Why Tories, including the PM, have got to be careful with comments about the elderly – politicalbett

FrancisUrquhart said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Cookie said:

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

Sorry, missed your edits.

Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.

Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...

I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.

I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.

I reckon Asda will be the lowest.

RochdalePioneers said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Cookie said:

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

Sorry, missed your edits.

Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.

Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...

I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.

I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.

I reckon Asda will be the lowest.

Home Bargains

Alistair said:

LostPassword said:

rkrkrk said:

Philip_Thompson said:

rkrkrk said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sorry but its just not true that having a premature lockdown works and the SAGE experts are right on this, because the second that you lift a premature lockdown cases start rising again.

But the cases rise from a lower base, meaning you have fewer cases overall.
This is the key thing to understand -> an earlier lockdown means fewer cases.

No it doesn't, because they just restart rising with exponential growth.

Exponential growth means that whatever amount of cases you start with is pretty irrelevant, before long you end up back at high numbers again.

Unless you can find a way to break the back of exponential growth, then premature lockdowns are useless.

See this is where you're wrong.

Mathematical exercise for you:

Put 100 in a column in excel. Double it for five rows, then halve it.
Put 100 in a column in excel. Halve it. Then double it for five rows.

In both columns you will have the same number in the last row.

But the total will not be the same.

Yes, in theory, if you have the same number of lockdown weeks, but you have them earlier, then you have many fewer cases.

However, this assumes that the public will respond to the lockdown in the same way. There's a lot of evidence that they don't, that people make their own judgements based on perceived risk.

So the mathematical argument might not hold in reality.

You s but the point were making is that "exponential means you can't do anything" is not a good argument and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how numbers work

Pagan2 said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

There are already enough fights with doorman over not letting people in because they don't like the look of them or the venue is too full.

The government servers would be a prime target for mischief makers, they currently have to get their jollies disrupting on line game login servers. I suspect the vaxport servers and the idea they can ruin millions of peoples nights will be just too tempting.

Floater said:

Talking about Labour

https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1417354275777302529

" Got hold of Labour’s own Liverpool report ahead of NEC today. Here are the panel’s key findings (incl bullying, misogyny, toxic culture) and recommendations (“Nothing less than a full reset of the Labour Party in Liverpool is needed”):"

Fysics_Teacher said:

HYUFD said:

RochdalePioneers said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Boris Johnson to delay social care reform plans until autumn

Which autumn

The autumn he ceases being PM

Evidenced @HYUFD is not a complete Boris fanboy I think.

(And I think your are probably right).

eek said:

RochdalePioneers said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Cookie said:

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

Sorry, missed your edits.

Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.

Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...

I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.

I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.

I reckon Asda will be the lowest.

Home Bargains

The Range will be worse than Home Bargains.

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

HYUFD said:

RochdalePioneers said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Boris Johnson to delay social care reform plans until autumn

Which autumn

The autumn he ceases being PM

RochdalePioneers said:

bigjohnowls said:

RochdalePioneers said:

bigjohnowls said:

Bywire News™
@bywirenews
·
1h
NEW: Keir Starmer has almost bankrupted the Labour Party.

The party’s financial reserves are down to just one months’ payroll - with senior staff blaming a huge swathe of lost members and legal fees.

Labour were the richest party in Britain under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

So with a reduction in subs from fly by night Trots who have scabbed off, and a reduction in union subs from Red Len, Starmer needs to go after private sector benefactors. No problem.

He has being trying to make good the shortfall from wealthy individuals ever since he became leader.

Unsurprisingly he has failed as he inspires nobody but a few anti Corbyn cranks

I am sure the staff losing their jobs will be extremely impressed by the success of your plan.

He needs the donations to keep the staff. Should have done it earlier of course.

Your argument is well made though. Without Corbyn the party is bankrupt. Which is why there should be an amicable divorce - let Labour Against the Witchhunt and Corbyn and the anti-semites and Chris Williamson stay, and have Starmer and the members and the voters leave.

The negative is that you'll lose the handful of trot MPs like Sultana who stay with you. The positive is that you'll have a large pot of money to defend the party against the endless legal cases. Well, until its all spent of course.

FrancisUrquhart said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Gnud said:

Dominic Cummings is selling "subscriber rights", which will include the right to ask him questions online during the BBC broadcast this evening.

Just the right to ask, mind.

He is making himself totally unemployable isn't he.

Dominic Cummings' attraction is that he won the Brexit referendum. Some might say GE2019 as well but I expect there will be many claimants for that one. So if you want to hire him to win a specific campaign, why not?

You can subscribe to Cummings at Substack for £10 a month. It only needs a thousand or so subscribers before he matches whatever Boris paid him as Chief SpAd.

And how much money does the man need given his main leisure pursuit is reading?

I doubt 1000 people will be subscribed for very long....how many people want to pay month in month out to read 1000s of lines of poorly written prose, claiming they were always right inhindsight.

Cookie said:

Early stats from the Welsh looking surprisingly good: 555 positive tests, no deaths ,as against 737 positives and 1 death last week. First time for a while Wales has undershot its previous week. Early impact of schools breaking up?

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

MarqueeMark said:

Floater said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Cookie said:

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

Sorry, missed your edits.

Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.

Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...

I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.

I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.

I reckon Asda will be the lowest.

That was the supermarket that asked my son to mask up - my wife went into a different Asda yesterday wearing her mask (unprompted) - she said most people still were.

I shopped in the big M&S at Torquay yesterday - and only saw two people there without masks. And they were both heavily overweight young women. People who really wouldn't want to risk getting Covid.

The nearby paint merchant was also requiring masks "because our owners are Welsh and they are still in lockdown - so we are too".

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Sandpit said:

351,000 feet.

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Cookie said:

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

Sorry, missed your edits.

Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.

Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...

I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.

I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.

Mortimer said:

The nicest change I've noticed in the last couple of days is the fear/disgust/jealousy from those wearing masks towards those not wearing masks seems to have gone. I don't wear them in shops, nor do I require them in mine. People have IMO been too judgey over the past year. A return to tolerance would be a welcome move....

NickPalmer said:

Mortimer said:

The nicest change I've noticed in the last couple of days is the fear/disgust/jealousy from those wearing masks towards those not wearing masks seems to have gone. I don't wear them in shops, nor do I require them in mine. People have IMO been too judgey over the past year. A return to tolerance would be a welcome move....

Should cut both ways, shouldn't it? Philip sneering at Waitrose customers wearing masks because they're "notoriously pretentious" is a bit of unnecessary culture war.

Cookie said:

RochdalePioneers said:

bigjohnowls said:

RochdalePioneers said:

bigjohnowls said:

Bywire News™
@bywirenews
·
1h
NEW: Keir Starmer has almost bankrupted the Labour Party.

The party’s financial reserves are down to just one months’ payroll - with senior staff blaming a huge swathe of lost members and legal fees.

Labour were the richest party in Britain under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

So with a reduction in subs from fly by night Trots who have scabbed off, and a reduction in union subs from Red Len, Starmer needs to go after private sector benefactors. No problem.

He has being trying to make good the shortfall from wealthy individuals ever since he became leader.

Unsurprisingly he has failed as he inspires nobody but a few anti Corbyn cranks

I am sure the staff losing their jobs will be extremely impressed by the success of your plan.

He needs the donations to keep the staff. Should have done it earlier of course.

Your argument is well made though. Without Corbyn the party is bankrupt. Which is why there should be an amicable divorce - let Labour Against the Witchhunt and Corbyn and the anti-semites and Chris Williamson stay, and have Starmer and the members and the voters leave.

The negative is that you'll lose the handful of trot MPs like Sultana who stay with you. The positive is that you'll have a large pot of money to defend the party against the endless legal cases. Well, until its all spent of course.

Oh how I wish that would happen. A Labour party shorn of the likes of Williamson and Corbyn and Sultana and all the people who support them would be one I could support. It could certainly recapture the centre ground from the Tories. At the expense of losing the far left, of course, but I think the prize would be worth it.

I don't wish to be rude, Rochdale, but have you had some good news or something today? The tone of your posts is a bit different and more like the Rochdale of Teesside days. Apologies if I am reading too much into things.

Sandpit said:

They did it!

RochdalePioneers said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

https://twitter.com/novaramedia/status/1417475612210515973

No the Labour right just won three elections and put the most amount of money into the NHS ever, virtually eliminated homelessness and halved child poverty.

But no good! We must keep losing!

And yet Novara Media still has higher production values than GB News

Carnyx said:

Sandpit said:

At least today’s billionaires are interested in improving the state of technology. Awesome to watch.

There was a time they'd use a chimp. I suppose that's progress, at least from the ape's point of view.

turbotubbs said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Cookie said:

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

Sorry, missed your edits.

Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.

Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...

I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.

I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.

Waitrose is very middle class, and I expect most to carry on wearing masks. Other stores not so much.
Weirdly, I'm not so bothered about wearing one when it is voluntary, than I was when it was mandatory. I'm weird.

JosiasJessop said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

RochdalePioneers said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

https://twitter.com/novaramedia/status/1417475612210515973

No the Labour right just won three elections and put the most amount of money into the NHS ever, virtually eliminated homelessness and halved child poverty.

But no good! We must keep losing!

And yet Novara Media still has higher production values than GB News

The content is equally unwatchable though....

Oh, I don't know. I could watch their 2019 GE coverage again and again and again.

FrancisUrquhart said:

kinabalu said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Cookie said:

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

Sorry, missed your edits.

Johnson: I was referring to his "I don't buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff" type thing that he was coming out with. After months of the crisis the PM had about the same grasp of the issues as Toby Young on his 4th pint. Or whatever Tobes' tipple is.

Maskless: Yep, did it, but not a great success. Waitrose was full of people still wearing. I really stood out. Got a few eyeballs along the lines of "Look at him, giving it the big John Wayne. Oh dear oh dear". So I think a compromise next time. I'll wear it, but once I've been through checkout I'll take it straight off rather than wait till I get outside the shop. A journey of 1000 miles starts with one small step ...

I wonder if masking rates vary by supermarket? With Waitrose being notoriously pretentious it probably has the highest masking rates.

I got no funny looks being unmasked at Tesco's.

Waitrose IS a 'wear a mask' type of place. For my one the acid test will be Julie Hartley Brewer. She shops there (although no sign today) and it'll be interesting to see what happens there. A case of irresistible force versus immovable object.

Anti lockdown, anti mask etc are a funny coalition from your Piers Corbyns to the likes of JHB, Isbael Oakenshot.

Sandpit said:

At least today’s billionaires are interested in improving the state of technology. Awesome to watch.

NickPalmer said:

Mortimer said:

The nicest change I've noticed in the last couple of days is the fear/disgust/jealousy from those wearing masks towards those not wearing masks seems to have gone. I don't wear them in shops, nor do I require them in mine. People have IMO been too judgey over the past year. A return to tolerance would be a welcome move....

Should cut both ways, shouldn't it? Philip sneering at Waitrose customers wearing masks because they're "notoriously pretentious" is a bit of unnecessary culture war.

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

NickPalmer said:

Mortimer said:

The nicest change I've noticed in the last couple of days is the fear/disgust/jealousy from those wearing masks towards those not wearing masks seems to have gone. I don't wear them in shops, nor do I require them in mine. People have IMO been too judgey over the past year. A return to tolerance would be a welcome move....

Should cut both ways, shouldn't it? Philip sneering at Waitrose customers wearing masks because they're "notoriously pretentious" is a bit of unnecessary culture war.

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Sandpit, curious similarity to knights in tournaments, taking huge risks for the excitement and popular approval.

Mr. Jessop, what name would you prefer?

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

Pagan2 said:

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

There is no debate to be had, UBI which is enough to live on is unaffordable

Philip_Thompson said:

Pagan2 said:

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

There is no debate to be had, UBI which is enough to live on is unaffordable

UBI already exists in this country, we just don't call it that and we have an extremely high real marginal income tax on it.

A sensible UBI introduction would be to merge existing things together, sort out the tax rates so they're sensible, then call it UBI. Not introduce massive new benefits.

A bit like Osborne introducing a Living Wage, based upon the pre-existing Minimum Wage and not dramatically different.

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

Philip_Thompson said:

Pagan2 said:

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

There is no debate to be had, UBI which is enough to live on is unaffordable

UBI already exists in this country, we just don't call it that and we have an extremely high real marginal income tax on it.

A sensible UBI introduction would be to merge existing things together, sort out the tax rates so they're sensible, then call it UBI. Not introduce massive new benefits.

A bit like Osborne introducing a Living Wage, based upon the pre-existing Minimum Wage and not dramatically different.