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The front pages not good for ministers on the eve of what was designated Freedom day – politicalbett

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited July 2021 in General
imageThe front pages not good for ministers on the eve of what was designated Freedom day – politicalbetting.com

With so-called Freedom Day scheduled for tomorrow, several of the papers are leading on the fact that this is going to be nothing like what BoJo had declared not so long ago. It is not helped by the fact that HealthSec Javid has now contracted the virus. This is how the S Times is reporting it:

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770
    FPT:

    The country needs a good opposition, so even though I don't want Starmer to win, I hope you're right and this is a good and significant move.

    But I won't be holding my breath. How many MPs who currently hold the whip will lose it? Will Burgon? Rebecca Long Bailey? Diane Abbott? Ian Lavery? John McDonnell? Kate Osamor? Zarah Sultana? Claudia Webbe? Etc

    If so then it will be a real and significant purge of the far left. Otherwise if its just a lot of people nobody has ever heard of from Twitter while the big names get left behind then its a meaningless gesture.
    Taking a leaf out of Johnson's playbook. Johnson of course, also ejected the far left from his party, before a magnificent victory at the next GE.
    Absolutely. Johnson expelling the troublemakers from his party ensured the party was fit to win the victory and also ensured he was capable of governing following the victory, since many of them would have been a permanent 'gaukeward squad' had they been left to wallow on the backbenches.
    Yup they're governing brilliantly
    Yep. 😀
    You can't genuinely in good conscience believe they're governing well. You can rightfully - if incorrectly in my view - think Labour would do worse but you have to be insane to think they're governing well.

    Johnson's speech with nothing in it sums up this government for me. No vision, no ideology, out of ideas.
    Like every government, the Johnson administration has done some things well, and other things poorly. There are a number of things that - at the time - I thought were mistakes, and which I now think were correct. And there are probably things which I liked, but I now think probably weren't the right decision.

    So...

    In the positive column, the UK invested early in vaccines at scale, and Brexit is now behind us. Liz Truss has done a good job at International Development, and we're in good shape for the next five years.

    The "levelling up" strategy is also clearly the right thing (morally) to do, and full credit to the Government for not pandering to its Southern supporters.

    Against that, I continue to be disappointed by the excessive willingness of Johnson to back people, even when they're in the wrong. I also think it was a mistake to return Patel to the Cabinet, given her behaviour when she lied not once, but twice, to the Prime Minister.

    The Cabinet is also - to my mind - too much made up of Johnson lackeys, rather than being the most talented people in the Commons. (The return of Saj is a welcome sign that this may be coming to an end.)

    So, I'd give them 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I'd rate them above Brown or May, but below Blair (1997-2001) and Thatcher.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,787
    Armin Laschet has committed a gaffe today by laughing and joking while the German President was giving a sombre speech about the flooding. He later apologised.

    image
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Tim Spector take on the situation, he is much more reasoned than the Zero Covidians.

    https://youtu.be/9dFSpSRTKwo
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Boris Johnson cancelled plans for a Churchillian launch of Freedom Day after No 10 became alarmed by the surge in the number of infections, The Mail on Sunday has learned.

    Officials had discussed marking the lifting of Covid restrictions with a rousing speech by the Prime Minister at an historic venue associated with the wartime leader – until scientific advisers took fright at the recent climb in cases.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9798757/Boris-Johnson-cancels-plans-Churchillian-Freedom-Day-launch.html
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    NEW: Thailand reports 11,397 new coronavirus cases, by far the biggest one-day increase on record, and 101 new deaths
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    edited July 2021
    ’Freedom Day’ is Boris Johnson’s ’Cones Hotlne’. It’ll haunt him.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279

    Tim Spector take on the situation, he is much more reasoned than the Zero Covidians.

    https://youtu.be/9dFSpSRTKwo

    Tim Spector is one of the best experts on Covid-19 in my opinion. Always worth listening to.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    rcs1000 said:

    FPT:

    The country needs a good opposition, so even though I don't want Starmer to win, I hope you're right and this is a good and significant move.

    But I won't be holding my breath. How many MPs who currently hold the whip will lose it? Will Burgon? Rebecca Long Bailey? Diane Abbott? Ian Lavery? John McDonnell? Kate Osamor? Zarah Sultana? Claudia Webbe? Etc

    If so then it will be a real and significant purge of the far left. Otherwise if its just a lot of people nobody has ever heard of from Twitter while the big names get left behind then its a meaningless gesture.
    Taking a leaf out of Johnson's playbook. Johnson of course, also ejected the far left from his party, before a magnificent victory at the next GE.
    Absolutely. Johnson expelling the troublemakers from his party ensured the party was fit to win the victory and also ensured he was capable of governing following the victory, since many of them would have been a permanent 'gaukeward squad' had they been left to wallow on the backbenches.
    Yup they're governing brilliantly
    Yep. 😀
    You can't genuinely in good conscience believe they're governing well. You can rightfully - if incorrectly in my view - think Labour would do worse but you have to be insane to think they're governing well.

    Johnson's speech with nothing in it sums up this government for me. No vision, no ideology, out of ideas.
    Like every government, the Johnson administration has done some things well, and other things poorly. There are a number of things that - at the time - I thought were mistakes, and which I now think were correct. And there are probably things which I liked, but I now think probably weren't the right decision.

    So...

    In the positive column, the UK invested early in vaccines at scale, and Brexit is now behind us. Liz Truss has done a good job at International Development, and we're in good shape for the next five years.

    The "levelling up" strategy is also clearly the right thing (morally) to do, and full credit to the Government for not pandering to its Southern supporters.

    Against that, I continue to be disappointed by the excessive willingness of Johnson to back people, even when they're in the wrong. I also think it was a mistake to return Patel to the Cabinet, given her behaviour when she lied not once, but twice, to the Prime Minister.

    The Cabinet is also - to my mind - too much made up of Johnson lackeys, rather than being the most talented people in the Commons. (The return of Saj is a welcome sign that this may be coming to an end.)

    So, I'd give them 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I'd rate them above Brown or May, but below Blair (1997-2001) and Thatcher.
    Tony “Devolution Will Kill Nationalism Stone Dead” Blair (1997-2001)?
    And Margaret “Single Market” Thatcher?

    Yeah. That turned out well.

    The Clown is a 2 out of 10. Still, beats Michael “Cocaine Kid” Gove.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    edited July 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    FPT:

    The country needs a good opposition, so even though I don't want Starmer to win, I hope you're right and this is a good and significant move.

    But I won't be holding my breath. How many MPs who currently hold the whip will lose it? Will Burgon? Rebecca Long Bailey? Diane Abbott? Ian Lavery? John McDonnell? Kate Osamor? Zarah Sultana? Claudia Webbe? Etc

    If so then it will be a real and significant purge of the far left. Otherwise if its just a lot of people nobody has ever heard of from Twitter while the big names get left behind then its a meaningless gesture.
    Taking a leaf out of Johnson's playbook. Johnson of course, also ejected the far left from his party, before a magnificent victory at the next GE.
    Absolutely. Johnson expelling the troublemakers from his party ensured the party was fit to win the victory and also ensured he was capable of governing following the victory, since many of them would have been a permanent 'gaukeward squad' had they been left to wallow on the backbenches.
    Yup they're governing brilliantly
    Yep. 😀
    You can't genuinely in good conscience believe they're governing well. You can rightfully - if incorrectly in my view - think Labour would do worse but you have to be insane to think they're governing well.

    Johnson's speech with nothing in it sums up this government for me. No vision, no ideology, out of ideas.
    Like every government, the Johnson administration has done some things well, and other things poorly. There are a number of things that - at the time - I thought were mistakes, and which I now think were correct. And there are probably things which I liked, but I now think probably weren't the right decision.

    So...

    In the positive column, the UK invested early in vaccines at scale, and Brexit is now behind us. Liz Truss has done a good job at International Development, and we're in good shape for the next five years.

    The "levelling up" strategy is also clearly the right thing (morally) to do, and full credit to the Government for not pandering to its Southern supporters.

    Against that, I continue to be disappointed by the excessive willingness of Johnson to back people, even when they're in the wrong. I also think it was a mistake to return Patel to the Cabinet, given her behaviour when she lied not once, but twice, to the Prime Minister.

    The Cabinet is also - to my mind - too much made up of Johnson lackeys, rather than being the most talented people in the Commons. (The return of Saj is a welcome sign that this may be coming to an end.)

    So, I'd give them 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I'd rate them above Brown or May, but below Blair (1997-2001) and Thatcher.
    I think that's fair, but a little too generous. On supporting the north, well, time will tell, but I remain to be convinced that throwing yet more public money at a region that already takes vastly more than its fair share of it will yield results. Grasping the nettle and admitting that much of the north is unviable and encouraging labour mobility to the south might have been better. However, if in 20 years we have a flourishing north, (and/or if it keeps returning Conservative MPs) noone will be happier than me to have been proved wrong.

    The extent to which they are caving in to their southern NIMBY supporters on planning, and also to the big builders by not encouraging self-build enough is also disappointing.

    That their only impulse with economic problems is to shovel taxpayers' money at them is also disappointing, and may be disastrous in the long term.

    But, in Europe and COVID, they have confronted two challenges that would have broken many other governments (indeed Europe certainly did) and done a reasonable if not stellar job on both overall.

    So I'd given them 5.5 or 6 out of 10.

    Oh, and I think you far overrate Tony Blair, who in his first term had an incredibly easy ride both politically, with a huge majority and a fawning press, and economically, with a golden legacy from the Conservatives.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081
    edited July 2021
    Johnson never thinks or plans ahead, but simply says whatever makes his current situation sound the best, and relies upon his lifetime’s experience of winging everything to be able to extricate himself should anything he says or does subsequently prove unwise.

    So we have ‘Freedom Day’ tomorrow with a lot of people unhappy that we won’t really be free and another lot of people calling for continued restrictions.

    Also remember how it was that we came to be awash in this Indian variant in the first place….
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081
    edited July 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    FPT:

    The country needs a good opposition, so even though I don't want Starmer to win, I hope you're right and this is a good and significant move.

    But I won't be holding my breath. How many MPs who currently hold the whip will lose it? Will Burgon? Rebecca Long Bailey? Diane Abbott? Ian Lavery? John McDonnell? Kate Osamor? Zarah Sultana? Claudia Webbe? Etc

    If so then it will be a real and significant purge of the far left. Otherwise if its just a lot of people nobody has ever heard of from Twitter while the big names get left behind then its a meaningless gesture.
    Taking a leaf out of Johnson's playbook. Johnson of course, also ejected the far left from his party, before a magnificent victory at the next GE.
    Absolutely. Johnson expelling the troublemakers from his party ensured the party was fit to win the victory and also ensured he was capable of governing following the victory, since many of them would have been a permanent 'gaukeward squad' had they been left to wallow on the backbenches.
    Yup they're governing brilliantly
    Yep. 😀
    You can't genuinely in good conscience believe they're governing well. You can rightfully - if incorrectly in my view - think Labour would do worse but you have to be insane to think they're governing well.

    Johnson's speech with nothing in it sums up this government for me. No vision, no ideology, out of ideas.
    Like every government, the Johnson administration has done some things well, and other things poorly. There are a number of things that - at the time - I thought were mistakes, and which I now think were correct. And there are probably things which I liked, but I now think probably weren't the right decision.

    So...

    In the positive column, the UK invested early in vaccines at scale, and Brexit is now behind us. Liz Truss has done a good job at International Development, and we're in good shape for the next five years.

    The "levelling up" strategy is also clearly the right thing (morally) to do, and full credit to the Government for not pandering to its Southern supporters.

    Against that, I continue to be disappointed by the excessive willingness of Johnson to back people, even when they're in the wrong. I also think it was a mistake to return Patel to the Cabinet, given her behaviour when she lied not once, but twice, to the Prime Minister.

    The Cabinet is also - to my mind - too much made up of Johnson lackeys, rather than being the most talented people in the Commons. (The return of Saj is a welcome sign that this may be coming to an end.)

    So, I'd give them 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I'd rate them above Brown or May, but below Blair (1997-2001) and Thatcher.
    I can’t argue with the latter part of your analysis, but the idea that a few trade deals of questionable merit with comparatively minor trading partners means we are “in good shape for the next five years” is laughable.

    Whether or not we are in good shape for the next five years will depend partly on the closing chapters of the pandemic story but mostly upon the economic fallout and how we cope with it.

    The government’s support packages have so far done a good job in reducing the immediate social and economic distress from the pandemic - at the cost of a number of looming cliff edges not least of which the large batch of people who will immediately lose their homes when the ban on evictions eventually ends.

    But we have also paid people specifically for not working, and given many a taste of an alternative, quieter life - which appears to have resulted in a significant exit from the labour market at just the moment when we have also and separately closed ourselves off to a good supply of labour from our European neighbours. The signs of labour shortages are already all around us. Compare the US approach of giving everyone some money whether they are working or not, maintaining incentives to continue economic activity at some risk to spread of the virus and potentially inflationary. It is way too early to pass judgement on whose approach will prove the better.

    The vaccination programme undoubtedly has gone well - largely because government was told to keep out of it - but the long term advantage to us of having handled it earlier and better is slowly slipping away.

    As for ‘levelling up’, the likelihood is that Johnson makes the same mistake as Trump in thinking that coming up with a catchy slogan and giving a few speeches can substitute for actually doing something substantive.
  • Absolute shambles.

    I'm afraid it characterises everything this Government does. The initial vaccine rollout was good, largely thanks to venture capitalist Kate Bingham. Now that ministers are running things again it's chaos.
  • Cocky_cockneyCocky_cockney Posts: 760
    edited July 2021
    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
  • On Friday, the UK recorded more than 50,000 daily cases of Covid for the first time since mid-January and that tally is soon expected to pass the previous peak of 68,000.

    Yesterday, the number of daily cases hit 54,674, with 740 patients admitted to hospital and 41 deaths.

    Vaccination rates are slowing, with 67,956 people having their first dose on Friday, and 188,976 their second: daily rates were running well below the level at the height of the rollout.

    The total number of people who have had both doses across the UK is now more than 35.7 million – just under 68 per cent of adults.

    Simply not good enough.
  • Cocky_cockneyCocky_cockney Posts: 760
    edited July 2021
    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    The mean of the last 9 polls is 9%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2021

    And let's see. That long slow slide is well underway. I predict that the latest shambolic week, and England's defeat last Sunday and evaporation of 'football's coming home' euphoric hype, will see Mr Johnson's Conservative lead dip even further into the 4-5% range.

    They were sensationally defeated in their Chesham & Amersham southern heartland and they failed to win Batley & Spen, much to the surprise of political commentators.


  • With regards to Robert's claim that levelling up the north is morally right, it's of course rather more nuanced than that. It's perfectly true that some areas were vastly under-invested and became ghost towns. Not just in the north but places down the east coast. These disenfranchised areas became Brexit fuel, especially when white working class people were able to blame their ills on immigrants (conveniently forgetting that they often came in to do the jobs that white Brits wouldn't touch).

    But we have a serious fiscal hole at the moment and Johnson's credit card attitude to spending is not 'moral', regardless of where that plastic is splurged.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081
    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    Because we are trapped inside a political system specifically designed to close off the chance of any new choices and because the opposition we are lumbered with is even more f*****g useless than the government.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,287
    edited July 2021
    IanB2 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    Because we are trapped inside a political system specifically designed to close off the chance of any new choices and because the opposition we are lumbered with is even more f*****g useless than the government.
    . And the third "choice" is even more useless. A few diehards, but noone would trust the Lib Dems in Govt post brexit... on reflection noone has trusted them in Govt as they were wiped out post coalition. They are destined for the odd "Orpington" and a few cheers on local election days.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,081
    edited July 2021
    Morning all.

    FPT:

    To go back to the German floods, it looks like as well as digging a massive sand quarry on a flood plain, there was also a coal mine:
    https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/imgs/48/1/1/0/7/7/6/8/8/9/tok_07f1bf0b460f5adc5135a1e97dadbb86/w1900_h766_x1796_y725_ZVA_mdb_27252829424978345-6cc816303862f785.jpg

    This is a very large mine and you have to wonder if any coal fired power stations might go short. Buy Australian coal futures...

    When this happened in near Leeds it took years to pump it out.

    I wonder if that mine will reopen, given that this is just before an election ? Is this going to give Bouncing Baerbock a bounce in the polls?

    In Australia terms I think a change in German coal production will not have a material impact on the market - unless that mine is say 10% of production, or dominant in one specialist product.

    Pollution wise, Germany's coal production currently makes them one of the 4 dirty men of Europe - Ukraine, Poland and Russia being the others.

    I think they will pivot the regional economy instead.
  • BromBrom Posts: 3,760

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    The mean of the last 9 polls is 9%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2021

    And let's see. That long slow slide is well underway. I predict that the latest shambolic week, and England's defeat last Sunday and evaporation of 'football's coming home' euphoric hype, will see Mr Johnson's Conservative lead dip even further into the 4-5% range.

    They were sensationally defeated in their Chesham & Amersham southern heartland and they failed to win Batley & Spen, much to the surprise of political commentators.



    Continually pumping out the same rubbish every day. Always suspicious of these new accounts. The Tories have been steady in the early 40s for a long time now. Not sure where you think these Tory votes will disappear to right now unless you know something about the Reform Party the rest of us don’t.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770
    MattW said:

    Morning all.

    FPT:

    To go back to the German floods, it looks like as well as digging a massive sand quarry on a flood plain, there was also a coal mine:
    https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/imgs/48/1/1/0/7/7/6/8/8/9/tok_07f1bf0b460f5adc5135a1e97dadbb86/w1900_h766_x1796_y725_ZVA_mdb_27252829424978345-6cc816303862f785.jpg

    This is a very large mine and you have to wonder if any coal fired power stations might go short. Buy Australian coal futures...

    When this happened in near Leeds it took years to pump it out.

    I wonder if that mine will reopen, given that this is just before an election ? Is this going to give Bouncing Baerbock a bounce in the polls?

    In Australia terms I think a change in German coal production will not have a material impact on the market - unless that mine is say 10% of production, or dominant in one specialist product.

    Pollution wise, Germany's coal production currently makes them one of the 4 dirty men of Europe - Ukraine, Poland and Russia being the others.

    I think they will pivot the regional economy instead.
    It will make bugger all difference to Australian coal market prices, as it's the middle of summer, photovoltaic output is strong and German electricity demand is likely to be reduced by the flooding too...

    If this had happened in winter, especially if it had coincided with a period of low winds, it would have been a very different story.

  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,081
    edited July 2021
    Fishing said:

    rcs1000 said:

    FPT:

    The country needs a good opposition, so even though I don't want Starmer to win, I hope you're right and this is a good and significant move.

    But I won't be holding my breath. How many MPs who currently hold the whip will lose it? Will Burgon? Rebecca Long Bailey? Diane Abbott? Ian Lavery? John McDonnell? Kate Osamor? Zarah Sultana? Claudia Webbe? Etc

    If so then it will be a real and significant purge of the far left. Otherwise if its just a lot of people nobody has ever heard of from Twitter while the big names get left behind then its a meaningless gesture.
    Taking a leaf out of Johnson's playbook. Johnson of course, also ejected the far left from his party, before a magnificent victory at the next GE.
    Absolutely. Johnson expelling the troublemakers from his party ensured the party was fit to win the victory and also ensured he was capable of governing following the victory, since many of them would have been a permanent 'gaukeward squad' had they been left to wallow on the backbenches.
    Yup they're governing brilliantly
    Yep. 😀
    You can't genuinely in good conscience believe they're governing well. You can rightfully - if incorrectly in my view - think Labour would do worse but you have to be insane to think they're governing well.

    Johnson's speech with nothing in it sums up this government for me. No vision, no ideology, out of ideas.
    Like every government, the Johnson administration has done some things well, and other things poorly. There are a number of things that - at the time - I thought were mistakes, and which I now think were correct. And there are probably things which I liked, but I now think probably weren't the right decision.

    So...

    In the positive column, the UK invested early in vaccines at scale, and Brexit is now behind us. Liz Truss has done a good job at International Development, and we're in good shape for the next five years.

    The "levelling up" strategy is also clearly the right thing (morally) to do, and full credit to the Government for not pandering to its Southern supporters.

    Against that, I continue to be disappointed by the excessive willingness of Johnson to back people, even when they're in the wrong. I also think it was a mistake to return Patel to the Cabinet, given her behaviour when she lied not once, but twice, to the Prime Minister.

    The Cabinet is also - to my mind - too much made up of Johnson lackeys, rather than being the most talented people in the Commons. (The return of Saj is a welcome sign that this may be coming to an end.)

    So, I'd give them 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I'd rate them above Brown or May, but below Blair (1997-2001) and Thatcher.
    I think that's fair, but a little too generous. On supporting the north, well, time will tell, but I remain to be convinced that throwing yet more public money at a region that already takes vastly more than its fair share of it will yield results. Grasping the nettle and admitting that much of the north is unviable and encouraging labour mobility to the south might have been better. However, if in 20 years we have a flourishing north, (and/or if it keeps returning Conservative MPs) noone will be happier than me to have been proved wrong.

    The extent to which they are caving in to their southern NIMBY supporters on planning, and also to the big builders by not encouraging self-build enough is also disappointing.

    That their only impulse with economic problems is to shovel taxpayers' money at them is also disappointing, and may be disastrous in the long term.

    But, in Europe and COVID, they have confronted two challenges that would have broken many other governments (indeed Europe certainly did) and done a reasonable if not stellar job on both overall.

    So I'd given them 5.5 or 6 out of 10.

    Oh, and I think you far overrate Tony Blair, who in his first term had an incredibly easy ride both politically, with a huge majority and a fawning press, and economically, with a golden legacy from the Conservatives.
    A couple of interesting points from @Fishing .

    The argument for the North taking "vastly more than its share of public money" seems like a tough one to make stick to me. Just look, for example, at relative regional investment in transport per pop for the last 2 decades.

    On self-build, it already gets quite a lot of support - eg zero rated VAT on your supplies, and exemption from Community Infrastructure Levy. I'm trying to get hold of some numbers, but by my initial estimate that might be worth 20-30k or more on a 500k project.

    I think one issue with "self-build" is that it is an activity for wealthier people - you need to have, or be able to raise, perhaps 300-600k for even a normal modest project. And 100k-200k of that would normally need to be free savings.

    The cheap route onto the property ladder is what it always was - a doer-upper 2 bed terrace or poor condition flat.
  • Brom said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    The mean of the last 9 polls is 9%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2021

    And let's see. That long slow slide is well underway. I predict that the latest shambolic week, and England's defeat last Sunday and evaporation of 'football's coming home' euphoric hype, will see Mr Johnson's Conservative lead dip even further into the 4-5% range.

    They were sensationally defeated in their Chesham & Amersham southern heartland and they failed to win Batley & Spen, much to the surprise of political commentators.



    Continually pumping out the same rubbish every day.

    You scoffed the same old rubbish at Mike Smithson for even daring to suggest the LibDems were in with the vaguest chance of winning Chesham & Amersham.

    They not only won, they trounced the tories.

    Wisdom is proved right by her actions.

    QED
  • Cocky_cockneyCocky_cockney Posts: 760
    edited July 2021

    IanB2 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    Because we are trapped inside a political system specifically designed to close off the chance of any new choices and because the opposition we are lumbered with is even more f*****g useless than the government.
    . And the third "choice" is even more useless. A few diehards, but noone would trust the Lib Dems in Govt post brexit... on reflection noone has trusted them in Govt as they were wiped out post coalition. They are destined for the odd "Orpington" and a few cheers on local election days.
    The latest opinion polling on the EU is 55% in favour, 45% against our decision to leave.

    The LibDems performed less well in 2019 for a number of reasons, not least the weakness of the then leader. Ed Davey is a more effective operator and much more trustworthy in the eyes of voters.

    We have this extraordinary tendency for recency bias. You can see it in Brom's snide post, and you can see it time and again amongst others on here. It runs like this: because the tories won in 2019 and have 'consistently' polled in the 40's ergo they will continue to do so.

    Great political commentators and even better political gamblers know how to read the runes ahead of the event. Like Mike Smithson (Chesham & Amersham, Batley & Spen) they correctly spot the trends when others (including scoffers on here) do not.

    The long slow slide of Boris Johnson is underway. The tories, especially after this past week, will soon start to see poll ratings in the high 30's. You mark my words.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,744
    edited July 2021
    Test and Trace Are Fecking Useless example 2074b:

    Covid: Ministers wait to hear if they face quarantine after Javid tests positive
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-5787737

    If they can’t even trace the movements of their own boss, they might as well shut up shop.

    Was it £37 billion we spent on this? For half that money, we could have opened ‘Nightingale Schools’ and reduced class sizes by 40%, which would have had a far more dramatic effect on transmission than a series of billion pound bungs to utter failures like Dido Harding.
  • ydoethur said:

    Test and Trace Are Fecking Useless example 2074b:

    Installed the App a year ago, deleted it 24 hours later. Best decision on covid I took.

    I could see what was coming ...
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,081
    edited July 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    Morning all.

    FPT:

    To go back to the German floods, it looks like as well as digging a massive sand quarry on a flood plain, there was also a coal mine:
    https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/imgs/48/1/1/0/7/7/6/8/8/9/tok_07f1bf0b460f5adc5135a1e97dadbb86/w1900_h766_x1796_y725_ZVA_mdb_27252829424978345-6cc816303862f785.jpg

    This is a very large mine and you have to wonder if any coal fired power stations might go short. Buy Australian coal futures...

    When this happened in near Leeds it took years to pump it out.

    I wonder if that mine will reopen, given that this is just before an election ? Is this going to give Bouncing Baerbock a bounce in the polls?

    In Australia terms I think a change in German coal production will not have a material impact on the market - unless that mine is say 10% of production, or dominant in one specialist product.

    Pollution wise, Germany's coal production currently makes them one of the 4 dirty men of Europe - Ukraine, Poland and Russia being the others.

    I think they will pivot the regional economy instead.
    It will make bugger all difference to Australian coal market prices, as it's the middle of summer, photovoltaic output is strong and German electricity demand is likely to be reduced by the flooding too...

    If this had happened in winter, especially if it had coincided with a period of low winds, it would have been a very different story.

    "Bugger all"

    That's with .. as "Cactus Jack" John Nance Garner used to .. the husk off.

    As far as I am aware, the only US President from the Red River Valley .

    :smile:
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    edited July 2021
    Brom said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    The mean of the last 9 polls is 9%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2021

    And let's see. That long slow slide is well underway. I predict that the latest shambolic week, and England's defeat last Sunday and evaporation of 'football's coming home' euphoric hype, will see Mr Johnson's Conservative lead dip even further into the 4-5% range.

    They were sensationally defeated in their Chesham & Amersham southern heartland and they failed to win Batley & Spen, much to the surprise of political commentators.



    Continually pumping out the same rubbish every day. Always suspicious of these new accounts. The Tories have been steady in the early 40s for a long time now. Not sure where you think these Tory votes will disappear to right now unless you know something about the Reform Party the rest of us don’t.
    Relatively long standing accounts are perfectly capable of pumping out the same rubbish every day.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    COVID-19: A quarantine dodge by Boris Johnson would unleash a massive 'do as I say, not as I do' row http://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-a-quarantine-dodge-by-boris-johnson-would-unleash-a-massive-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do-row-12358112
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,081
    edited July 2021

    ydoethur said:

    Test and Trace Are Fecking Useless example 2074b:

    Installed the App a year ago, deleted it 24 hours later. Best decision on covid I took.

    I could see what was coming ...
    If you deleted it immediately, how can you know?

    Personally I never installed it - worked out my own rules based on everything and generally stuck by them. I was shielding, however.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    Basement boy talks tough. For a contrarian his views on any given subject seem consistently predictable.

    https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1416584946102177793?s=20
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    edited July 2021
    Lol. More evidence for The Drake's godlike powers.

    https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1416472649430089729?s=20
  • MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    Test and Trace Are Fecking Useless example 2074b:

    Installed the App a year ago, deleted it 24 hours later. Best decision on covid I took.

    I could see what was coming ...
    If you deleted it immediately, how can you know?

    How can I know what? That it was the best decision? Because of the shitshow that has unfolded since. The Pingdemic was an obvious nightmare waiting to happen.

    It runs deeper than this though for me. It's what the Pingdemic is a symptom of: a deeper malaise which I realised within hours of installing the bloody thing:

    It's menacingly invasive. It tracks you everywhere. It, effectively, spies on you. To me it was evidently part of Government control. The dystopian Big Brother that Boris Johnson so loves.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html
  • Brom said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    The mean of the last 9 polls is 9%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2021

    And let's see. That long slow slide is well underway. I predict that the latest shambolic week, and England's defeat last Sunday and evaporation of 'football's coming home' euphoric hype, will see Mr Johnson's Conservative lead dip even further into the 4-5% range.

    They were sensationally defeated in their Chesham & Amersham southern heartland and they failed to win Batley & Spen, much to the surprise of political commentators.



    Continually pumping out the same rubbish every day. Always suspicious of these new accounts. The Tories have been steady in the early 40s for a long time now. Not sure where you think these Tory votes will disappear to right now unless you know something about the Reform Party the rest of us don’t.
    Relatively long standing accounts are perfectly capable of pumping out the same rubbish every day.
    Indeed. I thought it was rather a cheap and unnecessarily grumpy shot.

    I hope this site continues to receive new subscribers, bringing fresh insight, comment and punditry. And I hope they receive a rather more polite response than that.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,744

    Brom said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    The mean of the last 9 polls is 9%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2021

    And let's see. That long slow slide is well underway. I predict that the latest shambolic week, and England's defeat last Sunday and evaporation of 'football's coming home' euphoric hype, will see Mr Johnson's Conservative lead dip even further into the 4-5% range.

    They were sensationally defeated in their Chesham & Amersham southern heartland and they failed to win Batley & Spen, much to the surprise of political commentators.



    Continually pumping out the same rubbish every day. Always suspicious of these new accounts. The Tories have been steady in the early 40s for a long time now. Not sure where you think these Tory votes will disappear to right now unless you know something about the Reform Party the rest of us don’t.
    Relatively long standing accounts are perfectly capable of pumping out the same rubbish every day.
    What an admission :smile:
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,744
    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    Morning all.

    FPT:

    To go back to the German floods, it looks like as well as digging a massive sand quarry on a flood plain, there was also a coal mine:
    https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/imgs/48/1/1/0/7/7/6/8/8/9/tok_07f1bf0b460f5adc5135a1e97dadbb86/w1900_h766_x1796_y725_ZVA_mdb_27252829424978345-6cc816303862f785.jpg

    This is a very large mine and you have to wonder if any coal fired power stations might go short. Buy Australian coal futures...

    When this happened in near Leeds it took years to pump it out.

    I wonder if that mine will reopen, given that this is just before an election ? Is this going to give Bouncing Baerbock a bounce in the polls?

    In Australia terms I think a change in German coal production will not have a material impact on the market - unless that mine is say 10% of production, or dominant in one specialist product.

    Pollution wise, Germany's coal production currently makes them one of the 4 dirty men of Europe - Ukraine, Poland and Russia being the others.

    I think they will pivot the regional economy instead.
    It will make bugger all difference to Australian coal market prices, as it's the middle of summer, photovoltaic output is strong and German electricity demand is likely to be reduced by the flooding too...

    If this had happened in winter, especially if it had coincided with a period of low winds, it would have been a very different story.

    "Bugger all"

    That's with .. as "Cactus Jack" John Nance Garner used to .. the husk off.

    As far as I am aware, the only US President from the Red River Valley .

    :smile:
    Ummm - he was never President. He was Vice President to Roosevelt in his first two terms.
  • I think Mike's quite right (once again) that part of the problem was Boris Johnson's vanity in making such a big thing of Freedom Day. He wanted to give one of his blustering farty "Churchillian" speeches at a venue of historic pride and significance. He's now been forced to backtrack because of the facts that not even he can quite manage to lie about.

    He's an idiot.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765

    IanB2 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    Because we are trapped inside a political system specifically designed to close off the chance of any new choices and because the opposition we are lumbered with is even more f*****g useless than the government.
    . And the third "choice" is even more useless. A few diehards, but noone would trust the Lib Dems in Govt post brexit... on reflection noone has trusted them in Govt as they were wiped out post coalition. They are destined for the odd "Orpington" and a few cheers on local election days.
    The latest opinion polling on the EU is 55% in favour, 45% against our decision to leave.

    The LibDems performed less well in 2019 for a number of reasons, not least the weakness of the then leader. Ed Davey is a more effective operator and much more trustworthy in the eyes of voters.

    We have this extraordinary tendency for recency bias. You can see it in Brom's snide post, and you can see it time and again amongst others on here. It runs like this: because the tories won in 2019 and have 'consistently' polled in the 40's ergo they will continue to do so.

    Great political commentators and even better political gamblers know how to read the runes ahead of the event. Like Mike Smithson (Chesham & Amersham, Batley & Spen) they correctly spot the trends when others (including scoffers on here) do not.

    The long slow slide of Boris Johnson is underway. The tories, especially after this past week, will soon start to see poll ratings in the high 30's. You mark my words.
    I've yet to see any poll which shows 55% in favour of EU membership.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    The problem the Prime Minister faces is that political rhetoric, spin and friends in the media do not work when it comes to coronavirus.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081
    19.5 C in my garden at 0700. Highest ever recorded ;)
  • Cocky_cockneyCocky_cockney Posts: 760
    edited July 2021
    Sean_F said:

    IanB2 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    Because we are trapped inside a political system specifically designed to close off the chance of any new choices and because the opposition we are lumbered with is even more f*****g useless than the government.
    . And the third "choice" is even more useless. A few diehards, but noone would trust the Lib Dems in Govt post brexit... on reflection noone has trusted them in Govt as they were wiped out post coalition. They are destined for the odd "Orpington" and a few cheers on local election days.
    The latest opinion polling on the EU is 55% in favour, 45% against our decision to leave.

    The LibDems performed less well in 2019 for a number of reasons, not least the weakness of the then leader. Ed Davey is a more effective operator and much more trustworthy in the eyes of voters.

    We have this extraordinary tendency for recency bias. You can see it in Brom's snide post, and you can see it time and again amongst others on here. It runs like this: because the tories won in 2019 and have 'consistently' polled in the 40's ergo they will continue to do so.

    Great political commentators and even better political gamblers know how to read the runes ahead of the event. Like Mike Smithson (Chesham & Amersham, Batley & Spen) they correctly spot the trends when others (including scoffers on here) do not.

    The long slow slide of Boris Johnson is underway. The tories, especially after this past week, will soon start to see poll ratings in the high 30's. You mark my words.
    I've yet to see any poll which shows 55% in favour of EU membership.
    Neither have I.

    But I have seen 55% against our decision to leave, which is how I phrased it.

    I think there's an important difference. A majority think it was a mistake but that doesn't mean the same number would want to go through all that aggro again in order to rejoin. What is done is done. I'd like to say 'for good or ill' but the good is rapidly evaporating.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,065
    IanB2 said:

    19.5 C in my garden at 0700. Highest ever recorded ;)

    It's going to be a scorcher. I am off to take the hound out before it reaches boiling point.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Jonathan said:

    The problem the Prime Minister faces is that political rhetoric, spin and friends in the media do not work when it comes to coronavirus.

    Or Brexit. They worked on the voters, but they don't fill the trucks or sort out the paperwork...
  • Scott_xP said:

    Jonathan said:

    The problem the Prime Minister faces is that political rhetoric, spin and friends in the media do not work when it comes to coronavirus.

    Or Brexit. They worked on the voters, but they don't fill the trucks or sort out the paperwork...
    This is evidently true. Foxy posted the same below.

    We have significant Brexit problems at the moment and most commentators, including in newspapers like the Telegraph, argue that they are only going to get worse.

    Brexiteers will either pretend they don't exist, which is increasingly impossible, or hope they will be resolved in a relatively short amount of time.

    But the idea that Brexit is behind us (Robert) is risible. We're currently going through the rockiest part.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Scott_xP said:

    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html

    That’s the same Dan Hodges who has spent the last month calling it irresponsible to be lifting the remaining restrictions?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081
    edited July 2021
    MattW said:

    Fishing said:

    rcs1000 said:

    FPT:

    The country needs a good opposition, so even though I don't want Starmer to win, I hope you're right and this is a good and significant move.

    But I won't be holding my breath. How many MPs who currently hold the whip will lose it? Will Burgon? Rebecca Long Bailey? Diane Abbott? Ian Lavery? John McDonnell? Kate Osamor? Zarah Sultana? Claudia Webbe? Etc

    If so then it will be a real and significant purge of the far left. Otherwise if its just a lot of people nobody has ever heard of from Twitter while the big names get left behind then its a meaningless gesture.
    Taking a leaf out of Johnson's playbook. Johnson of course, also ejected the far left from his party, before a magnificent victory at the next GE.
    Absolutely. Johnson expelling the troublemakers from his party ensured the party was fit to win the victory and also ensured he was capable of governing following the victory, since many of them would have been a permanent 'gaukeward squad' had they been left to wallow on the backbenches.
    Yup they're governing brilliantly
    Yep. 😀
    You can't genuinely in good conscience believe they're governing well. You can rightfully - if incorrectly in my view - think Labour would do worse but you have to be insane to think they're governing well.

    Johnson's speech with nothing in it sums up this government for me. No vision, no ideology, out of ideas.
    Like every government, the Johnson administration has done some things well, and other things poorly. There are a number of things that - at the time - I thought were mistakes, and which I now think were correct. And there are probably things which I liked, but I now think probably weren't the right decision.

    So...

    In the positive column, the UK invested early in vaccines at scale, and Brexit is now behind us. Liz Truss has done a good job at International Development, and we're in good shape for the next five years.

    The "levelling up" strategy is also clearly the right thing (morally) to do, and full credit to the Government for not pandering to its Southern supporters.

    Against that, I continue to be disappointed by the excessive willingness of Johnson to back people, even when they're in the wrong. I also think it was a mistake to return Patel to the Cabinet, given her behaviour when she lied not once, but twice, to the Prime Minister.

    The Cabinet is also - to my mind - too much made up of Johnson lackeys, rather than being the most talented people in the Commons. (The return of Saj is a welcome sign that this may be coming to an end.)

    So, I'd give them 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I'd rate them above Brown or May, but below Blair (1997-2001) and Thatcher.
    I think that's fair, but a little too generous. On supporting the north, well, time will tell, but I remain to be convinced that throwing yet more public money at a region that already takes vastly more than its fair share of it will yield results. Grasping the nettle and admitting that much of the north is unviable and encouraging labour mobility to the south might have been better. However, if in 20 years we have a flourishing north, (and/or if it keeps returning Conservative MPs) noone will be happier than me to have been proved wrong.

    The extent to which they are caving in to their southern NIMBY supporters on planning, and also to the big builders by not encouraging self-build enough is also disappointing.

    That their only impulse with economic problems is to shovel taxpayers' money at them is also disappointing, and may be disastrous in the long term.

    But, in Europe and COVID, they have confronted two challenges that would have broken many other governments (indeed Europe certainly did) and done a reasonable if not stellar job on both overall.

    So I'd given them 5.5 or 6 out of 10.

    Oh, and I think you far overrate Tony Blair, who in his first term had an incredibly easy ride both politically, with a huge majority and a fawning press, and economically, with a golden legacy from the Conservatives.
    A couple of interesting points from @Fishing .

    The argument for the North taking "vastly more than its share of public money" seems like a tough one to make stick to me. Just look, for example, at relative regional investment in transport per pop for the last 2 decades.

    On self-build, it already gets quite a lot of support - eg zero rated VAT on your supplies, and exemption from Community Infrastructure Levy. I'm trying to get hold of some numbers, but by my initial estimate that might be worth 20-30k or more on a 500k project.

    I think one issue with "self-build" is that it is an activity for wealthier people - you need to have, or be able to raise, perhaps 300-600k for even a normal modest project. And 100k-200k of that would normally need to be free savings.

    The cheap route onto the property ladder is what it always was - a doer-upper 2 bed terrace or poor condition flat.
    Such analyses are generally futile as they depend on what you take as a given. For example you could look at Stamp Duty and suggest that the property market in the South is carrying the bulk of the tax burden. But if you consider that allowing mortgage interest as a taxable deduction for very many years (for landlords until recently and for individuals if you go back in history) is effectively a government subsidy, suddenly things look completely different.

    If you look at the state of public services and infrastructure across much of the North, it is hard to argue that they haven’t had a bad deal.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    edited July 2021
    Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html

    That’s the same Dan Hodges who has spent the last month calling it irresponsible to be lifting the remaining restrictions?
    It's often hard to keep up with what some people are complaining about. Either there are too few restrictions or too many, and quite often the same person will make both arguments.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081

    Scott_xP said:

    Jonathan said:

    The problem the Prime Minister faces is that political rhetoric, spin and friends in the media do not work when it comes to coronavirus.

    Or Brexit. They worked on the voters, but they don't fill the trucks or sort out the paperwork...
    This is evidently true. Foxy posted the same below.

    We have significant Brexit problems at the moment and most commentators, including in newspapers like the Telegraph, argue that they are only going to get worse.

    Brexiteers will either pretend they don't exist, which is increasingly impossible, or hope they will be resolved in a relatively short amount of time.

    But the idea that Brexit is behind us (Robert) is risible. We're currently going through the rockiest part.
    Leavers are lucky that the damage is going to be swamped or hidden by or misinterpreted as consequences of the pandemic.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081
    ydoethur said:

    Test and Trace Are Fecking Useless example 2074b:

    Covid: Ministers wait to hear if they face quarantine after Javid tests positive
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-5787737

    If they can’t even trace the movements of their own boss, they might as well shut up shop.

    Was it £37 billion we spent on this? For half that money, we could have opened ‘Nightingale Schools’ and reduced class sizes by 40%, which would have had a far more dramatic effect on transmission than a series of billion pound bungs to utter failures like Dido Harding.

    You haven’t allowed for the opportunity benefit that if she wasn’t running T&T she’d have been put in charge of something else…
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,703
    The final paragraph is very pertinent and I agree that this will come back to haunt him.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081
    Scott_xP said:

    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html

    At least we are spared his planned Churchill impression.

    ‘We shall isolate on the beaches, we shall isolate in the hills…’
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Betting Post

    FPT

    F1: backed Hamilton at around 4 on Betfair to lead lap 1. He got very close to reclaiming his place in the sprint, and can do it either off the line or on the straight where the Mercedes looks superfast.

    Full pre-race ramble here; https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2021/07/uk-pre-race-2021.html
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    To misquote Reagan to sum up current right wing attitudes on Coronavirus.

    “It isn't so much that they are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”
  • IanB2 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html

    At least we are spared his planned Churchill impression.

    ‘We shall isolate on the beaches, we shall isolate in the hills…’
    :smiley:
  • murali_smurali_s Posts: 3,037
    IanB2 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html

    At least we are spared his planned Churchill impression.

    ‘We shall isolate on the beaches, we shall isolate in the hills…’
    LOL
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,744
    IanB2 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html

    At least we are spared his planned Churchill impression.

    ‘We shall isolate on the beaches, we shall isolate in the hills…’
    We shall use masks with growing strength and growing confidence to block the air...
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,081
    edited July 2021
    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    Morning all.

    FPT:

    To go back to the German floods, it looks like as well as digging a massive sand quarry on a flood plain, there was also a coal mine:
    https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/imgs/48/1/1/0/7/7/6/8/8/9/tok_07f1bf0b460f5adc5135a1e97dadbb86/w1900_h766_x1796_y725_ZVA_mdb_27252829424978345-6cc816303862f785.jpg

    This is a very large mine and you have to wonder if any coal fired power stations might go short. Buy Australian coal futures...

    When this happened in near Leeds it took years to pump it out.

    I wonder if that mine will reopen, given that this is just before an election ? Is this going to give Bouncing Baerbock a bounce in the polls?

    In Australia terms I think a change in German coal production will not have a material impact on the market - unless that mine is say 10% of production, or dominant in one specialist product.

    Pollution wise, Germany's coal production currently makes them one of the 4 dirty men of Europe - Ukraine, Poland and Russia being the others.

    I think they will pivot the regional economy instead.
    It will make bugger all difference to Australian coal market prices, as it's the middle of summer, photovoltaic output is strong and German electricity demand is likely to be reduced by the flooding too...

    If this had happened in winter, especially if it had coincided with a period of low winds, it would have been a very different story.

    "Bugger all"

    That's with .. as "Cactus Jack" John Nance Garner used to .. the husk off.

    As far as I am aware, the only US President from the Red River Valley .

    :smile:
    Ummm - he was never President. He was Vice President to Roosevelt in his first two terms.
    True.

    Missed out "vice".

    Point of Order conceded.

    It is still a good quote.
  • murali_smurali_s Posts: 3,037
    edited July 2021

    Scott_xP said:

    Jonathan said:

    The problem the Prime Minister faces is that political rhetoric, spin and friends in the media do not work when it comes to coronavirus.

    Or Brexit. They worked on the voters, but they don't fill the trucks or sort out the paperwork...
    This is evidently true. Foxy posted the same below.

    We have significant Brexit problems at the moment and most commentators, including in newspapers like the Telegraph, argue that they are only going to get worse.

    Brexiteers will either pretend they don't exist, which is increasingly impossible, or hope they will be resolved in a relatively short amount of time.

    But the idea that Brexit is behind us (Robert) is risible. We're currently going through the rockiest part.
    Indeed.

    Brexit is Brexshit.

    I really don't know what Robert is on. 7/10 for Boris. LOL.

    2/10 is generous to this wretched PM and Government.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,081
    IanB2 said:

    MattW said:

    Fishing said:

    rcs1000 said:

    FPT:

    The country needs a good opposition, so even though I don't want Starmer to win, I hope you're right and this is a good and significant move.

    But I won't be holding my breath. How many MPs who currently hold the whip will lose it? Will Burgon? Rebecca Long Bailey? Diane Abbott? Ian Lavery? John McDonnell? Kate Osamor? Zarah Sultana? Claudia Webbe? Etc

    If so then it will be a real and significant purge of the far left. Otherwise if its just a lot of people nobody has ever heard of from Twitter while the big names get left behind then its a meaningless gesture.
    Taking a leaf out of Johnson's playbook. Johnson of course, also ejected the far left from his party, before a magnificent victory at the next GE.
    Absolutely. Johnson expelling the troublemakers from his party ensured the party was fit to win the victory and also ensured he was capable of governing following the victory, since many of them would have been a permanent 'gaukeward squad' had they been left to wallow on the backbenches.
    Yup they're governing brilliantly
    Yep. 😀
    You can't genuinely in good conscience believe they're governing well. You can rightfully - if incorrectly in my view - think Labour would do worse but you have to be insane to think they're governing well.

    Johnson's speech with nothing in it sums up this government for me. No vision, no ideology, out of ideas.
    Like every government, the Johnson administration has done some things well, and other things poorly. There are a number of things that - at the time - I thought were mistakes, and which I now think were correct. And there are probably things which I liked, but I now think probably weren't the right decision.

    So...

    In the positive column, the UK invested early in vaccines at scale, and Brexit is now behind us. Liz Truss has done a good job at International Development, and we're in good shape for the next five years.

    The "levelling up" strategy is also clearly the right thing (morally) to do, and full credit to the Government for not pandering to its Southern supporters.

    Against that, I continue to be disappointed by the excessive willingness of Johnson to back people, even when they're in the wrong. I also think it was a mistake to return Patel to the Cabinet, given her behaviour when she lied not once, but twice, to the Prime Minister.

    The Cabinet is also - to my mind - too much made up of Johnson lackeys, rather than being the most talented people in the Commons. (The return of Saj is a welcome sign that this may be coming to an end.)

    So, I'd give them 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I'd rate them above Brown or May, but below Blair (1997-2001) and Thatcher.
    I think that's fair, but a little too generous. On supporting the north, well, time will tell, but I remain to be convinced that throwing yet more public money at a region that already takes vastly more than its fair share of it will yield results. Grasping the nettle and admitting that much of the north is unviable and encouraging labour mobility to the south might have been better. However, if in 20 years we have a flourishing north, (and/or if it keeps returning Conservative MPs) noone will be happier than me to have been proved wrong.

    The extent to which they are caving in to their southern NIMBY supporters on planning, and also to the big builders by not encouraging self-build enough is also disappointing.

    That their only impulse with economic problems is to shovel taxpayers' money at them is also disappointing, and may be disastrous in the long term.

    But, in Europe and COVID, they have confronted two challenges that would have broken many other governments (indeed Europe certainly did) and done a reasonable if not stellar job on both overall.

    So I'd given them 5.5 or 6 out of 10.

    Oh, and I think you far overrate Tony Blair, who in his first term had an incredibly easy ride both politically, with a huge majority and a fawning press, and economically, with a golden legacy from the Conservatives.
    A couple of interesting points from @Fishing .

    The argument for the North taking "vastly more than its share of public money" seems like a tough one to make stick to me. Just look, for example, at relative regional investment in transport per pop for the last 2 decades.

    On self-build, it already gets quite a lot of support - eg zero rated VAT on your supplies, and exemption from Community Infrastructure Levy. I'm trying to get hold of some numbers, but by my initial estimate that might be worth 20-30k or more on a 500k project.

    I think one issue with "self-build" is that it is an activity for wealthier people - you need to have, or be able to raise, perhaps 300-600k for even a normal modest project. And 100k-200k of that would normally need to be free savings.

    The cheap route onto the property ladder is what it always was - a doer-upper 2 bed terrace or poor condition flat.
    Such analyses are generally futile as they depend on what you take as a given. For example you could look at Stamp Duty and suggest that the property market in the South is carrying the bulk of the tax burden. But if you consider that allowing mortgage interest as a taxable deduction for very many years (for landlords until recently and for individuals if you go back in history) is effectively a government subsidy, suddenly things look completely different.

    If you look at the state of public services and infrastructure across much of the North, it is hard to argue that they haven’t had a bad deal.
    Excellent points.

    I happen to be a moderator on a self-build forum, so I'm just collecting some real numbers as to how much some people are saving by exemptions- obvs indicative only, but valid.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,744
    edited July 2021
    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    Morning all.

    FPT:

    To go back to the German floods, it looks like as well as digging a massive sand quarry on a flood plain, there was also a coal mine:
    https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/imgs/48/1/1/0/7/7/6/8/8/9/tok_07f1bf0b460f5adc5135a1e97dadbb86/w1900_h766_x1796_y725_ZVA_mdb_27252829424978345-6cc816303862f785.jpg

    This is a very large mine and you have to wonder if any coal fired power stations might go short. Buy Australian coal futures...

    When this happened in near Leeds it took years to pump it out.

    I wonder if that mine will reopen, given that this is just before an election ? Is this going to give Bouncing Baerbock a bounce in the polls?

    In Australia terms I think a change in German coal production will not have a material impact on the market - unless that mine is say 10% of production, or dominant in one specialist product.

    Pollution wise, Germany's coal production currently makes them one of the 4 dirty men of Europe - Ukraine, Poland and Russia being the others.

    I think they will pivot the regional economy instead.
    It will make bugger all difference to Australian coal market prices, as it's the middle of summer, photovoltaic output is strong and German electricity demand is likely to be reduced by the flooding too...

    If this had happened in winter, especially if it had coincided with a period of low winds, it would have been a very different story.

    "Bugger all"

    That's with .. as "Cactus Jack" John Nance Garner used to .. the husk off.

    As far as I am aware, the only US President from the Red River Valley .

    :smile:
    Ummm - he was never President. He was Vice President to Roosevelt in his first two terms.
    True.

    Missed out "vice".

    Point of Order conceded.

    It is still a good quote.
    He was also (to be really picky) from Red River County in Texas, not the Red River Valley which forms the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota.

    But yes, it is still a good quote.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    IanB2 said:

    Johnson never thinks or plans ahead, but simply says whatever makes his current situation sound the best, and relies upon his lifetime’s experience of winging everything to be able to extricate himself should anything he says or does subsequently prove unwise.

    So we have ‘Freedom Day’ tomorrow with a lot of people unhappy that we won’t really be free and another lot of people calling for continued restrictions.

    Also remember how it was that we came to be awash in this Indian variant in the first place….

    Delta is everywhere in the world. There is no decision taken that if made differently would have stopped it. Without wanting to rehash the old India trade argument, we would have had delta sooner or later, and frankly our huge Indian diaspora made put us in the firing line first, but we will get through it faster too.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    Morning all. However bad it gets. However hamfisted and stupid he is. The PM Clown Apologists will still come on and insist He is resplendent in his new clothes and that we definitely can't all see his cock.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,081
    edited July 2021
    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    Morning all.

    FPT:

    To go back to the German floods, it looks like as well as digging a massive sand quarry on a flood plain, there was also a coal mine:
    https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/imgs/48/1/1/0/7/7/6/8/8/9/tok_07f1bf0b460f5adc5135a1e97dadbb86/w1900_h766_x1796_y725_ZVA_mdb_27252829424978345-6cc816303862f785.jpg

    This is a very large mine and you have to wonder if any coal fired power stations might go short. Buy Australian coal futures...

    When this happened in near Leeds it took years to pump it out.

    I wonder if that mine will reopen, given that this is just before an election ? Is this going to give Bouncing Baerbock a bounce in the polls?

    In Australia terms I think a change in German coal production will not have a material impact on the market - unless that mine is say 10% of production, or dominant in one specialist product.

    Pollution wise, Germany's coal production currently makes them one of the 4 dirty men of Europe - Ukraine, Poland and Russia being the others.

    I think they will pivot the regional economy instead.
    It will make bugger all difference to Australian coal market prices, as it's the middle of summer, photovoltaic output is strong and German electricity demand is likely to be reduced by the flooding too...

    If this had happened in winter, especially if it had coincided with a period of low winds, it would have been a very different story.

    "Bugger all"

    That's with .. as "Cactus Jack" John Nance Garner used to .. the husk off.

    As far as I am aware, the only US President from the Red River Valley .

    :smile:
    Ummm - he was never President. He was Vice President to Roosevelt in his first two terms.
    True.

    Missed out "vice".

    Point of Order conceded.

    It is still a good quote.
    He was also (to be really picky) from Red River County in Texas, not the Red River Valley which forms the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota.

    But yes, it is still a good quote.
    Now that *is* picky.

    I'm relying on there being a valley in the relevant bit of Texas :smile:

    In mitigation, I restrained myself from posting a link to Roy Rogers the Singing Cowboy performing the song.

    Here you go:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocd72uNPiFY
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,081
    edited July 2021
    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html

    At least we are spared his planned Churchill impression.

    ‘We shall isolate on the beaches, we shall isolate in the hills…’
    We shall use masks with growing strength and growing confidence to block the air...
    ...We willl never be free
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    Ironically Boris is following a Chamberlainesque policy of policy of appeasement with the virus.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 38,879
    Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html

    That’s the same Dan Hodges who has spent the last month calling it irresponsible to be lifting the remaining restrictions?
    Nope - it's the one who has been fully supportive of it.

  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited July 2021

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    Test and Trace Are Fecking Useless example 2074b:

    Installed the App a year ago, deleted it 24 hours later. Best decision on covid I took.

    I could see what was coming ...
    If you deleted it immediately, how can you know?

    How can I know what? That it was the best decision? Because of the shitshow that has unfolded since. The Pingdemic was an obvious nightmare waiting to happen.

    It runs deeper than this though for me. It's what the Pingdemic is a symptom of: a deeper malaise which I realised within hours of installing the bloody thing:

    It's menacingly invasive. It tracks you everywhere. It, effectively, spies on you. To me it was evidently part of Government control. The dystopian Big Brother that Boris Johnson so loves.
    You do know that the Government has no access to the app, right? In fact the very fact it is anonymous means that people can actually claim that they have been pinged whenever they want a couple of paid days off work. It's not even like people have to commit to 10 days. Depending on the day of contact it can be anywhere from 1 to 10
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,065
    edited July 2021
    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    Morning all.

    FPT:

    To go back to the German floods, it looks like as well as digging a massive sand quarry on a flood plain, there was also a coal mine:
    https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/imgs/48/1/1/0/7/7/6/8/8/9/tok_07f1bf0b460f5adc5135a1e97dadbb86/w1900_h766_x1796_y725_ZVA_mdb_27252829424978345-6cc816303862f785.jpg

    This is a very large mine and you have to wonder if any coal fired power stations might go short. Buy Australian coal futures...

    When this happened in near Leeds it took years to pump it out.

    I wonder if that mine will reopen, given that this is just before an election ? Is this going to give Bouncing Baerbock a bounce in the polls?

    In Australia terms I think a change in German coal production will not have a material impact on the market - unless that mine is say 10% of production, or dominant in one specialist product.

    Pollution wise, Germany's coal production currently makes them one of the 4 dirty men of Europe - Ukraine, Poland and Russia being the others.

    I think they will pivot the regional economy instead.
    It will make bugger all difference to Australian coal market prices, as it's the middle of summer, photovoltaic output is strong and German electricity demand is likely to be reduced by the flooding too...

    If this had happened in winter, especially if it had coincided with a period of low winds, it would have been a very different story.

    "Bugger all"

    That's with .. as "Cactus Jack" John Nance Garner used to .. the husk off.

    As far as I am aware, the only US President from the Red River Valley .

    :smile:
    Ummm - he was never President. He was Vice President to Roosevelt in his first two terms.
    True.

    Missed out "vice".

    Point of Order conceded.

    It is still a good quote.
    He was also (to be really picky) from Red River County in Texas, not the Red River Valley which forms the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota.

    But yes, it is still a good quote.
    Now that *is* picky.

    I'm relying on there being a valley in the relevant bit of Texas :smile:

    In mitigation, I restrained myself from posting a link to Roy Rogers the Singing Cowboy performing the song.

    Here you go:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocd72uNPiFY
    Red River County is on the Red River itself, so would seem to have a degree of hills and valleys, in this picture. I note how the population is a third of what it was in 1920. It depopulated in the dustbowl I suppose.






  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited July 2021
    re:polling. It is very dangerous for any Government to be relying on the "voters haven't got anywhere else to go argument". Because one day they might just decide that, if they haven't got anywhere else to go, that they just won't go anywhere.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    edited July 2021
    ‘A quarantine dodge by Boris Johnson after meeting COVID-positive Sajid Javid would unleash a massive 'do as I say, not as I do' row‘
    The timing could hardly be worse. A little more than 24 hours before what he used to call Freedom Day, Boris Johnson is under pressure to self-isolate.

    [Mr Javid] has had two jabs, both Oxford AstraZeneca.

    While the PM will no doubt be angry and frustrated at being "pinged", there are worse places to self-isolate than the 16th-century grace-and-favour mansion in the beautiful rolling countryside of the Chiltern Hills.

    "If Boris doesn't isolate and uses this 'pilot scheme', I will be encouraging my constituents to do the same," one unnamed Tory MP was quoted as saying. "There cannot be one rule for us and one for everyone else."


    https://news.sky.com/story/amp/covid-19-a-quarantine-dodge-by-boris-johnson-after-meeting-covid-positive-sajid-javid-would-unleash-a-massive-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do-row-12358112
    “Unnamed Tory MP. Ho ho. Next PM market:

    Rishi Sunak 14/5
    Michael Gove 10/1
    Jeremy Hunt 12/1
    Dominic Raab 20/1

    Spot the sneak.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Alex, aye.

    Sooner or later, electoral winter is coming.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,744

    Mr. Alex, aye.

    Sooner or later, electoral winter is coming.

    It will be stark, and will in in a Frey.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,081
    edited July 2021
    Foxy said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    Morning all.

    FPT:

    To go back to the German floods, it looks like as well as digging a massive sand quarry on a flood plain, there was also a coal mine:
    https://www.aachener-zeitung.de/imgs/48/1/1/0/7/7/6/8/8/9/tok_07f1bf0b460f5adc5135a1e97dadbb86/w1900_h766_x1796_y725_ZVA_mdb_27252829424978345-6cc816303862f785.jpg

    This is a very large mine and you have to wonder if any coal fired power stations might go short. Buy Australian coal futures...

    When this happened in near Leeds it took years to pump it out.

    I wonder if that mine will reopen, given that this is just before an election ? Is this going to give Bouncing Baerbock a bounce in the polls?

    In Australia terms I think a change in German coal production will not have a material impact on the market - unless that mine is say 10% of production, or dominant in one specialist product.

    Pollution wise, Germany's coal production currently makes them one of the 4 dirty men of Europe - Ukraine, Poland and Russia being the others.

    I think they will pivot the regional economy instead.
    It will make bugger all difference to Australian coal market prices, as it's the middle of summer, photovoltaic output is strong and German electricity demand is likely to be reduced by the flooding too...

    If this had happened in winter, especially if it had coincided with a period of low winds, it would have been a very different story.

    "Bugger all"

    That's with .. as "Cactus Jack" John Nance Garner used to .. the husk off.

    As far as I am aware, the only US President from the Red River Valley .

    :smile:
    Ummm - he was never President. He was Vice President to Roosevelt in his first two terms.
    True.

    Missed out "vice".

    Point of Order conceded.

    It is still a good quote.
    He was also (to be really picky) from Red River County in Texas, not the Red River Valley which forms the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota.

    But yes, it is still a good quote.
    Now that *is* picky.

    I'm relying on there being a valley in the relevant bit of Texas :smile:

    In mitigation, I restrained myself from posting a link to Roy Rogers the Singing Cowboy performing the song.

    Here you go:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocd72uNPiFY
    Red River County is on the Red River itself, so would seem to have a degree of hills and valleys, in this picture. I note how the population is a third of what it was in 1920. It depopulated in the dustbowl I suppose.






    Camden? Can we send @SeanT there? Since there's also El Dorado, he can make a one man Panto Soap Opera.

    Cheers.

    Things to do.

    Exiting rabbithole :smile:
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Doethur, it'll be a nice day for a... red wedding.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    ‘A quarantine dodge by Boris Johnson after meeting COVID-positive Sajid Javid would unleash a massive 'do as I say, not as I do' row‘

    The timing could hardly be worse. A little more than 24 hours before what he used to call Freedom Day, Boris Johnson is under pressure to self-isolate.

    [Mr Javid] has had two jabs, both Oxford AstraZeneca.

    While the PM will no doubt be angry and frustrated at being "pinged", there are worse places to self-isolate than the 16th-century grace-and-favour mansion in the beautiful rolling countryside of the Chiltern Hills.

    "If Boris doesn't isolate and uses this 'pilot scheme', I will be encouraging my constituents to do the same," one unnamed Tory MP was quoted as saying. "There cannot be one rule for us and one for everyone else."

    “Unnamed Tory MP. Ho ho. Next PM market:

    Rishi Sunak 14/5
    Michael Gove 10/1
    Jeremy Hunt 12/1
    Dominic Raab 20/1

    Spot the sneak.
    Seems to me that the "pilot" scheme is likely to be a lot better and more effective scheme than the current situation. So if everyone starts doing it instead then IMO that would be a good thing...
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,287

    Brom said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only someone who doesn't live here could claim this Government are doing well.

    It's an absolute shambles right now.

    And crowing about our vaccine success over Europe (Fishing) is rapidly coming undone. European countries are starting to fare far better on case rates, morbidity and vaccinations. The UK's decision not to vaccinated under-18's is unbelievably stupid. A disastrous mistake.

    In my lifetime the only other Government that competes with this one on shambles is Callaghan's during the Winter of Discontent. Not even Major's 1992-7 farce comes close, nor the Remainer Parliament of 2017-19.

    That's how bad things are.

    Why are they still 10% ahead in most polls?
    The mean of the last 9 polls is 9%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2021

    And let's see. That long slow slide is well underway. I predict that the latest shambolic week, and England's defeat last Sunday and evaporation of 'football's coming home' euphoric hype, will see Mr Johnson's Conservative lead dip even further into the 4-5% range.

    They were sensationally defeated in their Chesham & Amersham southern heartland and they failed to win Batley & Spen, much to the surprise of political commentators.



    Continually pumping out the same rubbish every day. Always suspicious of these new accounts. The Tories have been steady in the early 40s for a long time now. Not sure where you think these Tory votes will disappear to right now unless you know something about the Reform Party the rest of us don’t.
    Relatively long standing accounts are perfectly capable of pumping out the same rubbish every day.
    You seem to have managed to do so ....
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    edited July 2021
    FTPT

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Alistair said:

    I see Bolton now has 2 days of cases above their May 7-day average peak.

    The mathematically impossible has happened!

    Eh?

    Who claimed it was mathematically impossible for cases to be above May peaks?

    Delta is highly transmissable. Schools are (or were) operating normally. And children are unvaccinated.

    The question is what happens next, now that schools break up, the weather has improved and the Euros are behind us.
    That fact that Bolton peaked in May was used as extremely confident evidence that Delta had burned out fast.

    It had ripped through the remaining unvaccinated and that was it done. With increasing vaccination numbers there was no new people to infect and it was over. Delta had flared briefly and was gone with only faint echoes in the surrounding counties.

    Cases 100% deffo peaked at less than 10k.
    Are you really trying to compare individual days now with a weekly average in a different period ?

    Really ???
    How is Kirklees working out for you?

    Edit: thr implication is that the Bol on current 7 day average is going to rise pas the May "peak".
    Kirklees has significantly fewer cases now than it did last autumn:

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Kirklees

    Different places have different levels of cases and over different periods of time but its quite clear that nowhere goes exponential to infinity.
    Absolutely tremendous goalpost shifting.

    Just, Phenomenal.
    Look at the data and see the reality.

    You seem to be a bit bitter that things aren't bad enough.

    Strange. Very strange.
    You said "its bollox" that we'd get to 40,000 cases a day by July because of "the data from Bolton, Blackburn, Bedfordshire and Kirklees".

    I looked at the data (as you requested above) and saw the reality that new cases in Kirklees has gone vastly higher than when you said that and that Bolton and Bedfordshire's fall has stalled and in fact new cases have been increasing for the last month.

    And we are over 40,000 cases a day.

    Yet somehow you think your predictions were correct and you didn't pronounce too hastily given the data available?

    It's a view I suppose.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    IanB2 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Tomorrow was supposed to be Freedom Day. But at the moment of truth, Boris has lost his nerve > Mail On Sunday > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9798341/DAN-HODGES-Pushmi-pullyu-Boris-promised-freedom-ready-lockdown.html

    At least we are spared his planned Churchill impression.

    ‘We shall isolate on the beaches, we shall isolate in the hills…’
    This is not the beginning of the end.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,717
    alex_ said:

    ‘A quarantine dodge by Boris Johnson after meeting COVID-positive Sajid Javid would unleash a massive 'do as I say, not as I do' row‘

    The timing could hardly be worse. A little more than 24 hours before what he used to call Freedom Day, Boris Johnson is under pressure to self-isolate.

    [Mr Javid] has had two jabs, both Oxford AstraZeneca.

    While the PM will no doubt be angry and frustrated at being "pinged", there are worse places to self-isolate than the 16th-century grace-and-favour mansion in the beautiful rolling countryside of the Chiltern Hills.

    "If Boris doesn't isolate and uses this 'pilot scheme', I will be encouraging my constituents to do the same," one unnamed Tory MP was quoted as saying. "There cannot be one rule for us and one for everyone else."

    “Unnamed Tory MP. Ho ho. Next PM market:

    Rishi Sunak 14/5
    Michael Gove 10/1
    Jeremy Hunt 12/1
    Dominic Raab 20/1

    Spot the sneak.
    Seems to me that the "pilot" scheme is likely to be a lot better and more effective scheme than the current situation. So if everyone starts doing it instead then IMO that would be a good thing...
    Good morning everybody.

    How does one get on the 'pilot scheme'? As far as I can see it only applies to senior ministers.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    Breaking

    The PM and Chancellor have been contacted by track and trace and are to use contact testing pilot
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,081
    edited July 2021
    Totally off-topic without apology.

    Just came across a rather wonderful self-build rabbithole if anyone wants to lose half an hour over breakfast.

    All about how to fix timber cladding, screws, wood, finish, appearance. Brilliant read. The only thing not discussed in Shou-Sugi-Ban (scorched larch).

    LOL at how well it sticks to the wife too. She appears to have turned into a Zebra

    https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/21680-board-on-board-cladding-fixing-advice-critique/

    Now, back to my nettles and fencing.


  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    Colour me shocked. PM and chancellor have been pinged (assume by contact with the health secretary). Guess what, they will be partaking of the trial that means they don’t have to isolate...
    I will be deleting the ap today. This is the last straw. Feckers
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001

    From Guido - "Boris and Rishi pinged by test and trace, however are both participating in daily testing trial so will continue working in Downing Street"

    One rule for them, another for everyone else.

    Maybe time to extend it to everyone and to be honest I just do not understand why double vaccinated do not need to be isolating from the 16th August but do until then

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,744

    Colour me shocked. PM and chancellor have been pinged (assume by contact with the health secretary). Guess what, they will be partaking of the trial that means they don’t have to isolate...
    I will be deleting the ap today. This is the last straw. Feckers

    I deleted mine three weeks ago.

    But this is a total joke. What the hell are these stupid bastards thinking?

    If it works for them, who can work quite easily from home and still be paid, it can work for the rest of us - especially those on zero hours contracts who don’t get paid if they don’t work.

    And in that case, that should have been happening days ago.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 38,879
    edited July 2021
    The absolute contempt this government has for the British people is quite something. It believes it can do whatever it wants. Thanks to the triple lock and high house prices it probably can.
  • RazedabodeRazedabode Posts: 2,973
    So, who thinks people will continue to self isolate after this charade

    Totally expected - lost all moral credibility
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001

    Colour me shocked. PM and chancellor have been pinged (assume by contact with the health secretary). Guess what, they will be partaking of the trial that means they don’t have to isolate...
    I will be deleting the ap today. This is the last straw. Feckers

    I deleted it days ago as did my family and our WhatsApp group

    To be honest Boris and HMG deserve all the criticism they are receiving

    Their PR is worse than even Ratner
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,744

    So, who thinks people will continue to self isolate after this charade

    Totally expected - lost all moral credibility

    Actually, I have to disagree. That comment implies they had moral credibility and such is of course not the case.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,744

    Colour me shocked. PM and chancellor have been pinged (assume by contact with the health secretary). Guess what, they will be partaking of the trial that means they don’t have to isolate...
    I will be deleting the ap today. This is the last straw. Feckers

    I deleted it days ago as did my family and our WhatsApp group

    To be honest Boris and HMG deserve all the criticism they are receiving

    Their PR is worse than even Ratner
    If - as I expect - this turns into a PR disaster it also won’t look good for your favourite Sunak.

    Pile on Hunt to be next leader.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013

    From Guido - "Boris and Rishi pinged by test and trace, however are both participating in daily testing trial so will continue working in Downing Street"

    One rule for them, another for everyone else.

    and

    Colour me shocked. PM and chancellor have been pinged (assume by contact with the health secretary). Guess what, they will be partaking of the trial that means they don’t have to isolate...
    I will be deleting the ap today. This is the last straw. Feckers

    You have to ask just how dumb the clown and his advisers are. The pingdemic is causing absolute havoc. And here we have the PM not having to suffer like the plebs, doing a special "trial" of a "we are your betters know your place" process.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Doethur, aye, Sunak should voluntarily self-isolate.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    alex_ said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    Test and Trace Are Fecking Useless example 2074b:

    Installed the App a year ago, deleted it 24 hours later. Best decision on covid I took.

    I could see what was coming ...
    If you deleted it immediately, how can you know?

    How can I know what? That it was the best decision? Because of the shitshow that has unfolded since. The Pingdemic was an obvious nightmare waiting to happen.

    It runs deeper than this though for me. It's what the Pingdemic is a symptom of: a deeper malaise which I realised within hours of installing the bloody thing:

    It's menacingly invasive. It tracks you everywhere. It, effectively, spies on you. To me it was evidently part of Government control. The dystopian Big Brother that Boris Johnson so loves.
    You do know that the Government has no access to the app, right? In fact the very fact it is anonymous means that people can actually claim that they have been pinged whenever they want a couple of paid days off work. It's not even like people have to commit to 10 days. Depending on the day of contact it can be anywhere from 1 to 10
    The interesting thing was that, as I recall, they tried to build an app that they could control, but they failed so they had to use the off the shelf version built by tech companies which is anonymous.

    What they have built is not good for the current situation. It would work, potentially, at the very early stages of an outbreak of a severe infectious disease; but now they are trying to use it to control a virus that about 5% of the population may well currently be infected with, and for which there is something like a 99.97% survival rate. In doing so they are causing vast and pretty much unprecedented economic and social harm through the theatrics of self isolation, if this goes on for much longer the crisis will be existential.


  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    alex_ said:

    ‘A quarantine dodge by Boris Johnson after meeting COVID-positive Sajid Javid would unleash a massive 'do as I say, not as I do' row‘

    The timing could hardly be worse. A little more than 24 hours before what he used to call Freedom Day, Boris Johnson is under pressure to self-isolate.

    [Mr Javid] has had two jabs, both Oxford AstraZeneca.

    While the PM will no doubt be angry and frustrated at being "pinged", there are worse places to self-isolate than the 16th-century grace-and-favour mansion in the beautiful rolling countryside of the Chiltern Hills.

    "If Boris doesn't isolate and uses this 'pilot scheme', I will be encouraging my constituents to do the same," one unnamed Tory MP was quoted as saying. "There cannot be one rule for us and one for everyone else."

    “Unnamed Tory MP. Ho ho. Next PM market:

    Rishi Sunak 14/5
    Michael Gove 10/1
    Jeremy Hunt 12/1
    Dominic Raab 20/1

    Spot the sneak.
    Seems to me that the "pilot" scheme is likely to be a lot better and more effective scheme than the current situation. So if everyone starts doing it instead then IMO that would be a good thing...
    Good morning everybody.

    How does one get on the 'pilot scheme'? As far as I can see it only applies to senior ministers.
    I actually thought it was a ruse to cover up Gove’s superinjunction.
This discussion has been closed.