voters that their views are reprehensible.

    Better for Labour to have told it straight to this group of voters and lose with dignity than crawl in Galloway's gutter and still lose.
    The problem is a very high percentage of Labour seats today have large Muslim populations, so it would be difficult for the party to use that sort of blunt language without risking maybe 20% of their constituencies.
    That's what having principles and values mean. Sometimes using blunt language to those who don't share them or are opposed to them.
    Who will these Muslims vote for when Labour make it clear they don’t want them? I think I’d rather see Labour keep them on board, win power, Sir Keir become PM and rejoin the EU than risk the consequences of what might happen
    If Labour becomes homophobic, anti-Semitic and misogynistic to keep such voters on board, why would that be better? What would be the point of voting Labour then? And wouldn't it risk losing loads of other voters who think that one of the points of Labour is not to display or appease such ghastly views?
    It's the same challenge as we have for white working class leavers with reactionary social views.

    There's a respectable way to appeal to them - a clear, left of centre economic vision centred on devolving wealth and power (to them). And an unrespectable way - pander to the reactionary social views.

    Ditto here. Respectable way to court Muslim voters - pro Palestine, serious about islamophobia. Unrespectable way - dog whistle antisemitism, pull punches on homophobia and misogyny.

    There's more risk of us pandering to the 1st group than to the 2nd imo.
    Arguably though that's just the 'respectable' end of the same spectrum - by treating Muslim voters as a block whose primary interest is that they're Muslim and have a set of identifiable 'Muslim' interests which are to be advanced at the expense of other interests, you take the first step down the path of splitting people into mutually hostile groups defined by identity rather than interests, the outcome of which can be seen in B&S. You get sectoral interests seen as valid overriding all others, and teachers who offend the sectoral group, and particularly toxic by-elections.
    For me, it's more than ok for Labour to be pro-Palestine and very strong on opposing racism, including the anti-Muslim kind (which I think is quite prevalent). But, yes, I take the point about sectarian targeting. I agree that's a bad thing and our politics is better without it.

    It's interesting though. I often hear how Muslims are unfairly protected from insult and mockery due to our over-sensitivity to their feelings and concerns. I also often hear Muslims being denigrated in a way that suggests the purveyor (who is quite likely to have just said the above) is rather comfortable in doing so.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,054
    Nigelb said:

    One for @moonshine ...

    Alien bias towards English speaking populations.
    https://twitter.com/rpancost/status/1409256757424275458

    Well of course! Aliens only speak English, not that foreign jabber obviously.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    Andy_JS said:

    "Oxfam staff rage at ‘whiteness survey’

    Oxfam has defined “whiteness” as “the overarching preservation of power and domination for the benefit of white people” in a survey on racial justice that has caused upset among staff. The survey was circulated to Oxfam’s 1,800 staff in Britain — 88 per cent of whom are white — and describes racism as “a power construct created by white nations for the benefit of white people”." (£)

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/oxfam-staff-rage-at-whiteness-survey-fw7h6dl3w

    Oxfam...
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Foxy said:

    Nigelb said:

    One for @moonshine ...

    Alien bias towards English speaking populations.
    https://twitter.com/rpancost/status/1409256757424275458

    Well of course! Aliens only speak English, not that foreign jabber obviously.
    I've seen enough Stargate SG1 to know that English is the universal language spoken by humans across the galaxy.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,569

    Most impressive i have seen from SKS

    Final question about defending rule breakers and one rule for them one rule for everyone else was excellent

    Rare praise indeed. :smile:
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cyclefree said:

    isam said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Floater said:

    Bloody hell

    Watching a Telegraph piece on YouTube about Bately and Spen

    A Muslim says to camera "Starmer lost Muslim votes when he said Israel had a right to defend itself"

    "to defend itself" .......

    How can Labour keep its disparate wings together ....

    Labour have taken its BAME voters for granted, and part of that issue is not engaging with (as an example) the British Pakistani communities that such attitudes are not acceptable. The other observations that get hurled as abuse of Labour like voter fraud often come out of practices such as a family patriarch voting for the whole family.

    Anti-semitism is the acceptable form of racism apparently. We need to stamp it out wherever it comes from, and that means Labour expelling the anti-semites still riddling their ranks and telling certain BAME voters that their views are reprehensible.

    Better for Labour to have told it straight to this group of voters and lose with dignity than crawl in Galloway's gutter and still lose.
    The problem is a very high percentage of Labour seats today have large Muslim populations, so it would be difficult for the party to use that sort of blunt language without risking maybe 20% of their constituencies.
    That's what having principles and values mean. Sometimes using blunt language to those who don't share them or are opposed to them.
    Who will these Muslims vote for when Labour make it clear they don’t want them? I think I’d rather see Labour keep them on board, win power, Sir Keir become PM and rejoin the EU than risk the consequences of what might happen
    If Labour becomes homophobic, anti-Semitic and misogynistic to keep such voters on board, why would that be better? What would be the point of voting Labour then? And wouldn't it risk losing loads of other voters who think that one of the points of Labour is not to display or appease such ghastly views?
    It's the same challenge as we have for white working class leavers with reactionary social views.

    There's a respectable way to appeal to them - a clear, left of centre economic vision centred on devolving wealth and power (to them). And an unrespectable way - pander to the reactionary social views.

    Ditto here. Respectable way to court Muslim voters - pro Palestine, serious about islamophobia. Unrespectable way - dog whistle antisemitism, pull punches on homophobia and misogyny.

    There's more risk of us pandering to the 1st group than to the 2nd imo.
    Arguably though that's just the 'respectable' end of the same spectrum - by treating Muslim voters as a block whose primary interest is that they're Muslim and have a set of identifiable 'Muslim' interests which are to be advanced at the expense of other interests, you take the first step down the path of splitting people into mutually hostile groups defined by identity rather than interests, the outcome of which can be seen in B&S. You get sectoral interests seen as valid overriding all others, and teachers who offend the sectoral group, and particularly toxic by-elections.
    For me, it's more than ok for Labour to be pro-Palestine and very strong on opposing racism, including the anti-Muslim kind (which I think is quite prevalent). But, yes, I take the point about sectarian targeting. I agree that's a bad thing and our politics is better without it.

    It's interesting though. I often hear how Muslims are unfairly protected from insult and mockery due to our over-sensitivity to their feelings and concerns. I also often hear Muslims being denigrated in a way that suggests the purveyor (who is quite likely to have just said the above) is rather comfortable in doing so.
    I wonder if there are any examples of people being forced into hiding for a perceived slight against a non-Muslim group?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    2h
    Since the decision to offer alternatives to AZ to the under-30s was couched entirely in terms of cost-benefit when prevalence was low & it was explicit that the opposite wld be so when prevalence was high, when might that decision be reviewed with a view to reversal?
  • TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,387
    MattW said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Oxfam staff rage at ‘whiteness survey’

    Oxfam has defined “whiteness” as “the overarching preservation of power and domination for the benefit of white people” in a survey on racial justice that has caused upset among staff. The survey was circulated to Oxfam’s 1,800 staff in Britain — 88 per cent of whom are white — and describes racism as “a power construct created by white nations for the benefit of white people”." (£)

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/oxfam-staff-rage-at-whiteness-survey-fw7h6dl3w

    Oxfam...
    Given their track record, I honestly think the best thing they can do is arrange for many of their operations to be passed to other charities with better governance, and to rebuild from a much smaller base.

    Instead what we get is this pattern of reaction and over-reaction.

    Oxfam's white staff are shown to have committed serous crimes (including sexual violence) under the guise of being a literal "white knight", and so whiteness might be the problem. Even though Oxfam operates in plenty of countries where racism is being perpetrated by non-white people and is a really important issue.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    PM asked question about shortage of HGV drivers.
    Replies about getting people off furlough.
  • GnudGnud Posts: 298
    The English football team should change their anthem from the monarchist song that doesn't even mention England to ... the incomparably finer in all respects "Jerusalem" that does. Why hasn't that happened already? I thought Dave was for it, or was it only in some sporting competitions and not others? Doesn't make sense...
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    Nigelb said:

    This is cool.

    31,600-year-old human virus genomes support a Pleistocene origin for common childhood infections
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450199v1
    The origins of viral pathogens and the age of their association with humans remains largely elusive. To date, there is no direct evidence about the diversity of viral infections in early modern humans pre-dating the Holocene. We recovered two near-complete genomes (5.2X and 0.7X) of human adenovirus C (HAdV-C), as well as low-coverage genomes from four distinct species of human herpesvirus obtained from two 31,630-year-old milk teeth excavated at Yana, in northeastern Siberia. Phylogenetic analysis of the two HAdV-C genomes suggests an evolutionary origin around 700,000 years ago consistent with a common evolutionary history with hominin hosts. Our findings push back the earliest direct molecular evidence for human viral infections by ~25,000 years, and demonstrate that viral species causing common childhood viral infections today have been in circulation in humans at least since the Pleistocene...

    (edit)
    Twitter thread by one of the authors.
    https://twitter.com/DrCJ_Houldcroft/status/1409917542152523776

    While interesting as a matter of scientific proof, this is somewhat of a shrug paper for me. I'd be stunned if viruses have not infected every mammal, nay, every animal, nay every living thing, since shortly after the evolution of prokaryotic cells. Viruses have helped shaped - and sped up - evolution. Without them, live on earth would not be as advanced and diverse as it is.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,722


    Pippa Crerar
    @PippaCrerar
    ·
    8m
    Keir Starmer silences Commons with moving story of Olly who was unable to have his family by his side when he died of leukaemia because of Covid rules.

    Boris Johnson accuses Labour leader of "focusing on stuff that's going on in the Westminster bubble".

    Tone deaf.

    #PMQs

    SKS asks PM to apologise he declines.

    Terrible look for PM
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    Ratters said:

    One thought on July 19th...

    If cases continue to rise at a rapid pace then we could be at a point where hundreds of thousands are testing positive per week. All of these are presumably being told to self isolate along with their households, plus those notified under the track and trace system.

    Is there a point at which the self isolation requirements start to have a significant impact on things, even if legally everything is open? Both in terms of numbers isolating and people avoiding very crowded placed for fear of then needing to isolate subsequently.

    We need to make an honest choice: are we trying to control the virus any more or not? If not, the mass testing, track and trace, and isolation are no longer necessary outside of areas such as health and social care workers. Albeit we should continue the excellent work on monitoring variants, but that could be done via the ONS surveys.

    Only guidance post 19 July.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    dixiedean said:

    PM asked question about shortage of HGV drivers.
    Replies about getting people off furlough.

    It's almost like he doesn't know what he is talking about and doesn't have any answer to the question.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    Starmer had a good PMQs and Boris's bluster is embarrassing

    Thursday's B & S election is important for Starmer and the Labour party and winning is essential if they have any chance to change their fortunes
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2021
    An exclusive poll for Sky News has revealed that seven in 10 Labour members think Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham would make a better leader of the party than Sir Keir Starmer.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp8H6nfoyb0
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,722
    Nigelb said:

    Most impressive i have seen from SKS

    Final question about defending rule breakers and one rule for them one rule for everyone else was excellent

    Rare praise indeed. :smile:
    Rare good moment from SKS made even better by PMs ineptitude
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    edited June 2021
    dixiedean said:

    PM soaring to new heights of answering a different question today.
    Noticeably less background roaring.

    The long-term reduction in barracking is, I think, due to the Conservative whips because it derails Boris as much as the Opposition. It was always a Conservative tactic, introduced to aid Mrs Thatcher against Jim Callaghan.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    PM in response to SKS's question

    "What would you say to Ollies family, who i spoke to this morning, a family who lost a son on Friday and who wasnt allowed access to say goodbye under the rules and who were furious with Hancocks rule breaking compared to their sticking to the rules"


    Unbelievable response from PM said it was "a Westminster bubble story"


    FFS what a cloth eared twat

    Sorry, but it’s Starmer who is in the wrong. If he opposed the rule that doesn’t allow any visits to hospitals, then he should say so and ask the PM about it in its own right.

    But I suspect Starmer does support that rule. So instead he uses the distress and heartbreak of that family to score a political point.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Nigelb said:

    This is cool.

    31,600-year-old human virus genomes support a Pleistocene origin for common childhood infections
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450199v1
    The origins of viral pathogens and the age of their association with humans remains largely elusive. To date, there is no direct evidence about the diversity of viral infections in early modern humans pre-dating the Holocene. We recovered two near-complete genomes (5.2X and 0.7X) of human adenovirus C (HAdV-C), as well as low-coverage genomes from four distinct species of human herpesvirus obtained from two 31,630-year-old milk teeth excavated at Yana, in northeastern Siberia. Phylogenetic analysis of the two HAdV-C genomes suggests an evolutionary origin around 700,000 years ago consistent with a common evolutionary history with hominin hosts. Our findings push back the earliest direct molecular evidence for human viral infections by ~25,000 years, and demonstrate that viral species causing common childhood viral infections today have been in circulation in humans at least since the Pleistocene...

    (edit)
    Twitter thread by one of the authors.
    https://twitter.com/DrCJ_Houldcroft/status/1409917542152523776

    That is interesting. But raises the question 'which ones'? My understanding - and I only vaguely remember this - is that most childhood illnesses - mumps, measles, chickenpox - are less then 2000 years old, some newer still.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Foxy said:

    Nigelb said:

    One for @moonshine ...

    Alien bias towards English speaking populations.
    https://twitter.com/rpancost/status/1409256757424275458

    Well of course! Aliens only speak English, not that foreign jabber obviously.
    If you are using broadcast signals to learn a language - it is probably correct that your typical alien has learnt English from American TV signals broadcast between 1950 to 2000.

    What they think of us is probably "interesting"....
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    tlg86 said:

    PM in response to SKS's question

    "What would you say to Ollies family, who i spoke to this morning, a family who lost a son on Friday and who wasnt allowed access to say goodbye under the rules and who were furious with Hancocks rule breaking compared to their sticking to the rules"


    Unbelievable response from PM said it was "a Westminster bubble story"


    FFS what a cloth eared twat

    Sorry, but it’s Starmer who is in the wrong. If he opposed the rule that doesn’t allow any visits to hospitals, then he should say so and ask the PM about it in its own right.

    But I suspect Starmer does support that rule. So instead he uses the distress and heartbreak of that family to score a political point.
    At least SKS is starting to understand that he needs human interest stories to make his points...
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    Nigelb said:

    This is cool.

    31,600-year-old human virus genomes support a Pleistocene origin for common childhood infections
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450199v1
    The origins of viral pathogens and the age of their association with humans remains largely elusive. To date, there is no direct evidence about the diversity of viral infections in early modern humans pre-dating the Holocene. We recovered two near-complete genomes (5.2X and 0.7X) of human adenovirus C (HAdV-C), as well as low-coverage genomes from four distinct species of human herpesvirus obtained from two 31,630-year-old milk teeth excavated at Yana, in northeastern Siberia. Phylogenetic analysis of the two HAdV-C genomes suggests an evolutionary origin around 700,000 years ago consistent with a common evolutionary history with hominin hosts. Our findings push back the earliest direct molecular evidence for human viral infections by ~25,000 years, and demonstrate that viral species causing common childhood viral infections today have been in circulation in humans at least since the Pleistocene...

    (edit)
    Twitter thread by one of the authors.
    https://twitter.com/DrCJ_Houldcroft/status/1409917542152523776

    Nice.

    We found some pre-historic viruses that were resident in humans somewhere. Finding a couple is not the same, yet, as unpicking what the while virus ecosystem around humans looked like thousands of years ago.

    How likely and how close do you think we are to being able to crack exactly what was behind most of the historical pandemics for which there is a record and does this help or is it tangential? Anything identifying pandemics from 1890 and backwards relies mainly on indirect evidence (1890 had some direct evidence from survivors in the 1950s, but I'm not certain whether that definitively settled the matter in favour of flu).
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 5,997
    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is cool.

    31,600-year-old human virus genomes support a Pleistocene origin for common childhood infections
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450199v1
    The origins of viral pathogens and the age of their association with humans remains largely elusive. To date, there is no direct evidence about the diversity of viral infections in early modern humans pre-dating the Holocene. We recovered two near-complete genomes (5.2X and 0.7X) of human adenovirus C (HAdV-C), as well as low-coverage genomes from four distinct species of human herpesvirus obtained from two 31,630-year-old milk teeth excavated at Yana, in northeastern Siberia. Phylogenetic analysis of the two HAdV-C genomes suggests an evolutionary origin around 700,000 years ago consistent with a common evolutionary history with hominin hosts. Our findings push back the earliest direct molecular evidence for human viral infections by ~25,000 years, and demonstrate that viral species causing common childhood viral infections today have been in circulation in humans at least since the Pleistocene...

    (edit)
    Twitter thread by one of the authors.
    https://twitter.com/DrCJ_Houldcroft/status/1409917542152523776

    That is interesting. But raises the question 'which ones'? My understanding - and I only vaguely remember this - is that most childhood illnesses - mumps, measles, chickenpox - are less then 2000 years old, some newer still.
    Measles I believe is definitely zoonotic and is similar to rinderpest
  • Starmer's best PMQs
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653


    Pippa Crerar
    @PippaCrerar
    ·
    8m
    Keir Starmer silences Commons with moving story of Olly who was unable to have his family by his side when he died of leukaemia because of Covid rules.

    Boris Johnson accuses Labour leader of "focusing on stuff that's going on in the Westminster bubble".

    Tone deaf.

    #PMQs

    SKS asks PM to apologise he declines.

    Terrible look for PM
    Why didn't Johnson just say "Yes I agree it is terrible. This is why the honourable member was right to resign."
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,569
    edited June 2021
    TimT said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is cool.

    31,600-year-old human virus genomes support a Pleistocene origin for common childhood infections
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450199v1
    The origins of viral pathogens and the age of their association with humans remains largely elusive. To date, there is no direct evidence about the diversity of viral infections in early modern humans pre-dating the Holocene. We recovered two near-complete genomes (5.2X and 0.7X) of human adenovirus C (HAdV-C), as well as low-coverage genomes from four distinct species of human herpesvirus obtained from two 31,630-year-old milk teeth excavated at Yana, in northeastern Siberia. Phylogenetic analysis of the two HAdV-C genomes suggests an evolutionary origin around 700,000 years ago consistent with a common evolutionary history with hominin hosts. Our findings push back the earliest direct molecular evidence for human viral infections by ~25,000 years, and demonstrate that viral species causing common childhood viral infections today have been in circulation in humans at least since the Pleistocene...

    (edit)
    Twitter thread by one of the authors.
    https://twitter.com/DrCJ_Houldcroft/status/1409917542152523776

    While interesting as a matter of scientific proof, this is somewhat of a shrug paper for me. I'd be stunned if viruses have not infected every mammal, nay, every animal, nay every living thing, since shortly after the evolution of prokaryotic cells. Viruses have helped shaped - and sped up - evolution. Without them, live on earth would not be as advanced and diverse as it is.
    Of course, and this result was (as the author points out) predicted. But to be able to sample genetic code of such an age is a relatively recent development.
    And most, if not all of the human infectious viruses will have been zoonotic, and tying down their initial origins and rates of mutation are interesting areas of research.

    Another comment from the author:
    Adenovirus infections CAN be fatal. Same for EBV, CMV and HSV (in transplant patient & others, which is why I work on them). But mostly they don't. When we say 'viruses evolve to be milder over time' - think about how long that evolutionary timescale might be..
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    Gnud said:

    The English football team should change their anthem from the monarchist song that doesn't even mention England to ... the incomparably finer in all respects "Jerusalem" that does. Why hasn't that happened already? I thought Dave was for it, or was it only in some sporting competitions and not others? Doesn't make sense...

    Jerusalem is a fine socialist anthem. What could go wrong?
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555

    Foxy said:

    Nigelb said:

    One for @moonshine ...

    Alien bias towards English speaking populations.
    https://twitter.com/rpancost/status/1409256757424275458

    Well of course! Aliens only speak English, not that foreign jabber obviously.
    I've seen enough Stargate SG1 to know that English is the universal language spoken by humans across the galaxy.
    Then why do the Galaxy's Hitchhikers need the Babelfish?
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    Stocky said:


    Pippa Crerar
    @PippaCrerar
    ·
    8m
    Keir Starmer silences Commons with moving story of Olly who was unable to have his family by his side when he died of leukaemia because of Covid rules.

    Boris Johnson accuses Labour leader of "focusing on stuff that's going on in the Westminster bubble".

    Tone deaf.

    #PMQs

    SKS asks PM to apologise he declines.

    Terrible look for PM
    Why didn't Johnson just say "Yes I agree it is terrible. This is why the honourable member was right to resign."
    He cannot think on his feet and his blustering is, as I have said, embarrassing
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    Gnud said:

    My sister reports that in her street in Dundee the Yessers have now replaced their German flags with blue and yellow Ukrainian ones.

    Such a positive programme they have to offer! Not xenophobic against Scotland's largest ethnic minority at all. They love the ethnic minority in question! And if anyone in the ethnic minority disagrees, or feels oppressed, that's what those types would say, isn't it? Can't trust what people like them will say if it differs from the view of the ethnic majority whose ancestors were walking these glens in the halcyon days prior to inside toilets and mass literacy.

    There remains the earnestly-debated matter of whether or not a "free at last" Scotland would have as its main trading partners the EU or Norway and Iceland. Tar and feathers for anyone who suggests an alternative.

    Who said it's 12-0 to Unionism so far this century in Scotland-wide votes (6 Westminster, 5 Holyrood, 1 referendum)? Fake news! That's all the fault of the "London media". The partei that controls much of local government (if not the police or security forces) is ontologically identical with the people.

    I remain of the view that English victories in major international sporting competitions are precisely what the Scottish separatist movement requires. Every English kick of the ball into the back of the net is a punch in the stomach for Scotland, and therefore capable of stimulating collective resistance to the outrage that is colonialism!

    "They never let us stop hearing about 1966" is a whinge I've heard from Mr and Mrs Mc Shoulder-Chip more times than I can count.

    How they'd love a 2021 to put with their 1966. It would prove them right about everything.

    No apologies for the sarcasm - for many it really is this sick.

    PS Big up to any SNP activist who responds to this by condemning the flying of those flags. Double big up if they admit they've heard "They never let us stop hearing about 1966" many times.

    I remember seeing the lighthouse at Corran Ferry adorned with the flags of all the other teams in England's group during a world cup about 20 odd years ago. It didn't look petty in the slightest, oh no.

    It was around then I gave up supporting the Scottish football team, despite being half Scottish.

    The problems with Brexit were because nobody was quite explicit about what it was for, rather than what it was against. Scottish independence would be the same, but on serious amounts of steroids.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    Gnud said:

    The English football team should change their anthem from the monarchist song that doesn't even mention England to ... the incomparably finer in all respects "Jerusalem" that does. Why hasn't that happened already? I thought Dave was for it, or was it only in some sporting competitions and not others? Doesn't make sense...

    I've always thought this would be a great national anthem for England once Scotland, Wales and the 6C have gone.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPSO8pdAX6c
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Andy_JS said:


    If we want fast journey times, we should consider building a MagLev system that runs alongside the motorways. For example London to Birmingham in 20 minutes along the M40.

    Maglev's a dead technology. Even the Chinese are not progressing it after their initial line.

    At least for the German-style system. The Japanese one *may* be better, but that's a long way from having a real, as opposed to test, system.

    As an aside, (1) is an interesting historical document. It claimed: "Collisions between (the) vehicles are also ruled out due to the technical layout of the system and the section-wise switching of the ”guideway motor“."

    The document was produced for the Transrapid system, and was released before 23 people were killed in a collision on a test Transrapid.

    One thing any proposer of a new transport system has to consider is safety. Safety should not be assumed, or tacked on later: it has to be integral to the system. This goes for Maglev, Starship point-to-point, Hyperloop or any other proposed system. In part, rail systems cost a lot because there are layers of expensive safety systems to keep them safe, each part introduced after a 'learning incident'. All too often, these new systems hand-wave away these lessons and say that 'their' system won't be affected because ... reasons.

    It's all rubbish. You cannot hand-wave away safety, and safety costs.

    (Gets off high horse)

    (1): https://www.ncl.ac.uk/media/wwwnclacuk/pressoffice/files/pressreleaseslegacy/TRI_Flug_Hoehe_e_5_021.pdf
    Great post!

    I’m 100% in agreement.

    What no transportation method can avoid is human error. Our collective addiction to screens of all sorts is going to increasingly be a problem. I’m not just thinking of drivers, pilots, marine crew etc, but also traffic controllers (road, rail, maritime and air). Far too many people are killed and put in wheelchairs because some twat is playing Candy Crush instead of focusing on their job.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 5,997
    HYUFD said:

    Gnud said:

    My sister reports that in her street in Dundee the Yessers have now replaced their German flags with blue and yellow Ukrainian ones.

    Such a positive programme they have to offer! Not xenophobic against Scotland's largest ethnic minority at all. They love the ethnic minority in question! And if anyone in the ethnic minority disagrees, or feels oppressed, that's what those types would say, isn't it? Can't trust what people like them will say if it differs from the view of the ethnic majority whose ancestors were walking these glens in the halcyon days prior to inside toilets and mass literacy.

    There remains the earnestly-debated matter of whether or not a "free at last" Scotland would have as its main trading partners the EU or Norway and Iceland. Tar and feathers for anyone who suggests an alternative.

    Who said it's 12-0 to Unionism so far this century in Scotland-wide votes (6 Westminster, 5 Holyrood, 1 referendum)? Fake news! That's all the fault of the "London media". The partei that controls much of local government (if not the police or security forces) is ontologically identical with the people.

    I remain of the view that English victories in major international sporting competitions are precisely what the Scottish separatist movement requires. Every English kick of the ball into the back of the net is a punch in the stomach for Scotland, and therefore capable of stimulating collective resistance to the outrage that is colonialism!

    "They never let us stop hearing about 1966" is a whinge I've heard from Mr and Mrs Mc Shoulder-Chip more times than I can count.

    How they'd love a 2021 to put with their 1966. It would prove them right about everything.

    No apologies for the sarcasm - for many it really is this sick.

    PS Big up to any SNP activist who responds to this by condemning the flying of those flags. Double big up if they admit they've heard "They never let us stop hearing about 1966" many times.

    If Scotland always did better than England however that would make the case for independence even more, as it would show that Scotland was stronger without England.

    However regardless as Gove has correctly made clear the government will refuse a legal indyref2 before the next general election
    I have no issue with Scots supporting Ukraine. We pretend to be different countries for football purposes, if Scots always supported England then it would raise questions why that should be the case.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555

    Wow 5.6 million of the 3 million EU citizens living in the UK have now applied for Settled Status.

    ... including probably 4 million of the 13,000 who came after the Eastern Europeans joined the EU.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    An exclusive poll for Sky News has revealed that seven in 10 Labour members think Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham would make a better leader of the party than Sir Keir Starmer.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp8H6nfoyb0

    I'm surprised the number isn't higher. It seems to me that Burnham is more prominent than Khan is nationally, despite Khan's job being the bigger one. I don't agree with Burnham at times, but he certainly does a good job of getting attention for issues relevant to his constituents.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,085
    edited June 2021
    eek said:

    tlg86 said:

    PM in response to SKS's question

    "What would you say to Ollies family, who i spoke to this morning, a family who lost a son on Friday and who wasnt allowed access to say goodbye under the rules and who were furious with Hancocks rule breaking compared to their sticking to the rules"


    Unbelievable response from PM said it was "a Westminster bubble story"


    FFS what a cloth eared twat

    Sorry, but it’s Starmer who is in the wrong. If he opposed the rule that doesn’t allow any visits to hospitals, then he should say so and ask the PM about it in its own right.

    But I suspect Starmer does support that rule. So instead he uses the distress and heartbreak of that family to score a political point.
    At least SKS is starting to understand that he needs human interest stories to make his points...


    One of the differences between the PM and the LotO is that one of them is capable of learning and improving, and the other one appears not to be. Or can't be bothered to.

    How long can BoJo continue to dine out on the vaccine story, and what does he do after that?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    Labour voted for it. They’re as bad as the government.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    The PM would have made a better stab at addressing the questions with some relevance if he'd read out the Peruvian football results.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    glw said:

    An exclusive poll for Sky News has revealed that seven in 10 Labour members think Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham would make a better leader of the party than Sir Keir Starmer.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp8H6nfoyb0

    I'm surprised the number isn't higher. It seems to me that Burnham is more prominent than Khan is nationally, despite Khan's job being the bigger one. I don't agree with Burnham at times, but he certainly does a good job of getting attention for issues relevant to his constituents.
    Its because Khan goes missing in action when there are tricky issues.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089
    tlg86 said:

    PM in response to SKS's question

    "What would you say to Ollies family, who i spoke to this morning, a family who lost a son on Friday and who wasnt allowed access to say goodbye under the rules and who were furious with Hancocks rule breaking compared to their sticking to the rules"


    Unbelievable response from PM said it was "a Westminster bubble story"


    FFS what a cloth eared twat

    Sorry, but it’s Starmer who is in the wrong. If he opposed the rule that doesn’t allow any visits to hospitals, then he should say so and ask the PM about it in its own right.

    But I suspect Starmer does support that rule. So instead he uses the distress and heartbreak of that family to score a political point.
    He doesn't have to oppose that rule to make the point that to impose rules that cause this kind of heartbreak, and then to casually ignore them for your own convenience, is a) profoundly hypocritical and b) habitual for this government
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    eek said:

    tlg86 said:

    PM in response to SKS's question

    "What would you say to Ollies family, who i spoke to this morning, a family who lost a son on Friday and who wasnt allowed access to say goodbye under the rules and who were furious with Hancocks rule breaking compared to their sticking to the rules"


    Unbelievable response from PM said it was "a Westminster bubble story"


    FFS what a cloth eared twat

    Sorry, but it’s Starmer who is in the wrong. If he opposed the rule that doesn’t allow any visits to hospitals, then he should say so and ask the PM about it in its own right.

    But I suspect Starmer does support that rule. So instead he uses the distress and heartbreak of that family to score a political point.
    At least SKS is starting to understand that he needs human interest stories to make his points...
    Not just the human interest story (and he needs to beware of involving the public in another War of Jennifer's Ear) but also the list of other Conservative ministers whom Boris backed after they'd been caught out one way or the other. One rule for them...
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    MattW said:

    Cookie said:

    eek said:

    Cookie said:

    Completely new lines Liverpool to Manchester and Manchester-Bradford-Leeds does not sound small beer.

    If they happen. But the point is that RP said that NPR was already under construction. Which it is, but also rather ignores the fact that the definition of NPR has radically changed (and for the better, IMO).

    HS2 is a set project: to build a new high-speed rail line from London to just north of Birmingham (phase1/1a), and to Manchester/Leeds (phase 2). Much other work needs doing, but it's all directed to that core.

    NPR is a set of related and unrelated projects to enhance connectivity and services in the north, including electrification schemes, reducing bottlenecks, and adding new lines. Some of that work is ongoing; others are barely specified, let alone been through planning or funded. NPR is a very different, and in many ways more complex, project.
    I was being truthful and sarcastic in equal measure. The extension of the knitting from Colton Junction to Church Fenton is absolutely an HS2B/3 scheme. And like so many of the rump motorway stubs left up and down the country I expect that is the last we will see of it.

    Lets understand the issue. The Pennines are bloody lumpy and have towns and villages all over their eastern foothills. A ruddy great base tunnel is doable at a price and has been proposed since at least the 1860s. Its where it goes at either end that is the problem.

    The brutal problem for HS3/NPR is this: its purpose is to speed people between Manchester and Leeds quickly. For other towns like Huddersfield or even cities like Bradford they can offer as many different route options as they like, serving these places is expensive both in terms of land and construction costs and journey time loss.

    The plan is to upgrade the existing route via Standege - and decent time savings can be realised - AND to build the new route via Bradford. I just can't see the latter ever getting through the planning hell to come and then the budgeting hell that follows that. Not when cash has already been spent on upgrades to the existing route - "Isn't that good enough" is an easy cop-out.

    Likewise the Liverpool to Manchester bit is already now good enough.

    Liverpool to Manchester is fine. But like HS2, the primary issue is not the speed in getting from A to B but the capacity this eats up. A mix of fast and slow trains results in much lower track capacity than simply sending down train after train at the same speed, as a moments' thought will demonstrate. So although we can go reasonably fast between Manchester and Liverpool, doing so inhibits the number of suburban trains we can run to Urmston and Allerton and Eccles and Huyton. And the number of freight trains we can run.
    That said, the potential upside in speed for Mcr/Lpl in relation to what we already have is rather more significant than that between Manchester and London for HS2, creating a genuine two-city city-region.
    Also, HS2 will create a much better connection between Liverpool and Manchester Airport, cutting journey times from about an hour to about 15 minutes.

    All the above arguments can also be applied to Manchester-Leeds, with the added bonus that we tie Bradford properly into the high speed network. At present, trains to Bradford are a bit pedestrian. By giving a sub-half-hour connection between Bradford and Manchester, we connect a massive labour pool (Bradford's bigger than most people think) with a massive jobs market.

    Yes, it's a major engineering challenge to do it. But what we have at present in terms of a whole network isn't good enough.
    Indeed, depending on which statistics you ask Bradford and Leeds are both bigger by population than either Manchester or Liverpool.

    eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom
    Well yes, but only by boundaries of local authorities, which tend to be somewhat arbitrary - so Bradford and Leeds are both drawn to include much of those cities' suburban hinterland (Bingley, Horsforth, Wetherby) while the equivalents in Manchester are excluded (Sale, Stretford, Denton). And also Manchester has a twin city across the river which is also excluded from the numbers.

    But as you say - Bradford's big.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2021
    Owen Jones - The racist campaign against Muslims in Batley & Spen

    "With allies and supporters of Keir Starmer panicking about Labour losing the Batley and Spen by election, a cynical narrative is being pushed - that the left, who are otherwise dismissed as irrelevant, are somehow to blame. But it's even worse - they are paving the way for a narrative that if Labour lose the seat, it's because Muslim voters are disillusioned for legitimate reasons, but rather because of homophobia and antisemitism. This is a racist campaign - and it must be fought."

    Hmmmm....
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2021
    tlg86 said:

    PM in response to SKS's question

    "What would you say to Ollies family, who i spoke to this morning, a family who lost a son on Friday and who wasnt allowed access to say goodbye under the rules and who were furious with Hancocks rule breaking compared to their sticking to the rules"


    Unbelievable response from PM said it was "a Westminster bubble story"


    FFS what a cloth eared twat

    Sorry, but it’s Starmer who is in the wrong. If he opposed the rule that doesn’t allow any visits to hospitals, then he should say so and ask the PM about it in its own right.

    But I suspect Starmer does support that rule. So instead he uses the distress and heartbreak of that family to score a political point.
    Its a bit like closing the border. Even though they have moved to a position where they talk about stricter controls, when it gets down to brass tax, nearly a year they didn't say anything, then it is still well yes, but no, but yes, but...we need to get rid of amber, but still have an airbridge system....
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926

    Stocky said:


    Pippa Crerar
    @PippaCrerar
    ·
    8m
    Keir Starmer silences Commons with moving story of Olly who was unable to have his family by his side when he died of leukaemia because of Covid rules.

    Boris Johnson accuses Labour leader of "focusing on stuff that's going on in the Westminster bubble".

    Tone deaf.

    #PMQs

    SKS asks PM to apologise he declines.

    Terrible look for PM
    Why didn't Johnson just say "Yes I agree it is terrible. This is why the honourable member was right to resign."
    He cannot think on his feet and his blustering is, as I have said, embarrassing
    Long Covid again? Boris had appeared to have recovered but now seems to fallen back into a mental fog where he is not responding cleverly or even grasping the point of a question.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    Fishing said:

    Wow 5.6 million of the 3 million EU citizens living in the UK have now applied for Settled Status.

    ... including probably 4 million of the 13,000 who came after the Eastern Europeans joined the EU.
    More than twice as many Romanians have applied as were thought to be in the UK as recently as 2019. Population and residency data for the UK is clearly crap.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    glw said:

    An exclusive poll for Sky News has revealed that seven in 10 Labour members think Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham would make a better leader of the party than Sir Keir Starmer.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp8H6nfoyb0

    I'm surprised the number isn't higher. It seems to me that Burnham is more prominent than Khan is nationally, despite Khan's job being the bigger one. I don't agree with Burnham at times, but he certainly does a good job of getting attention for issues relevant to his constituents.
    Its because Khan goes missing in action when there are tricky issues.
    Ken and Boris were always in the news, Khan is damn near invisible.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,569
    Pro_Rata said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is cool.

    31,600-year-old human virus genomes support a Pleistocene origin for common childhood infections
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450199v1
    The origins of viral pathogens and the age of their association with humans remains largely elusive. To date, there is no direct evidence about the diversity of viral infections in early modern humans pre-dating the Holocene. We recovered two near-complete genomes (5.2X and 0.7X) of human adenovirus C (HAdV-C), as well as low-coverage genomes from four distinct species of human herpesvirus obtained from two 31,630-year-old milk teeth excavated at Yana, in northeastern Siberia. Phylogenetic analysis of the two HAdV-C genomes suggests an evolutionary origin around 700,000 years ago consistent with a common evolutionary history with hominin hosts. Our findings push back the earliest direct molecular evidence for human viral infections by ~25,000 years, and demonstrate that viral species causing common childhood viral infections today have been in circulation in humans at least since the Pleistocene...

    (edit)
    Twitter thread by one of the authors.
    https://twitter.com/DrCJ_Houldcroft/status/1409917542152523776

    Nice.

    We found some pre-historic viruses that were resident in humans somewhere. Finding a couple is not the same, yet, as unpicking what the while virus ecosystem around humans looked like thousands of years ago.

    How likely and how close do you think we are to being able to crack exactly what was behind most of the historical pandemics for which there is a record and does this help or is it tangential? Anything identifying pandemics from 1890 and backwards relies mainly on indirect evidence (1890 had some direct evidence from survivors in the 1950s, but I'm not certain whether that definitively settled the matter in favour of flu).
    I'm no expert, but I would think that depends on obtaining samples which definitively originated from individuals who died in the pandemic. The ability to sequence degraded genetic material and reconstruct genomes has improved massively in recent years.

    Here's an account of how the 1918 flu virus was reconstructed in labs (and tested on mice):
    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-1918-virus.html
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,569
    edited June 2021
    Stocky said:


    Pippa Crerar
    @PippaCrerar
    ·
    8m
    Keir Starmer silences Commons with moving story of Olly who was unable to have his family by his side when he died of leukaemia because of Covid rules.

    Boris Johnson accuses Labour leader of "focusing on stuff that's going on in the Westminster bubble".

    Tone deaf.

    #PMQs

    SKS asks PM to apologise he declines.

    Terrible look for PM
    Why didn't Johnson just say "Yes I agree it is terrible. This is why the honourable member was right to resign."
    Because he'd already declared the matter closed ?
    And no one has yet had long enough to forget that.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    edited June 2021
    Fishing said:

    Wow 5.6 million of the 3 million EU citizens living in the UK have now applied for Settled Status.

    ... including probably 4 million of the 13,000 who came after the Eastern Europeans joined the EU.
    Rather oddly, none of the 5.6 million are lorry drivers.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    Owen Jones - The racist campaign against Muslims in Batley & Spen

    "With allies and supporters of Keir Starmer panicking about Labour losing the Batley and Spen by election, a cynical narrative is being pushed - that the left, who are otherwise dismissed as irrelevant, are somehow to blame. But it's even worse - they are paving the way for a narrative that if Labour lose the seat, it's because Muslim voters are disillusioned for legitimate reasons, but rather because of homophobia and antisemitism. This is a racist campaign - and it must be fought."

    Hmmmm....

    More or less saying "It's alright when we do it."
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2021
    glw said:

    Fishing said:

    Wow 5.6 million of the 3 million EU citizens living in the UK have now applied for Settled Status.

    ... including probably 4 million of the 13,000 who came after the Eastern Europeans joined the EU.
    More than twice as many Romanians have applied as were thought to be in the UK as recently as 2019. Population and residency data for the UK is clearly crap.
    Well all despite the narrative that the UK is some massive racist hell hole, that a) it isn't and b) the scheme the government has put in place is incredibly generous (far more than EU countries), so you would be very silly not to take advantage of it even if you don't live in the UK fulltime at the moment, but might like to come and work here again in the future.

    We know until COVID a lot of Eastern European labour comes and goes, few months here, few months there.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    mwadams said:

    tlg86 said:

    PM in response to SKS's question

    "What would you say to Ollies family, who i spoke to this morning, a family who lost a son on Friday and who wasnt allowed access to say goodbye under the rules and who were furious with Hancocks rule breaking compared to their sticking to the rules"


    Unbelievable response from PM said it was "a Westminster bubble story"


    FFS what a cloth eared twat

    Sorry, but it’s Starmer who is in the wrong. If he opposed the rule that doesn’t allow any visits to hospitals, then he should say so and ask the PM about it in its own right.

    But I suspect Starmer does support that rule. So instead he uses the distress and heartbreak of that family to score a political point.
    He doesn't have to oppose that rule to make the point that to impose rules that cause this kind of heartbreak, and then to casually ignore them for your own convenience, is a) profoundly hypocritical and b) habitual for this government
    Bollocks. Humans do stupid things. Of course Cummings, Sturgeon and Hancock should have resigned/been sacked for their behaviour.

    But it’s thoroughly dishonest to get all upset on the behalf of others when you’d be imposing the same harm on them. That’s just as hypocritical.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    Well all despite the narrative that the UK is some massive racist hell hole, that a) it isn't and b) the scheme the government has put in place is incredibly generous (far more than EU countries), so you would be very silly not to take advantage of it even if you don't live in the UK fulltime at the moment, but might like to come and work here again in the future.

    We know until COVID a lot of Eastern European labour comes and goes, few months here, few months there.

    Even the "backlog due to goverment incompetence" seems to be more a case of a late surge in applications as people finally apply years after the scheme started.
  • maaarshmaaarsh Posts: 3,391

    Wow 5.6 million of the 3 million EU citizens living in the UK have now applied for Settled Status.

    And yet just the other day we had someone trying to take the piss out of the idea that immigration drives house prices because they're going up and we have much less immigration right now.

    In reality we have absolutely no idea how much immigration there is either now or in the past. I fondly recall how Nigel was mocked for warning about Romanian immigration - lots of smug BBC coverage from empty airports.

    7 years's later there are over 900k Romanians applying to stay, which means not far short of 5% of all Romanians now live here.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,722
    tlg86 said:

    Labour voted for it. They’re as bad as the government.
    Its not about the rule its about law makers becoming Law breakers

    You are as tone deaf as the PM
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    2h
    Since the decision to offer alternatives to AZ to the under-30s was couched entirely in terms of cost-benefit when prevalence was low & it was explicit that the opposite wld be so when prevalence was high, when might that decision be reviewed with a view to reversal?

    Given that Pfizer works faster than AZ and is available to everyone under-30 (indeed most under 30s have already had it) why the heck would you reverse the decision now?

    PM confirmed today that all first doses will be done by 19 July, it will probably be sooner than that, so quite frankly its far too late to change courses now and use AZ given that AZ is slower to build immunity than Pfizer is.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2021
    glw said:

    Well all despite the narrative that the UK is some massive racist hell hole, that a) it isn't and b) the scheme the government has put in place is incredibly generous (far more than EU countries), so you would be very silly not to take advantage of it even if you don't live in the UK fulltime at the moment, but might like to come and work here again in the future.

    We know until COVID a lot of Eastern European labour comes and goes, few months here, few months there.

    Even the "backlog due to goverment incompetence" seems to be more a case of a late surge in applications as people finally apply years after the scheme started.
    My question is this scheme has been available for years and widely known about. I really can't imagine anybody who is settled here full time hasn't been aware about it for a long time, I mean its 5 years since we voted for Brexit. Every EU national I know that calls the UK their full time home was on this straight away, didn't want to take any risks.

    If you really have left it until the last few days of an already an extension on an extension, really how serious are you about your status in the UK?
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346
    glw said:

    glw said:

    An exclusive poll for Sky News has revealed that seven in 10 Labour members think Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham would make a better leader of the party than Sir Keir Starmer.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp8H6nfoyb0

    I'm surprised the number isn't higher. It seems to me that Burnham is more prominent than Khan is nationally, despite Khan's job being the bigger one. I don't agree with Burnham at times, but he certainly does a good job of getting attention for issues relevant to his constituents.
    Its because Khan goes missing in action when there are tricky issues.
    Ken and Boris were always in the news, Khan is damn near invisible.
    Without Trump to have a go at he does nothing. He is a truly terrible London Mayor.
This discussion has been closed.