It is important to stress that no one in government — from ministers to aides to scientists — has a clear explanation for why cases are currently far lower than projected. Today’s poll may just provide some insight. It shows that tens of millions of Brits were uneasy about Johnson’s decision to open up this month, that a clear majority seems to be complying with ongoing isolation rules, and that huge numbers are exercising significant caution in how they go about their daily lives, limiting whom they meet and taking measures that would help stop the spread. The truth is we still don’t know and there may be other more important factors at play, though it might just be that the natural caution and moderation of the public has at least partly helped to stop cases from spiralling out of control.
If the above theory is correct then unfortunately for Pagel and co, it implies that trusting people to judge their own risk works far better than iSAGE would believe.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
There can be a fine line, though. A certain kudos in some circles that one's child has got into Oxford/plays for Liverpool.
Indeed! Good parenting includes the art of treading fine lines.
Mr. 86, the side of Hamilton's front left hit Verstappen's rear right. You could call that behind and to the side, but the Dutchman was clearly ahead and photographs show the drastic difference in Hamilton's car positioning compared to when he passed (without collision) Leclerc.
I don't think Hamilton was malicious, just that it was a misjudgement on his part.
Our golfers, while we are talking about posh sports, Paul Casey and Tommy Fleetwood, are both on -3 as the second round gets under way. They could win from there but so could three dozen others. The leader is on -8. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/golf/leaderboard
(Women's golf is next week.)
Golf really is a sport that shouldn't be anywhere near the Olympics. They already have 4 majors, several major team competitions and umpteen professional tours with massive tournaments 40+ weeks oit of the year.
Like tennis, you mean?
Whether or not these events belong rather depends on whether your view is that (a) the Games should be as big and as comprehensive as possible or (b) it should be a bit more streamlined, so that the cost of hosting it isn't astronomical (which would also significantly increase the pool of countries that could afford to do so.) Golf and tennis both clearly belong under criterion (a), but arguably not under (b).
The Olympics should be the pinnacle of achievement, for all the sports it contains. Athletes competing, should be thinking about nothing else for four years prior, the competitors should be basically amateur, not highly-paid professionals. Boxing does a good job of making the distinction, so should golf, tennis, and many of the team sports.
In what way are golf or tennis players - or for that matter, boxers - ‘essentially amateur?’ Are you defining professional as ‘somebody who gets paid a regular salary?’
I’m saying that the golfers and tennis players competing at the Olympics, if we are going to have these sports, should be amateurs, not touring professionals, for whom the Games is just another event on their non-stop trip around the world.
Golf has well-defined rules on amateur status, as does boxing, and these should be the golfers at the Games.
The Olympics have not been amateur for three decades.
The football compromise works, only let younger players compete, if we're going to have sports like golf, tennis etc...
If I am going to watch Olympic tennis, I would rather watch a field led by Djokovic than one led by Casper Ruud. I suspect I am in a big majority.
But should viewer statistics be driving these decisions? I’d say no. There’s more to society than algorithms.
Some interesting comments about elite sport below.
But sportsmen have it easy. Imagine being a scientist, and working all your life to try to get a Nobel Prize. An almost impossible to achieve goal, especially nowadays.
Physicist Brian Keating wrote a book called "Losing the Nobel Prize", and he speaks eloquently about how the existence of the prize may actually hinder science.
I tend to agree. The Nobel prize is *huge* here in Sweden, with wall to wall coverage at that time of year, including all the ball gowns and meal details for the banquet. Yawn.
They do attempt to explain the actual science to the general public, but fail I fear.
Nobel himself was a bit bonkers, and I fear his legacy was also ill-considered.
I dont think Nobel prizes are bad - lets face it 99% of scientists would not turn one down if offered and thus be very proud to have won one. If film actors can get OTT attention at the Oscars for doing something far more mundane then I think it is right we value Nobel prizes and all the ceremony and glitz with it.
Even electrical goods retailers have "best of" awards as I know cos I used to work in the game and have a very funny if rude story about one ceremony.
"Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory backbench MPs, said it was "frustrating and ridiculous that this was not available months and months ago". "
Our golfers, while we are talking about posh sports, Paul Casey and Tommy Fleetwood, are both on -3 as the second round gets under way. They could win from there but so could three dozen others. The leader is on -8. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/golf/leaderboard
(Women's golf is next week.)
Golf really is a sport that shouldn't be anywhere near the Olympics. They already have 4 majors, several major team competitions and umpteen professional tours with massive tournaments 40+ weeks oit of the year.
Like tennis, you mean?
Whether or not these events belong rather depends on whether your view is that (a) the Games should be as big and as comprehensive as possible or (b) it should be a bit more streamlined, so that the cost of hosting it isn't astronomical (which would also significantly increase the pool of countries that could afford to do so.) Golf and tennis both clearly belong under criterion (a), but arguably not under (b).
The Olympics should be the pinnacle of achievement, for all the sports it contains. Athletes competing, should be thinking about nothing else for four years prior, the competitors should be basically amateur, not highly-paid professionals. Boxing does a good job of making the distinction, so should golf, tennis, and many of the team sports.
In what way are golf or tennis players - or for that matter, boxers - ‘essentially amateur?’ Are you defining professional as ‘somebody who gets paid a regular salary?’
I’m saying that the golfers and tennis players competing at the Olympics, if we are going to have these sports, should be amateurs, not touring professionals, for whom the Games is just another event on their non-stop trip around the world.
Golf has well-defined rules on amateur status, as does boxing, and these should be the golfers at the Games.
The Olympics have not been amateur for three decades.
The football compromise works, only let younger players compete, if we're going to have sports like golf, tennis etc...
If I am going to watch Olympic tennis, I would rather watch a field led by Djokovic than one led by Casper Ruud. I suspect I am in a big majority.
But should viewer statistics be driving these decisions? I’d say no. There’s more to society than algorithms.
As well as viewers, the athletes themselves also want to play the best. The sponsors want to be associated with the best. The athletes from other sports want to meet and be a team with the likes of Djokovic and Murray. The organisers want the prestige of the best sports people in the world involved.
On the flip side, grumpy old men who think the Olympics is amateur, when it has not been for generations, think the best should be excluded.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
A friend of mine represented England in a minor sport, and was a very good Ironman triathlete. (*) In his mid-twenties he had the opportunity to go professional, and he turned it down. He had a very good career in engineering, and found the training brain-deadeningly boring. He could not see himself dedicating five to ten years of his life to triathlon, only to have to try to return to his career when he grew to old, or his body gave up on him.
In fact, he used to say that most professional athletes were quite thick, and that talent-spotters actively wanted people who were good at the sport but easily controllable.
(*) Thinking about, the brother of a friend of mine represented Wales at hockey.
On topic, there are structural issues which Alastair highlights: 1. The Clown Posse's hostile environment policy means that many EU workers have left. They filled the jobs that many British people didn't want, and still don't want 2. Some industries in some areas are riddled with vacancies and very low local unemployment. There is literally no-one to fill the gaps left by departed EU workers as the natives are largely all in work 3. Where we have sticky unemployment issues there aren't any jobs, at least not ones available to people without a car, with children etc etc.
There is no easy solution. You can't move either the jobs or the labour pool very easily. We aren't about to create all hours public transport or childcare that is affordable. And we have too many old people and not enough workers.
So the solution is simple - a positive migration policy that brings people in specifically to fill the vacancies that cannot otherwise be filled.
I'll get me coat...
You are aware that by the end of June the number of EU citizens who have managed to overcome that "hostile environment" which never applied to them anyway, exceeds 6m, roughly 10% of our entire adult population? I know that the Home Office and Border Force really cannot count a damn but how many more millions do you think were here but have supposedly gone home? The number who have applied has already significantly exceeded the previous estimates of the total number of EU citizens here.
The idea that large numbers of EU citizens have gone home is a myth or fantasy. Some may have temporarily during the pandemic but the vast majority have either stayed or returned. They see the chance of a successful country where their wages are going to rise from an already higher base much more rapidly than they do at home. They are an essential part of our economic model and many of them contribute greatly. Its a win win situation but that does not mean that we should not recognise that you can have too much of a good thing.
Its a fantasy apart from that companies who used to employ them and now don't do not have fantasy vacancies. You do know the difference between statistics and reality, surely.
The difference between statistics and reality. The numbers used to prove mass immigration of cheap Labour didn’t cause wage depression & job insecurity were wrong by a long, long way. People competing for these jobs knew it, and voted Leave, whilst Remain mocked them by quoting incorrect statistics, and calling them racist, proving how out of touch the 1997-2016 establishment were
“By March, there had been 5.3m applications from almost 5m individuals for “settled” or “pre-settled” status (some people applied twice) […]
Yet in 2019, the Home Office estimated the total pool of people eligible to apply for the scheme was only between 3.5m and 4.1m. Applications by people from Romania and Bulgaria had reached about 918,000 and 284,000 respectively by March, while the latest official estimates of their resident populations were 370,000 and 122,000 respectively. Some applications will be from eligible family members or from people who have left the UK. Even so, it seems clear the UK’s population and migration estimates have been “wholly inadequate since at least the mid-2010s”, as economist Jonathan Portes has written.”
Mr. 86, the side of Hamilton's front left hit Verstappen's rear right. You could call that behind and to the side, but the Dutchman was clearly ahead and photographs show the drastic difference in Hamilton's car positioning compared to when he passed (without collision) Leclerc.
I don't think Hamilton was malicious, just that it was a misjudgement on his part.
FFS. They were level going into the corner. Hamilton has to go slower because he's on the inside. Verstappen clearly wasn't interested in giving Hamilton room on the inside so took the corner at usual speed. That's why he was ahead, but unfortunately for him, not by enough.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
100% agree.
I am not opposed to elite performance, in sport, academia, the arts, business, wherever. But I am opposed to bullying, psychological abuse and coercion; including such actions by the state, sports governing bodies and individual coaches.
Its not as simple as that though - When an athlete is thinking he or she is flat out in training and the coach knows they can do more is it "bullying" to tell them to push harder etc? Even with me doing middle aged parkrun running i know my brain is the most negative muscle or organ in my body in that the physical body can do more than the brain initially thinks it can.You always want to stop ,slow down ,give up before you really physicallly need to . To win gold you have to go beyond what your brain tells you.
Would anybody in later life thank a coach who denied them a gold medal because they did not push them enough ? Works two ways
“to tell them to push harder” a few times a year? No, probably not bullying.
“to tell them to push harder” a few times a week? Yes, probably bullying.
It is the job of sports governing bodies to root out the bullies, not actively support them.
Equally telling that education doesn't make the top three for Tories.
Not really. I wouldn’t want the country to have (1) poor education (2) poor health (3) an inadequate welfare system (4) onerous taxation (5) uncontrolled immigration (6) lots of other things
A “top 3” is meaningless because they are all important to get right.
It is important to stress that no one in government — from ministers to aides to scientists — has a clear explanation for why cases are currently far lower than projected. Today’s poll may just provide some insight. It shows that tens of millions of Brits were uneasy about Johnson’s decision to open up this month, that a clear majority seems to be complying with ongoing isolation rules, and that huge numbers are exercising significant caution in how they go about their daily lives, limiting whom they meet and taking measures that would help stop the spread. The truth is we still don’t know and there may be other more important factors at play, though it might just be that the natural caution and moderation of the public has at least partly helped to stop cases from spiralling out of control.
I think the clear explanation is that the models being used aren't accurate enough and the parameters that go into the models aren't accurately enough known.
They may be crackers, but unfortunately Starmer has to win 1000s of them over to take office.
Time to dust off the Miliband era immigration mugs?
God knows what the answer is for Labour. Try and persuade them something else is more important? Crime? Economy? Or try and come up with some policy that Tory voters can agree with on immigration.
The latter seems a tall stretch for the party as it is such a fundamental divide.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
Max, you have a link to a bit more info on this Woke approach please?
The only things I've notice this time are TeamGB proudly tweeting lots of athletes taking the knee, and that we're supposed to be proud of Tom Daley's gold medal win as a landmark moment for gay rights, rather than the fact he's Tom Daley and has finally achieved his dream in his 4th Olympics.
I couldn't care less about the Olympics, but the coverage I've seen doesn't suggest any interest in wokeness or anti-wokeness, just pleasure when our atheletes win and sympathy when they don't. People who worry about this stuff on either extreme are a small minority.
The PB "home advantage" golfer from a couple of threads back, Hideki Matsuyama, has crept into contention on -7 (joint fifth) along with the two Irish golfers, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry. Still all to play for at the halfway stage and any one of two dozen or more can win the Gold Medal.
yes backed Matsuyama at the start at 22/1 which I thought was cracking value -tbf it was when Rahm and Dechambeau were still in it though
Of course you wouldn't recognise gentlemanly behaviour, Roger. You think women working in your industry should just submit to the whims of the 'talent' or leave to become hairdressers. Or have you changed your views on this since the MeToo movement rightfully erupted?
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
A friend of mine represented England in a minor sport, and was a very good Ironman triathlete. (*) In his mid-twenties he had the opportunity to go professional, and he turned it down. He had a very good career in engineering, and found the training brain-deadeningly boring. He could not see himself dedicating five to ten years of his life to triathlon, only to have to try to return to his career when he grew to old, or his body gave up on him.
In fact, he used to say that most professional athletes were quite thick, and that talent-spotters actively wanted people who were good at the sport but easily controllable.
(*) Thinking about, the brother of a friend of mine represented Wales at hockey.
I can understand some people being concerned about immigration some of the time. But the number 1 issue facing the country? In the middle of a pandemic?
Surely foreigners spreading disease is one of the classic anti-immigrant tenets?
Equally telling that education doesn't make the top three for Tories.
We Tories ARE well educated!
High levels of education are strongly correlated with NOT voting Tory. according to every poll we've seen lately...
I think it is more complicated than that. I don't have a link but there is a Guardian list of seats by education attainment. If the general thesis is correct that low levels of education = voting Tory and high levels = voting Labour/LD, then the Tories should be threatening Bootle and Labour/LD should be taking Arundel and South Downs.
But I am opposed to bullying, psychological abuse and coercion; including such actions by the state, sports governing bodies and individual coaches.
I was stagiare on a pro cycling team for one summer (the peak of my 'career' was being Marc Madiot's dom on a training ride when his regular had the shits) where bullying, psychological abuse and coercion were in plentiful supply.
The painful truth is that it works. We would and did ride ourselves into a state of vomiting semi-consciousness just because the DS asked us to.
On topic, there are structural issues which Alastair highlights: 1. The Clown Posse's hostile environment policy means that many EU workers have left. They filled the jobs that many British people didn't want, and still don't want 2. Some industries in some areas are riddled with vacancies and very low local unemployment. There is literally no-one to fill the gaps left by departed EU workers as the natives are largely all in work 3. Where we have sticky unemployment issues there aren't any jobs, at least not ones available to people without a car, with children etc etc.
There is no easy solution. You can't move either the jobs or the labour pool very easily. We aren't about to create all hours public transport or childcare that is affordable. And we have too many old people and not enough workers.
So the solution is simple - a positive migration policy that brings people in specifically to fill the vacancies that cannot otherwise be filled.
I'll get me coat...
You are aware that by the end of June the number of EU citizens who have managed to overcome that "hostile environment" which never applied to them anyway, exceeds 6m, roughly 10% of our entire adult population? I know that the Home Office and Border Force really cannot count a damn but how many more millions do you think were here but have supposedly gone home? The number who have applied has already significantly exceeded the previous estimates of the total number of EU citizens here.
The idea that large numbers of EU citizens have gone home is a myth or fantasy. Some may have temporarily during the pandemic but the vast majority have either stayed or returned. They see the chance of a successful country where their wages are going to rise from an already higher base much more rapidly than they do at home. They are an essential part of our economic model and many of them contribute greatly. Its a win win situation but that does not mean that we should not recognise that you can have too much of a good thing.
If they went home temporarily David then they’ve had it. They cannot go back to the UK now.
This is why Covid has worsened Brexit. Adjustments that should have occurred over decades happened in months.
That's not correct. If they can show that they were here before the relevant date they can apply for settled status. I normally regard the Home Office as completely incompetent, especially in the realm of immigration, but the speed and efficiency with which they have processed and granted over 6m applications for settled status is a remarkable logistical feat.
Yes and no David.
If they have been outside the UK for more than six months in any 12-month period, they will now only be able to upgrade to settled status if they returned to the UK before 31 December 2020. After that: bugger off.
Also issues with young adults who have both worked and studied in the UK. Extremely easy to have the “wrong” paperwork.
It is important to stress that no one in government — from ministers to aides to scientists — has a clear explanation for why cases are currently far lower than projected. Today’s poll may just provide some insight. It shows that tens of millions of Brits were uneasy about Johnson’s decision to open up this month, that a clear majority seems to be complying with ongoing isolation rules, and that huge numbers are exercising significant caution in how they go about their daily lives, limiting whom they meet and taking measures that would help stop the spread. The truth is we still don’t know and there may be other more important factors at play, though it might just be that the natural caution and moderation of the public has at least partly helped to stop cases from spiralling out of control.
If the above theory is correct then unfortunately for Pagel and co, it implies that trusting people to judge their own risk works far better than iSAGE would believe.
Paging Tegnell.
Yes, it always seemed likely to me that when official restrictions were lifted, people would exercise caution anyway. We don’t need a nanny state ordering us all the time. We don’t have to wear masks anymore, yet most people in shops still do, who in their right mind would go about their business no as if it were July 2019? A few maybe but generally not many. Give the public some credit!
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
Max, you have a link to a bit more info on this Woke approach please?
The only things I've notice this time are TeamGB proudly tweeting lots of athletes taking the knee, and that we're supposed to be proud of Tom Daley's gold medal win as a landmark moment for gay rights, rather than the fact he's Tom Daley and has finally achieved his dream in his 4th Olympics.
I couldn't care less about the Olympics, but the coverage I've seen doesn't suggest any interest in wokeness or anti-wokeness, just pleasure when our atheletes win and sympathy when they don't. People who worry about this stuff on either extreme are a small minority.
I think the main bit of "wokeness" was on the self withdrawal of Simone Bile . That of course is completely up to her but rather than just state the facts that she withdrew after not mentally ready for it , we got a whole heap of people praising her (gary Lineker) etc when 20 years ago she woudl have got a lot of people even on tv saying she let the side down (USA team) . If other athletes pick up the fact that people will praise you for withdrawing in a team event half way through it then it makes it easier to do and not sure that is good. It would have been better to then concentrate on those who were still competing not on Biles
O/t but am I the only one to be surprised that the Guardian has on it's front page this: ‘Glorious Twelfth’ on the brink across UK after poor grouse breeding season
So far as I could see, from a quick glance and the other front pages as published on the BBC, no other paper has the story.
Don’t get me going on the grouse industry. There’s another bunch of chancers.
Managing upland as grouse moor is much the most sensible thing you can do with it from all sorts of points of view, including conservation. The classic case is the Berwyn mountains in Wales where as a result of stopping grouse shooting they have lost curlew, lapwing, golden plover, redshank, red grouse and black grouse populations in just 20 years.
Mr. Sandpit, Verstappen didn't bin it in Silverstone. He was hit from behind and put into a wall.
Cheers for the grid penalty info.
Ha, I think we may disagree on this one. It was 50/50, Max would have had the penalty if Lewis had gone out instead.
The stewards told Red Bull to get out yesterday, after they accused Lewis of crashing deliberately and demanded a higher penalty.
Not an accusation in the heat of the moment with a microphone pushed in your face - but in writing, two weeks later.
Hamilton crashing deliberately makes little sense. He was way behind in the points, and the chances are any crash like that will take you out instead, or as well. I think I read if it hadn't been for the red flag, Hamilton wouldn't have finished. Essentially a deliberate crash risked making it harder for him to win the championship.
I also don't like Red Bull's insistence that the severity of the crash should be taken into account.
IMV it was a racing incident, with Hamilton 80% to blame, Verstappen 20%. However given Max's driving style, such a clash was inevitable eventually.
Equally telling that education doesn't make the top three for Tories.
We Tories ARE well educated!
High levels of education are strongly correlated with NOT voting Tory. according to every poll we've seen lately...
Almost all of those polls don't control for age or income, though.
It still might be true, but to know if it is we really need to poll over 60s by tertiary education both high and low income - which I suspect will be a small sample size - and compare them to under 30s who've graduated of the same.
By the way, even if it is true it doesn't mean Tories are "thick" - which is where this argument usually goes - it's more likely to mean the globalised international economy works particularly well for those tertiary educated, with the income levels to go with it.
The issue is that accelerated approval comes with an obligation to conduct Phase IV trials. In theory the approval is conditional but the FDA isn’t as rigourous as they should be in enforcing that.
Many of the examples are also label expansion so there is evidence of efficacy in the main indication plus reasonable scientific support for the new indication
Equally telling that education doesn't make the top three for Tories.
Not really. I wouldn’t want the country to have (1) poor education (2) poor health (3) an inadequate welfare system (4) onerous taxation (5) uncontrolled immigration (6) lots of other things
A “top 3” is meaningless because they are all important to get right.
On the contrary, I think it's very telling. If you think a few hundred unfortunate souls washing up on our shores will have a bigger impact on our future happiness and prosperity than having a well resourced and effective education system then you are deluded. Politics is all about priorities. If you have daft priorities, you will get bad outcomes. Similarly, if you have politicians who use unimportant stuff to distract you from their manifest incompetence on the things that matter.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
100% agree.
I am not opposed to elite performance, in sport, academia, the arts, business, wherever. But I am opposed to bullying, psychological abuse and coercion; including such actions by the state, sports governing bodies and individual coaches.
Its not as simple as that though - When an athlete is thinking he or she is flat out in training and the coach knows they can do more is it "bullying" to tell them to push harder etc? Even with me doing middle aged parkrun running i know my brain is the most negative muscle or organ in my body in that the physical body can do more than the brain initially thinks it can.You always want to stop ,slow down ,give up before you really physicallly need to . To win gold you have to go beyond what your brain tells you.
Would anybody in later life thank a coach who denied them a gold medal because they did not push them enough ? Works two ways
“to tell them to push harder” a few times a year? No, probably not bullying.
“to tell them to push harder” a few times a week? Yes, probably bullying.
It is the job of sports governing bodies to root out the bullies, not actively support them.
Even in your definition you can see how hard it is to define "bullying " in coaching. It is just not that simple
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
Max, you have a link to a bit more info on this Woke approach please?
The only things I've notice this time are TeamGB proudly tweeting lots of athletes taking the knee, and that we're supposed to be proud of Tom Daley's gold medal win as a landmark moment for gay rights, rather than the fact he's Tom Daley and has finally achieved his dream in his 4th Olympics.
I couldn't care less about the Olympics, but the coverage I've seen doesn't suggest any interest in wokeness or anti-wokeness, just pleasure when our atheletes win and sympathy when they don't. People who worry about this stuff on either extreme are a small minority.
I wish that were true, Nick, but when Tom Daley won gold almost all the news articles (for days) majored on the fact he was gay, and what a landmark this was, rather than his sporting achievement.
Mr. 86, Hamilton had space. He was out of position. Verstappen was ahead because he had the racing line.
Posted before, but here's the photographic comparison that shows Hamilton's position versus Verstappen and versus Leclerc. He was in the wrong place and got very lucky.
Mr. Sandpit, indeed, we do disagree. If it had been earlier in the lap I might concur but they'd effectively separated from others so the chaos of the opening was over and it was just the two of them.
Thank you Cyclefree for this passionately written header. I would like to see our whole society and government transformed to put the interests of children and young people first. Sexual abuse is the most flagrant and disgusting - and for most of us unfathomable - way in which children are hurt in our society. But poverty, neglect and an education system that fails to meet children's needs are equally damning failures.
I could not agree more and just cannot start to understand why anyone would abuse a child in any form whatsoever
There is no penalty in my view strong enough to deal with anyone who abuses a child
That’s basically my view, although I wouldn’t quite go all out hang-em-and-flog-em.
Serious crimes deserve serious penalties, though.
There is also a place for strong social taboos. Comments like Leon’s, upthread, need to be called out.
Call me a puritan all you like, Leon, but I think you’re on a slippery slope to rationalising disgusting abuse.
Both child abuse, and the inclination are disgusting. That should be a firm red line in our society and our public debate.
Dunno about puritan, but can I call you a bigot? It seems to be absolutely certain that sexual impulses are irrevocably baked in to people way before they have any choice in the matter. Nobody chooses to be straight or gay and I'm guessing nobody chooses to be a paedophile. You can be disgusted by the inclination as much as you like, but someone with the inclination who entirely resists giving in to it is morally a better person than you appear to be.
The issue I have is when people try to rationalise fantasising about hurting other people. Especially, but not limited to, kids. Surely a fucking bell goes off in their head at some point and they think “what was I thinking, that’s wrong”
I think we’ve unrepressed our society too much when it’s ok for people to rationalise fantasising about harming others. And vocalising/publishing it.
The extreme libertarians on this site are seriously out of whack with the rest of society on this.
The harder they push (child sex dolls?!!) the greater the inevitable repressive pushback.
There’s such a thing as public morality. And so there should be.
As Pagan says, what if it could be proved that child sex robots reduced harm to real children in the real world?
What would your attitude be then?
I find that very distasteful, Leon.
Oh good god. Why?
I genuinely don't understand this mentality
Or were you trolling? Hard to tell!
I'm just thinking about the practicalities, ethics and not least the political optics of a controlled experiment to prove that. Which is what your wording requires, in essence.
Firstly, you have to decide which population you are dealing with - existing perverts or potential ones.
If it's existing ones, giving them sex toys, and very dodgy ones, on the rates/taxes is not a great look. Can yo uimagine Ms Patel fronting that? Hell, so far as we can tell she thinks the RNLI are a bunch of furriner-loving pinkoes.
If it's potential ones, then you need a much larger trial - and have the ethical problem of ending up with, erm, fully activated perverts (which is in itself a cruelty to them).
Secondly, either way you will have some children who have been harmed that would not otherwise have been harmed, if only because they were allocated to the wrong arm of the trial. Instant pitchforks and firebrands.
I can't see the experiment being done. And if that is not possible, then it is not discussable.
We have just done a live experiment on BILLIONS of people with unprecedented inhumane lockdowns, entirely experiments vaccines, which could kill millions either way
So, yes, I think this is do-able, it is certainly "discussable"
I detect your inner repuls-o-meter is overcoming your rationalism. Which is understandable, but silly
The way to do the experiment would you would give half of a sample of convicted child abusers one of the dolls on release and half not. Then measure reoffending rates. No new perverts produced and you get an answer
I was at a stats conference a few years ago and one of the presentations was on the analysis of a programme that tried to “treat” sex offenders. The stattos reckoned that this sort of thing actually made things worse and the govt dept pulled the plug on it straightaway.
I enter this thread with trepidation, as I was once banned for having a firey discussion with another PB poster (who no longer posts) on the issue.
But here goes: there are many different sorts of child sex abusers, and it does blend into other forms of abuse, including non sexual physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect, but also shades into other forms of male* sexual behaviour that vary from the illegal to the legal but misogynistic, such as use of sex workers pornography or even manipulative "pick up techniques".
These things are not just driven by sexual desire, but a drive to control, exploit, humiliate and hurt, and to do so to those perceived weak such as children, or naive young adults. That is why these sorts of incidents happen in many different situations and cultures. The problem boils down in large part to toxic masculinity.
There is a call to lock 'em up and throw away the key, or even more draconian solutions, but actually the evidence for the efficacy of this is limited. One problem of ostracizing Paedophiles and similar is that it pushes them into like company (for want of any other) and also where they have nothing to lose. That is a very toxic set up for re-offending in an even more appalling way.
There is a completely different approach, that has proven successful in Canada, and has been trialled in other countries. This article claims a reduction of offending of 83% in Canada, without a bizarre enthusiasm for abusing child androids. It is for many an uncomfortable idea, but it does seem to work by re-normalising toxic masculinity, and creating normal social skills and values:
*while there are incidents of female abusers, this is overwhelmingly a male issue.
I researched the pickup artist scene and didn't observe any points where it shaded into child sexual abuse. What are you referring to here, Foxy?
You refer to "manipulative" PU techniques, but I couldn't work out whether your use of the adjective was restrictive or descriptive. Most of the PUA scene's leaders and members have a high degree of contempt for women (see the use of the term "hamster") and an utterly exploitative attitude, many are racists, and at least one leading figure (Nick Krauser) is a neo-Nazi, but I think misogyny in the true sense of that word is extremely rare in that scene. A misogynist hates women. Hatred is not necessarily present when some white racist sexist bonehead rants on about non-whites and "girly men" every day and dislikes seeing women in the government, or in other senior positions, or doing science, or refereeing men's football. He is probably just a moronic bigot who can't pull his head out of his bum. He may well think he's more protective of women than an anti-sexist man is. That's even if he doesn't get much chance to protect many women as he performs his daily slope between the betting shop and the pub. Sometimes I suspect that many who use the word "hate" have never actually seen it. A misogynist doesn't want women to be protected at all, either by himself or by other men. Thus if a woman - even a woman he knows nothing about other than that she is a woman and she isn't his slave - finds herself in trouble or she gets hurt, for example if she gets treated like dirt or beaten up, he will think it's her just desserts, or amusing, and probably both. That's not really a pickup artist's attitude.
I am not saying that being a PUA and being a paedophile are the same thing. What I was trying to point out was that both use manipulative techniques to groom their target. One is distasteful while the other is illegal, but both are ways of targeting the vulnerable for personal gratification. There is a world of difference between the PUA scene and conventional flirting to establish a relationship.
Thank you for clarifying that you are saying that all PU artistry is manipulative. But you also wrote that "[child abuse] shades into other forms of [...] male sexual behaviour that [include] manipulative 'pick up techniques'."
Advertisers, politicians, door canvassers, lawyers, medics, schoolteachers, tradesmen, police officers, double-glazing salesmen, estate agents, secondhand car dealers, managers, and journalists all use manipulative techniques too, so PUAs aren't special in that respect. In my extensive research (from behind my desk) into the PUA scene, I've never come across any hint of an intersection with child abuse, so I was wondering whether maybe you had. Paedophiles who commit their crimes outside of the family are attracted to places and jobs where they have access to children, such as schools, playgroups, and institutions that interface with children in fields that include health, sports, cultural activities, the criminal justice system, and social services. Approaching women and employing the Mystery method, the London daygame model, etc. etc. etc., is another kind of interest.
If Tory voters are crackers to put Immigration at the top, is it not just as crackers to put Healthcare and Education at the top in a country which has universal free provision of these good things, while not putting the threat of nuclear annihilation and destruction of human life by climate change in the top three?
Any such meaningless list is equally open to attack.
Mr. Jessop, I agree the severity of the result shouldn't affect the penalty but it should give Red Bull a free pass for any parts changes they need, and potentially have Mercedes contribute half the cost of replacing parts (as the cost cap is now fairly stringent).
I think it's a fine line with elite sport. Personally I think it must amazing to get the opportunity to play sport as a job. I know it's hard work, but being able to devote your time to a discipline is something I would love to have had the opportunity to do. I was decent cricketer between the ages of 11 and 14, but I didn't go to a posh school so didn't have the opportunity to train regularly, which is what you have to do.
And whilst "having fun" is a nice to have, it isn't necessary to achieve success. I think football is a job for a fair few players who do it because they are good at it.
The rowing team are getting grief, but eventually you'll have a poor games. It's the nature of the beast. What matters is that they go away and try to come back better in Paris.
One final thing. My favourite moment of the games was when the Gadirova twins were interviewed yesterday after the all around final. The interviewer asked them about Simone Biles and Jennifer said words to the effect of "well I'm first reserve for the floor final, so if she doesn't take part I'll get to compete in another Olympic final, which would be great." Not the nice answer the interviewer was hoping for, but exactly how athletes should be thinking in my opinion.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
A friend of mine represented England in a minor sport, and was a very good Ironman triathlete. (*) In his mid-twenties he had the opportunity to go professional, and he turned it down. He had a very good career in engineering, and found the training brain-deadeningly boring. He could not see himself dedicating five to ten years of his life to triathlon, only to have to try to return to his career when he grew to old, or his body gave up on him.
In fact, he used to say that most professional athletes were quite thick, and that talent-spotters actively wanted people who were good at the sport but easily controllable.
(*) Thinking about, the brother of a friend of mine represented Wales at hockey.
I love the quite thick thing.
This is perhaps why rowing is Oxbridge-dominated?
That's an interesting one. Rowers from Oxford are quite thick, but that's offset by the brilliance of Cambridge.
To be serious: perhaps it is that to get to Oxbridge, you have to be quite bright already, offsetting the effect somewhat. I should say that the one person I've known who could have rowed in the Boat Race was quite bright: but even years later he would get up at the crack of dawn to go to the gym to train.
But I am opposed to bullying, psychological abuse and coercion; including such actions by the state, sports governing bodies and individual coaches.
I was stagiare on a pro cycling team for one summer (the peak of my 'career' was being Marc Madiot's dom on a training ride when his regular had the shits) where bullying, psychological abuse and coercion were in plentiful supply.
The painful truth is that it works. We would and did ride ourselves into a state of vomiting semi-consciousness just because the DS asked us to.
I’m glad you got out!
Much as I love road racing, I am also fully aware that it has an ugly side. Several ugly sides in fact.
It is one of the reasons I’m delighted that none of our children chose that sport. I’m also glad they rejected swimming, for much the same reasons.
Equally telling that education doesn't make the top three for Tories.
Self preservation, given the association between higher education levels and voiting Labour!
(Firmly tongue in cheek - I suspect that's mostly a correlation with age, with education as proxy - I've not seen any work that shows an education association while controlling for age, although that would be interesting)
Edit - ah, Nick P and Casino beat me to both the joke and the serious point that there's obvious confounding with age
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
Max, you have a link to a bit more info on this Woke approach please?
The only things I've notice this time are TeamGB proudly tweeting lots of athletes taking the knee, and that we're supposed to be proud of Tom Daley's gold medal win as a landmark moment for gay rights, rather than the fact he's Tom Daley and has finally achieved his dream in his 4th Olympics.
I couldn't care less about the Olympics, but the coverage I've seen doesn't suggest any interest in wokeness or anti-wokeness, just pleasure when our atheletes win and sympathy when they don't. People who worry about this stuff on either extreme are a small minority.
I wish that were true, Nick, but when Tom Daley won gold almost all the news articles (for days) majored on the fact he was gay, and what a landmark this was, rather than his sporting achievement.
Sign of the times.
The only Tom Daley articles I noticed were the ones about his knitted pouch for his medal, but that may reflect which stories I am predisposed to be interested in.
Mr. Sandpit, Verstappen didn't bin it in Silverstone. He was hit from behind and put into a wall.
Cheers for the grid penalty info.
Ha, I think we may disagree on this one. It was 50/50, Max would have had the penalty if Lewis had gone out instead.
The stewards told Red Bull to get out yesterday, after they accused Lewis of crashing deliberately and demanded a higher penalty.
Not an accusation in the heat of the moment with a microphone pushed in your face - but in writing, two weeks later.
Hamilton crashing deliberately makes little sense. He was way behind in the points, and the chances are any crash like that will take you out instead, or as well. I think I read if it hadn't been for the red flag, Hamilton wouldn't have finished. Essentially a deliberate crash risked making it harder for him to win the championship.
I also don't like Red Bull's insistence that the severity of the crash should be taken into account.
IMV it was a racing incident, with Hamilton 80% to blame, Verstappen 20%. However given Max's driving style, such a clash was inevitable eventually.
If Max wants to be the champion, he needs to understand that second place is much better than the tyre barrier. That requires a serious change in his mentality.
An interesting article in the FT about why Brits just don’t go for these jobs. The Labour market has evolved to the point where not having access to EU Labour makes it tricky for employers. The work is almost designed for those with no dependents nor desire to make a life here
This was the issue with the call to go and pick fruit and veg in the fields. You now need to commit to several months living on site in a caravan with a load of other people, working 6-7 days a week, morning, noon and night.
That immediately rules out anybody with kids, anybody with a significant other who doesn't also want to go and live in a caravan with a load of other strangers, etc.
You forgot the lazy barsteward locals who get as much for lying in their pits.
Equally telling that education doesn't make the top three for Tories.
Not really. I wouldn’t want the country to have (1) poor education (2) poor health (3) an inadequate welfare system (4) onerous taxation (5) uncontrolled immigration (6) lots of other things
A “top 3” is meaningless because they are all important to get right.
On the contrary, I think it's very telling. If you think a few hundred unfortunate souls washing up on our shores will have a bigger impact on our future happiness and prosperity than having a well resourced and effective education system then you are deluded. Politics is all about priorities. If you have daft priorities, you will get bad outcomes. Similarly, if you have politicians who use unimportant stuff to distract you from their manifest incompetence on the things that matter.
Interesting that you conflate the Channel crossings with the issue of mass economic migration.
Equally telling that education doesn't make the top three for Tories.
We Tories ARE well educated!
High levels of education are strongly correlated with NOT voting Tory. according to every poll we've seen lately...
Almost all of those polls don't control for age or income, though.
It still might be true, but to know if it is we really need to poll over 60s by tertiary education both high and low income - which I suspect will be a small sample size - and compare them to under 30s who've graduated of the same.
By the way, even if it is true it doesn't mean Tories are "thick" - which is where this argument usually goes - it's more likely to mean the globalised international economy works particularly well for those tertiary educated, with the income levels to go with it.
I have no doubt that the correlation between education and not voting Tory holds if you control for age, but I'm equally sure the coefficient on it would be lower, because age cohort effects are certainly a big part of it. I would have thought that income is positively correlated with voting Tory once you control for age and education. A wealthy self made man who left school at 16 would be highly likely to vote Tory I would have thought, and a perennial student doing post doc work in their late 20s would be nailed on for not Tory. Someone should obtain some raw polling data though and run some regressions so we have something solid to go on.
Personally I draw no conclusions about Tory voters being "thick", I view formal education as weakly correlated with innate intelligence.
Mr. 86, Hamilton had space. He was out of position. Verstappen was ahead because he had the racing line.
Posted before, but here's the photographic comparison that shows Hamilton's position versus Verstappen and versus Leclerc. He was in the wrong place and got very lucky.
Mr. Sandpit, indeed, we do disagree. If it had been earlier in the lap I might concur but they'd effectively separated from others so the chaos of the opening was over and it was just the two of them.
No, Verstappen did not have the racing line. Being on the outside going into a corner does not give you the right to take whatever line you like.
Mens BMX Final (only lasts 40 seconds) not shown live on BBC1 whilst they show some non medal boxing.
Then BBC1 cuts to Womens BMX Final live literally 5 seconds before it starts.
We win medals in both. After Womens Final, presenter and reporter discuss both GB medals at length, seemingly totally unaware viewers hadn't seen the Mens race (unless they had been on red button).
Then finally, approx 10 minutes later, presenter apologises and BBC1 shows recording of Mens Race, acknowledging we already knew the result.
Amateurish presentation. Too many staff are probably involved in the awful..tip and run cricket
They will have hundreds of freeloaders in Tokyo having a rare old time, just the fact that they are F******* useless but are experts at blowing public cash. Easy come easy go.
"Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory backbench MPs, said it was "frustrating and ridiculous that this was not available months and months ago". "
Mr. 86, the side of Hamilton's front left hit Verstappen's rear right. You could call that behind and to the side, but the Dutchman was clearly ahead and photographs show the drastic difference in Hamilton's car positioning compared to when he passed (without collision) Leclerc.
I don't think Hamilton was malicious, just that it was a misjudgement on his part.
The view of most of the impartial (eg Leclerc, Alonso, Ricciardo) F1 drivers is that it was a simple racing incident. Both went for the same bit of track, which both were entitled to, and neither backed out.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
You know what's worse? Doing 98% of it and coming away without the gold.
What worries me is the 2% remainder. That’s what these poor sods have left over for free time, hobbies, reading, mucking about on bikes, holidays, dipping their toes at the seaside, taking their driving test, snogging pretty girls, studying, partaking of a lager shandy, smelling the flowers.
You nasty bunch effectively want to enslave talented children and young adults in the service of the British State. That’s not “sport”, that’s trafficking.
You do realise your last paragraph is absolutely barking, don't you?
I like hyperbole as much as the next man, but I dont think highlighting problems in attitudes to funding and training athletes without due consideration of them as people is aided by calling it akin to slavery. It's so preposterous it just leads to dismissal of things that might actually be of concern.
It is important to stress that no one in government — from ministers to aides to scientists — has a clear explanation for why cases are currently far lower than projected. Today’s poll may just provide some insight. It shows that tens of millions of Brits were uneasy about Johnson’s decision to open up this month, that a clear majority seems to be complying with ongoing isolation rules, and that huge numbers are exercising significant caution in how they go about their daily lives, limiting whom they meet and taking measures that would help stop the spread. The truth is we still don’t know and there may be other more important factors at play, though it might just be that the natural caution and moderation of the public has at least partly helped to stop cases from spiralling out of control.
If the above theory is correct then unfortunately for Pagel and co, it implies that trusting people to judge their own risk works far better than iSAGE would believe.
Paging Tegnell.
Yes, it always seemed likely to me that when official restrictions were lifted, people would exercise caution anyway. We don’t need a nanny state ordering us all the time. We don’t have to wear masks anymore, yet most people in shops still do, who in their right mind would go about their business no as if it were July 2019? A few maybe but generally not many. Give the public some credit!
If its correct that everyone is going to come into contact with covid at some point then its pretty senseless for people who are fully vaccinated to wear a mask. Especially if they are at low risk to begin with.
While those who think they are at risk would be well advised to wear a proper mask.
The wearing of the blue flimsy masks, often incorrectly, falls into the pointless gap between the two sensible choices.
They may be crackers, but unfortunately Starmer has to win 1000s of them over to take office.
Time to dust off the Miliband era immigration mugs?
God knows what the answer is for Labour. Try and persuade them something else is more important? Crime? Economy? Or try and come up with some policy that Tory voters can agree with on immigration.
The latter seems a tall stretch for the party as it is such a fundamental divide.
I don't think there's any point trying to out-Farage the Tories on it. That, as with the mugs, will alienate many too.
Some actual policies to recognise the real effects and concerns could help though. Serious money for areas with high immigration, ensuring that services gain capacity faster than the increased load on them for example - "since all those Poles arrived, it's got easier than ever to get a GP appointment", council funding. Get councils competing for migrants to settle. Crack down heavily on illegal working undercutting wages etc (the punishments already quite harsh, I think, but a lack of resource for detection).
Set out the need for immigration, in terms of the economy and (if it is, indeed, a net benefit) make sure that those areas with high immigration see those benefits.
As with Brexit, those pro-immigration (and those pro-EU) have preferred to change the subject rather than make the positive case for their position. With the same results.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
And if the coach believes the athlete has the ability to get the gold with that extra 1-2%? Will they be thanked for not pushing for it. All of those 4th place finishers will find the coaching advice they ignored ringing in their ears right now and all of the previous gold medal winners remember standing on the top step.
As you say, it's a choice, if they aren't doing what it takes to get the gold then give them the chop for someone who will. Elite sport is exactly that.
It is a really tricky one. My daughter (12yo) is quite a talented long distance runner who has competed at a national level for the county. She is very competitive and likes racing but really doesn't like training (who does?). Up until the age of about 11, I really encouraged her to do training to get the best out of her. Since then she has reached the age where she needs to make decisions for herself as to what she wants to do with her life. As a parent it is difficult because you want to make sure they make the most of their talents but at the same time being careful that you don't push the child to do it for you and not for themselves.
I do think though that if you have a young athlete who is capable of gold in the Olympics then it needs to be spelled out to them exactly what is involved. The decision is up to them and they either need to get with that programme or get off to let someone who is prepared to do it take their place. There is no point taking an athlete like that and not pushing them and coming up with a 4th place when they could have got Gold. They will have wasted their time by doing a lot but not enough.
Another fourth place in the rowing for the plucky Brit. In fairness, sculling is hard work.
How many 4ths in the rowing is that now? 5?
Probably going to get another 4th in the 8 man as well....
Bronze, so that’s something at least. First Olympics since 1980 that we haven’t won a rowing gold, and back then we up against the might of the GDR and the Soviet Union:
We decided to take money away from them because it’s ‘posh’
No, the reduction in funding for poshos in boats is for Paris 2024. Funding was maintained for Tokyo 2020. And it is not that they are posh but that the number of sports being funded has increased. At least, that is what reports seem to say.
Some interesting comments about elite sport below.
But sportsmen have it easy. Imagine being a scientist, and working all your life to try to get a Nobel Prize. An almost impossible to achieve goal, especially nowadays.
Physicist Brian Keating wrote a book called "Losing the Nobel Prize", and he speaks eloquently about how the existence of the prize may actually hinder science.
I tend to agree. The Nobel prize is *huge* here in Sweden, with wall to wall coverage at that time of year, including all the ball gowns and meal details for the banquet. Yawn.
They do attempt to explain the actual science to the general public, but fail I fear.
Nobel himself was a bit bonkers, and I fear his legacy was also ill-considered.
I think Keating says that Nobel was very specific in his will about how the prize should ne awarded. When he died, they changed the rules considerably, and many of the problems come from those changes.
It is important to stress that no one in government — from ministers to aides to scientists — has a clear explanation for why cases are currently far lower than projected. Today’s poll may just provide some insight. It shows that tens of millions of Brits were uneasy about Johnson’s decision to open up this month, that a clear majority seems to be complying with ongoing isolation rules, and that huge numbers are exercising significant caution in how they go about their daily lives, limiting whom they meet and taking measures that would help stop the spread. The truth is we still don’t know and there may be other more important factors at play, though it might just be that the natural caution and moderation of the public has at least partly helped to stop cases from spiralling out of control.
If the above theory is correct then unfortunately for Pagel and co, it implies that trusting people to judge their own risk works far better than iSAGE would believe.
Paging Tegnell.
Yes, it always seemed likely to me that when official restrictions were lifted, people would exercise caution anyway. We don’t need a nanny state ordering us all the time. We don’t have to wear masks anymore, yet most people in shops still do, who in their right mind would go about their business no as if it were July 2019? A few maybe but generally not many. Give the public some credit!
If its correct that everyone is going to come into contact with covid at some point then its pretty senseless for people who are fully vaccinated to wear a mask. Especially if they are at low risk to begin with.
While those who think they are at risk would be well advised to wear a proper mask.
The wearing of the blue flimsy masks, often incorrectly, falls into the pointless gap between the two sensible choices.
I don’t know about the effectivity of types of mask, personally I wear one most of the time I’m shopping because I don’t want to upset people feeling vulnerable, but they are an obvious indicator of how much people are or are not simply relying on the government to inform their everyday decisions.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
And if the coach believes the athlete has the ability to get the gold with that extra 1-2%? Will they be thanked for not pushing for it. All of those 4th place finishers will find the coaching advice they ignored ringing in their ears right now and all of the previous gold medal winners remember standing on the top step.
As you say, it's a choice, if they aren't doing what it takes to get the gold then give them the chop for someone who will. Elite sport is exactly that.
It is a really tricky one. My daughter (12yo) is quite a talented long distance runner who has competed at a national level for the county. She is very competitive and likes racing but really doesn't like training (who does?). Up until the age of about 11, I really encouraged her to do training to get the best out of her. Since then she has reached the age where she needs to make decisions for herself as to what she wants to do with her life. As a parent it is difficult because you want to make sure they make the most of their talents but at the same time being careful that you don't push the child to do it for you and not for themselves.
I do think though that if you have a young athlete who is capable of gold in the Olympics then it needs to be spelled out to them exactly what is involved. The decision is up to them and they either need to get with that programme or get off to let someone who is prepared to do it take their place. There is no point taking an athlete like that and not pushing them and coming up with a 4th place when they could have got Gold. They will have wasted their time by doing a lot but not enough.
But the point is that she's clearly not going to become an elite long distance runner. I'm specifically talking about people who already are. Their life goal is to stand on the top step of the podium. If it isn't they're in the wrong career.
Mr. B, I think Red Bull being pissed off at the time was fair enough, but they are over-egging things now.
Opinion is split on the matter, though. I was watching Channel 4's coverage and both Webber and Coulthard thought it was down to Hamilton (NB both are former Red Bull drivers, but given the photograph linked previously I do think they're correct).
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
You know what's worse? Doing 98% of it and coming away without the gold.
What worries me is the 2% remainder. That’s what these poor sods have left over for free time, hobbies, reading, mucking about on bikes, holidays, dipping their toes at the seaside, taking their driving test, snogging pretty girls, studying, partaking of a lager shandy, smelling the flowers.
You nasty bunch effectively want to enslave talented children and young adults in the service of the British State. That’s not “sport”, that’s trafficking.
You do realise your last paragraph is absolutely barking, don't you?
I don't think Mr Dickson has met an Olympic grade athlete.
The word "driven" begins to describe it.
Given the list - "free time, hobbies, reading, mucking about on bikes, holidays, dipping their toes at the seaside, taking their driving test, snogging pretty girls, studying, partaking of a lager shandy, smelling the flowers"
vs
"Training until you throw up. Then training some more."
The Olympic grade athletes will chose B every single time. This is what they *want* - to a degree that can seem like selfish monomania to outsiders.
Mr. 86, the side of Hamilton's front left hit Verstappen's rear right. You could call that behind and to the side, but the Dutchman was clearly ahead and photographs show the drastic difference in Hamilton's car positioning compared to when he passed (without collision) Leclerc.
I don't think Hamilton was malicious, just that it was a misjudgement on his part.
The view of most of the impartial (eg Leclerc, Alonso, Ricciardo) F1 drivers is that it was a simple racing incident. Both went for the same bit of track, which both were entitled to, and neither backed out.
The EU and AstraZeneca could settle their months-long lawsuit over their ill-fated coronavirus vaccines contract in a few weeks, according to a senior AstraZeneca executive Thursday.
"We are working very close with the European Commission in order to reach a settlement," said Ruud Dobber, AstraZeneca's vice president of biopharmaceuticals, on a call with journalists. "We don't think it's useful for both parties to continue this, and I'm very hopeful that in the next few weeks, we will come to an agreement."
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
Max, you have a link to a bit more info on this Woke approach please?
The only things I've notice this time are TeamGB proudly tweeting lots of athletes taking the knee, and that we're supposed to be proud of Tom Daley's gold medal win as a landmark moment for gay rights, rather than the fact he's Tom Daley and has finally achieved his dream in his 4th Olympics.
I get the impression you are seeing stuff here that just doesn't exist because you are looking for it. The stuff on Tom Daley was just nice stuff focusing on his long trip to gold. Lots was mentioned like his son, his partner, his diving history, his father's death, but you hear gay and think woke.
It is just what reporters do when a Brit wins. It's nice not woke.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
Max, you have a link to a bit more info on this Woke approach please?
The only things I've notice this time are TeamGB proudly tweeting lots of athletes taking the knee, and that we're supposed to be proud of Tom Daley's gold medal win as a landmark moment for gay rights, rather than the fact he's Tom Daley and has finally achieved his dream in his 4th Olympics.
Mr. B, I think Red Bull being pissed off at the time was fair enough, but they are over-egging things now.
Opinion is split on the matter, though. I was watching Channel 4's coverage and both Webber and Coulthard thought it was down to Hamilton (NB both are former Red Bull drivers, but given the photograph linked previously I do think they're correct).
They’re alongside going into the corner entry. Both are entitled to challenge, and to be given space by the other.
Mr. 86, compare, from the linked photo, the Leclerc and Verstappen positions. They've very close.
Hamilton's placement varies far more.
So? Hamilton is allowed to be on the race track! As has been explained many times, Hamilton was a lot less willing to risk a collision with Leclerc. He isn't a seven-time World Champion for nothing.
Some interesting comments about elite sport below.
But sportsmen have it easy. Imagine being a scientist, and working all your life to try to get a Nobel Prize. An almost impossible to achieve goal, especially nowadays.
Physicist Brian Keating wrote a book called "Losing the Nobel Prize", and he speaks eloquently about how the existence of the prize may actually hinder science.
I tend to agree. The Nobel prize is *huge* here in Sweden, with wall to wall coverage at that time of year, including all the ball gowns and meal details for the banquet. Yawn.
They do attempt to explain the actual science to the general public, but fail I fear.
Nobel himself was a bit bonkers, and I fear his legacy was also ill-considered.
I dont think Nobel prizes are bad - lets face it 99% of scientists would not turn one down if offered and thus be very proud to have won one. If film actors can get OTT attention at the Oscars for doing something far more mundane then I think it is right we value Nobel prizes and all the ceremony and glitz with it.
Even electrical goods retailers have "best of" awards as I know cos I used to work in the game and have a very funny if rude story about one ceremony.
Mr. Jessop, that shouldn't affect the line he was taking. It wasn't like he had to cool intermediate tyres on a drying track. He was simply in the wrong place.
Mr. Sandpit, indeed. I just hope luck evens up over the course of the season. It's tight and Verstappen should be comfortably ahead, but now has only a narrow lead.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
And if the coach believes the athlete has the ability to get the gold with that extra 1-2%? Will they be thanked for not pushing for it. All of those 4th place finishers will find the coaching advice they ignored ringing in their ears right now and all of the previous gold medal winners remember standing on the top step.
As you say, it's a choice, if they aren't doing what it takes to get the gold then give them the chop for someone who will. Elite sport is exactly that.
It is a really tricky one. My daughter (12yo) is quite a talented long distance runner who has competed at a national level for the county. She is very competitive and likes racing but really doesn't like training (who does?). Up until the age of about 11, I really encouraged her to do training to get the best out of her. Since then she has reached the age where she needs to make decisions for herself as to what she wants to do with her life. As a parent it is difficult because you want to make sure they make the most of their talents but at the same time being careful that you don't push the child to do it for you and not for themselves.
I do think though that if you have a young athlete who is capable of gold in the Olympics then it needs to be spelled out to them exactly what is involved. The decision is up to them and they either need to get with that programme or get off to let someone who is prepared to do it take their place. There is no point taking an athlete like that and not pushing them and coming up with a 4th place when they could have got Gold. They will have wasted their time by doing a lot but not enough.
But the point is that she's clearly not going to become an elite long distance runner. I'm specifically talking about people who already are. Their life goal is to stand on the top step of the podium. If it isn't they're in the wrong career.
That's all great but the system where you leave everything in life to train bonkersly to get a gold is by definition one which is going to create vastly more failures than winners.
Mr. B, I think Red Bull being pissed off at the time was fair enough, but they are over-egging things now.
Opinion is split on the matter, though. I was watching Channel 4's coverage and both Webber and Coulthard thought it was down to Hamilton (NB both are former Red Bull drivers, but given the photograph linked previously I do think they're correct).
They’re alongside going into the corner entry. Both are entitled to challenge, and to be given space by the other.
They are almost wheel to wheel. If Hamilton was half a yard back, Red Bull would have something to beef about. (Unitended pun).
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
And if the coach believes the athlete has the ability to get the gold with that extra 1-2%? Will they be thanked for not pushing for it. All of those 4th place finishers will find the coaching advice they ignored ringing in their ears right now and all of the previous gold medal winners remember standing on the top step.
As you say, it's a choice, if they aren't doing what it takes to get the gold then give them the chop for someone who will. Elite sport is exactly that.
It is a really tricky one. My daughter (12yo) is quite a talented long distance runner who has competed at a national level for the county. She is very competitive and likes racing but really doesn't like training (who does?). Up until the age of about 11, I really encouraged her to do training to get the best out of her. Since then she has reached the age where she needs to make decisions for herself as to what she wants to do with her life. As a parent it is difficult because you want to make sure they make the most of their talents but at the same time being careful that you don't push the child to do it for you and not for themselves.
I do think though that if you have a young athlete who is capable of gold in the Olympics then it needs to be spelled out to them exactly what is involved. The decision is up to them and they either need to get with that programme or get off to let someone who is prepared to do it take their place. There is no point taking an athlete like that and not pushing them and coming up with a 4th place when they could have got Gold. They will have wasted their time by doing a lot but not enough.
But the point is that she's clearly not going to become an elite long distance runner. I'm specifically talking about people who already are. Their life goal is to stand on the top step of the podium. If it isn't they're in the wrong career.
That's all great but the system where you leave everything in life to train bonkersly to get a gold is by definition one which is going to create vastly more failures than winners.
The latest move from Premier League clubs is to pick kids from u8s football and tell them they can train at satellite academies far from the clubs ground… and charge them for doing so! I didn’t like the sound of that at all when my mates son was invited, though the kids would probably kick and scream if the parents prevented them going
Mr. B, I think Red Bull being pissed off at the time was fair enough, but they are over-egging things now.
Opinion is split on the matter, though. I was watching Channel 4's coverage and both Webber and Coulthard thought it was down to Hamilton (NB both are former Red Bull drivers, but given the photograph linked previously I do think they're correct).
They’re alongside going into the corner entry. Both are entitled to challenge, and to be given space by the other.
They are almost wheel to wheel. If Hamilton was half a yard back, Red Bull would have something to beef about. (Unitended pun).
And the thing that keeps being forgotten is that Verstappen went defensive going into the corner. He was trying to have his cake and eat it. He got what he deserved.
Equally telling that education doesn't make the top three for Tories.
Not really. I wouldn’t want the country to have (1) poor education (2) poor health (3) an inadequate welfare system (4) onerous taxation (5) uncontrolled immigration (6) lots of other things
A “top 3” is meaningless because they are all important to get right.
On the contrary, I think it's very telling. If you think a few hundred unfortunate souls washing up on our shores will have a bigger impact on our future happiness and prosperity than having a well resourced and effective education system then you are deluded. Politics is all about priorities. If you have daft priorities, you will get bad outcomes. Similarly, if you have politicians who use unimportant stuff to distract you from their manifest incompetence on the things that matter.
Interesting that you conflate the Channel crossings with the issue of mass economic migration.
That is Faragist position.
Isn't it the dinghies that people are getting their knickers in a twist about? We have tough rules governing economic migration already, a points based immigration system no less, so there's nothing to worry about there surely. Personally I am a big fan of immigration. I am married to the daughter of immigrants. I have three beautiful kids who are grandchildren of immigrants. I work for a business created by an immigrant. Many of my friends, neighbours and colleagues are immigrants. The idea that immigration is one of the great problems facing us as a country is for the birds.
Recriminations already starting in Team GB rowing. "Medals and more" (the woke approach) being blamed for the underperformance. Athletes to be told you win medals or you fuck off for Paris in a reversal of the Tokyo approach. Weak willed athletes to be left at home if they can't handle training to win gold.
If sport isn’t fun then these young people are simply wasting a chunk of their lives. I feel profoundly sorry for individuals caught in the web of the nasty bastards running these organisations. The culture of course comes from the top: the UK government.
Wokeness doesn't come from the top of government, it's the ideology of present day elites and it's advancing through society day-by-day regardless of politics.
You'd be right to say that only Government action can stop it, though.
So, now it’s “woke” to say that children and young adults should be having fun? Nonsense! It’s plain common sense. Nothing to do with “elites”.
What you “anti-woke” chancers want is for children and young adults to be effectively enslaved by the state. Shame on you!
I am with you on this Stuart. Those of us who are old enough to remember the enslaved gymnasts of eastern Europe who were even in some cases inseminated and then aborted because it gave the young girls just that little bit of more suppleness or who were force fed diets of steroids with horrific consequences to their health all in the name of glory for some tin pot dictator can see where this leads.
Sport is not just about winning. If it were it is not worth doing. Athletes need to be treated with respect and develop as people not as automatons. There is nothing woke about stopping sexual or physical harrassment of young athletes in the name of some glory for the institution. It leads to bad things.
Thank you for your support David.
This is a topic very close to my heart. I have a lot of experience in the area, both joy and sorrow. Both historic and current.
I suspect that most people have never been anywhere near the strange world of elite sport, and therefore don’t really understand it. That said, PB does have several hundred experts on Covid19 who don’t have a degree in medicine, so why should the world of sport be any different?
I've seen this with my own son in his drive to get into Oxford. He decided he wanted it and went for it 100%. He gave up a lot of other things because he recognised it was necessary to get to that level and worked incredibly hard to achieve it. The absolutely critical thing is that this was his choice. He wanted it and he's got his medal.
It's the same with elite sport. If the kid is self driven and determined by all means give him all the technical support and skilled coaching that we can. But it must, must remain his or her choice. The moment someone else is doing the driving, as opposed to supporting, things go wrong.
And if the coach believes the athlete has the ability to get the gold with that extra 1-2%? Will they be thanked for not pushing for it. All of those 4th place finishers will find the coaching advice they ignored ringing in their ears right now and all of the previous gold medal winners remember standing on the top step.
As you say, it's a choice, if they aren't doing what it takes to get the gold then give them the chop for someone who will. Elite sport is exactly that.
It is a really tricky one. My daughter (12yo) is quite a talented long distance runner who has competed at a national level for the county. She is very competitive and likes racing but really doesn't like training (who does?). Up until the age of about 11, I really encouraged her to do training to get the best out of her. Since then she has reached the age where she needs to make decisions for herself as to what she wants to do with her life. As a parent it is difficult because you want to make sure they make the most of their talents but at the same time being careful that you don't push the child to do it for you and not for themselves.
I do think though that if you have a young athlete who is capable of gold in the Olympics then it needs to be spelled out to them exactly what is involved. The decision is up to them and they either need to get with that programme or get off to let someone who is prepared to do it take their place. There is no point taking an athlete like that and not pushing them and coming up with a 4th place when they could have got Gold. They will have wasted their time by doing a lot but not enough.
But the point is that she's clearly not going to become an elite long distance runner. I'm specifically talking about people who already are. Their life goal is to stand on the top step of the podium. If it isn't they're in the wrong career.
That's all great but the system where you leave everything in life to train bonkersly to get a gold is by definition one which is going to create vastly more failures than winners.
I think it is somewhere in the middle- To get taxpayer or lottery funding and the best coaching (rare resource in itself) you have to be prepared to give it all and more (the coach bit comes in with the "more" bit) and you have to aim for at least a medal in your career.
Most will still not quite achieve this as sport is uncertain and cruel (its why its so interesting to many especially those who are competitive) but once initial disappointment is over generally most athletes if they have given everything will have benefited from the programme . Even GB will have as to get medals you need a greater pool trying to get medals (sort of maths really)
It's an interesting contrast with Macron and the flowers
I think the reason it caught in the wind is he lifted it up to offer it to the woman behind him. Old fashioned may be, but a nice gesture
It was Chaplinesque slapstick gold from a comedic genius.
Don't undersell your boy by suggesting he offered his umbrella as a prop for a chat-up line.
If the sequence had captured T May, IDS, Howard, Brown, even Blair, Jezza, Miliband, SKS in the same way it would have been sub optimal for them. Hague, Cameron (maybe), Mowlem, might have been OK. But for this apparently accidental sequence to be comedy gold that silent films and cartoons strive for with great effort shows a sort of unlearnable genius.
Mr. B, I think Red Bull being pissed off at the time was fair enough, but they are over-egging things now.
Opinion is split on the matter, though. I was watching Channel 4's coverage and both Webber and Coulthard thought it was down to Hamilton (NB both are former Red Bull drivers, but given the photograph linked previously I do think they're correct).
They’re alongside going into the corner entry. Both are entitled to challenge, and to be given space by the other.
They are almost wheel to wheel. If Hamilton was half a yard back, Red Bull would have something to beef about. (Unitended pun).
And the thing that keeps being forgotten is that Verstappen went defensive going into the corner. He was trying to have his cake and eat it. He got what he deserved.
TBF, I suspect without Horner in his corner Max would take it on the chin. Horner strikes me as a bit of a princess.
A subject close to my heart - my girlfriend says the midwives and nurses have not been at all pushy about this, & even seem to be saying don’t bother, reading between the lines.
“ Public Health England data suggests about 51,724 pregnant women have received one Covid vaccine in England so far. Of these, around 20,648 have had their second dose. This is out of approximately 606,500 pregnant women in England in 2020-21, based on estimates from GP records.”
It is important to stress that no one in government — from ministers to aides to scientists — has a clear explanation for why cases are currently far lower than projected. Today’s poll may just provide some insight. It shows that tens of millions of Brits were uneasy about Johnson’s decision to open up this month, that a clear majority seems to be complying with ongoing isolation rules, and that huge numbers are exercising significant caution in how they go about their daily lives, limiting whom they meet and taking measures that would help stop the spread. The truth is we still don’t know and there may be other more important factors at play, though it might just be that the natural caution and moderation of the public has at least partly helped to stop cases from spiralling out of control.
If the above theory is correct then unfortunately for Pagel and co, it implies that trusting people to judge their own risk works far better than iSAGE would believe.
Paging Tegnell.
Yes, it always seemed likely to me that when official restrictions were lifted, people would exercise caution anyway. We don’t need a nanny state ordering us all the time. We don’t have to wear masks anymore, yet most people in shops still do, who in their right mind would go about their business no as if it were July 2019? A few maybe but generally not many. Give the public some credit!
If its correct that everyone is going to come into contact with covid at some point then its pretty senseless for people who are fully vaccinated to wear a mask. Especially if they are at low risk to begin with.
While those who think they are at risk would be well advised to wear a proper mask.
The wearing of the blue flimsy masks, often incorrectly, falls into the pointless gap between the two sensible choices.
I don’t know about the effectivity of types of mask, personally I wear one most of the time I’m shopping because I don’t want to upset people feeling vulnerable, but they are an obvious indicator of how much people are or are not simply relying on the government to inform their everyday decisions.
I also wear a mask in shops, but it's not because of anything the government says or because I think they are effective. It's because a) the shop usually has a sign asking people to do so, b) as you say, it makes some vulnerable people feel safer and c) it's no great hardship for me. I imagine that most mask wearers are thinking along similar lines, and it's why Sajid Javid's "cowering" comment was so misplaced. Those of us who continue to wear masks in shops are not "cowering", we are simply being considerate. "Cowering" was an insult.
Mr. 86, Verstappen was defending his position. He isn't obliged to let his title rival past by opening the door. It's bizarre to blame a chap ahead who gets hit by someone else for the collision.
It is important to stress that no one in government — from ministers to aides to scientists — has a clear explanation for why cases are currently far lower than projected. Today’s poll may just provide some insight. It shows that tens of millions of Brits were uneasy about Johnson’s decision to open up this month, that a clear majority seems to be complying with ongoing isolation rules, and that huge numbers are exercising significant caution in how they go about their daily lives, limiting whom they meet and taking measures that would help stop the spread. The truth is we still don’t know and there may be other more important factors at play, though it might just be that the natural caution and moderation of the public has at least partly helped to stop cases from spiralling out of control.
If the above theory is correct then unfortunately for Pagel and co, it implies that trusting people to judge their own risk works far better than iSAGE would believe.
Paging Tegnell.
Yes, it always seemed likely to me that when official restrictions were lifted, people would exercise caution anyway. We don’t need a nanny state ordering us all the time. We don’t have to wear masks anymore, yet most people in shops still do, who in their right mind would go about their business no as if it were July 2019? A few maybe but generally not many. Give the public some credit!
I get that people may have stayed cautious but that alone cannot explain the huge falls, as they are not more cautious than before, surely?
Comments
If the above theory is correct then unfortunately for Pagel and co, it implies that trusting people to judge their own risk works far better than iSAGE would believe.
Paging Tegnell.
I don't think Hamilton was malicious, just that it was a misjudgement on his part.
Even electrical goods retailers have "best of" awards as I know cos I used to work in the game and have a very funny if rude story about one ceremony.
Checks on vaccine passports will be carried out by airlines before travellers reach Britain to reduce disruption
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1421011748782579714?s=20
"Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory backbench MPs, said it was "frustrating and ridiculous that this was not available months and months ago". "
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/29/hospital-figures-covid-cases-misleading/
On the flip side, grumpy old men who think the Olympics is amateur, when it has not been for generations, think the best should be excluded.
In fact, he used to say that most professional athletes were quite thick, and that talent-spotters actively wanted people who were good at the sport but easily controllable.
(*) Thinking about, the brother of a friend of mine represented Wales at hockey.
“By March, there had been 5.3m applications from almost 5m individuals for “settled” or “pre-settled” status (some people applied twice) […]
Yet in 2019, the Home Office estimated the total pool of people eligible to apply for the scheme was only between 3.5m and 4.1m. Applications by people from Romania and Bulgaria had reached about 918,000 and 284,000 respectively by March, while the latest official estimates of their resident populations were 370,000 and 122,000 respectively. Some applications will be from eligible family members or from people who have left the UK. Even so, it seems clear the UK’s population and migration estimates have been “wholly inadequate since at least the mid-2010s”, as economist Jonathan Portes has written.”
https://www.ft.com/content/1c489fb7-2840-4810-b3e6-a036803edf5c
“to tell them to push harder” a few times a week? Yes, probably bullying.
It is the job of sports governing bodies to root out the bullies, not actively support them.
A “top 3” is meaningless because they are all important to get right.
The latter seems a tall stretch for the party as it is such a fundamental divide.
The stewards told Red Bull to get out yesterday, after they accused Lewis of crashing deliberately and demanded a higher penalty.
Not an accusation in the heat of the moment with a microphone pushed in your face - but in writing, two weeks later.
This is perhaps why rowing is Oxbridge-dominated?
The reality is much more nuanced.
The painful truth is that it works. We would and did ride ourselves into a state of vomiting semi-consciousness just because the DS asked us to.
If they have been outside the UK for more than six months in any 12-month period, they will now only be able to upgrade to settled status if they returned to the UK before 31 December 2020. After that: bugger off.
Also issues with young adults who have both worked and studied in the UK. Extremely easy to have the “wrong” paperwork.
If other athletes pick up the fact that people will praise you for withdrawing in a team event half way through it then it makes it easier to do and not sure that is good. It would have been better to then concentrate on those who were still competing not on Biles
I also don't like Red Bull's insistence that the severity of the crash should be taken into account.
IMV it was a racing incident, with Hamilton 80% to blame, Verstappen 20%. However given Max's driving style, such a clash was inevitable eventually.
It still might be true, but to know if it is we really need to poll over 60s by tertiary education both high and low income - which I suspect will be a small sample size - and compare them to under 30s who've graduated of the same.
By the way, even if it is true it doesn't mean Tories are "thick" - which is where this argument usually goes - it's more likely to mean the globalised international economy works particularly well for those tertiary educated, with the income levels to go with it.
The issue is that accelerated approval comes with an obligation to conduct Phase IV trials. In theory the approval is conditional but the FDA isn’t as rigourous as they should be in enforcing that.
Many of the examples are also label expansion so there is evidence of efficacy in the main indication plus reasonable scientific support for the new indication
Sign of the times.
CON: 40.1% (+25.2)
IND: 39.7% (+39.7)
LAB: 20.1% (-47.7)
Conservative GAIN from Labour.
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1421016965485842432?s=20
Posted before, but here's the photographic comparison that shows Hamilton's position versus Verstappen and versus Leclerc. He was in the wrong place and got very lucky.
https://twitter.com/MorrisF1/status/1417023610666065920
Mr. Sandpit, indeed, we do disagree. If it had been earlier in the lap I might concur but they'd effectively separated from others so the chaos of the opening was over and it was just the two of them.
Advertisers, politicians, door canvassers, lawyers, medics, schoolteachers, tradesmen, police officers, double-glazing salesmen, estate agents, secondhand car dealers, managers, and journalists all use manipulative techniques too, so PUAs aren't special in that respect. In my extensive research (from behind my desk) into the PUA scene, I've never come across any hint of an intersection with child abuse, so I was wondering whether maybe you had. Paedophiles who commit their crimes outside of the family are attracted to places and jobs where they have access to children, such as schools, playgroups, and institutions that interface with children in fields that include health, sports, cultural activities, the criminal justice system, and social services. Approaching women and employing the Mystery method, the London daygame model, etc. etc. etc., is another kind of interest.
Any such meaningless list is equally open to attack.
And whilst "having fun" is a nice to have, it isn't necessary to achieve success. I think football is a job for a fair few players who do it because they are good at it.
The rowing team are getting grief, but eventually you'll have a poor games. It's the nature of the beast. What matters is that they go away and try to come back better in Paris.
One final thing. My favourite moment of the games was when the Gadirova twins were interviewed yesterday after the all around final. The interviewer asked them about Simone Biles and Jennifer said words to the effect of "well I'm first reserve for the floor final, so if she doesn't take part I'll get to compete in another Olympic final, which would be great." Not the nice answer the interviewer was hoping for, but exactly how athletes should be thinking in my opinion.
To be serious: perhaps it is that to get to Oxbridge, you have to be quite bright already, offsetting the effect somewhat. I should say that the one person I've known who could have rowed in the Boat Race was quite bright: but even years later he would get up at the crack of dawn to go to the gym to train.
Much as I love road racing, I am also fully aware that it has an ugly side. Several ugly sides in fact.
It is one of the reasons I’m delighted that none of our children chose that sport. I’m also glad they rejected swimming, for much the same reasons.
(Firmly tongue in cheek - I suspect that's mostly a correlation with age, with education as proxy - I've not seen any work that shows an education association while controlling for age, although that would be interesting)
Edit - ah, Nick P and Casino beat me to both the joke and the serious point that there's obvious confounding with age
That is Faragist position.
Personally I draw no conclusions about Tory voters being "thick", I view formal education as weakly correlated with innate intelligence.
Seems less than likely.
ETA he died.
And note that Red Bull still seem to be alleging malice.
https://www.racefans.net/2021/07/29/red-bulls-failed-bid-for-another-hamilton-penalty-troubles-the-fia-and-enrages-mercedes/
Hamilton's placement varies far more.
While those who think they are at risk would be well advised to wear a proper mask.
The wearing of the blue flimsy masks, often incorrectly, falls into the pointless gap between the two sensible choices.
Some actual policies to recognise the real effects and concerns could help though. Serious money for areas with high immigration, ensuring that services gain capacity faster than the increased load on them for example - "since all those Poles arrived, it's got easier than ever to get a GP appointment", council funding. Get councils competing for migrants to settle. Crack down heavily on illegal working undercutting wages etc (the punishments already quite harsh, I think, but a lack of resource for detection).
Set out the need for immigration, in terms of the economy and (if it is, indeed, a net benefit) make sure that those areas with high immigration see those benefits.
As with Brexit, those pro-immigration (and those pro-EU) have preferred to change the subject rather than make the positive case for their position. With the same results.
I do think though that if you have a young athlete who is capable of gold in the Olympics then it needs to be spelled out to them exactly what is involved. The decision is up to them and they either need to get with that programme or get off to let someone who is prepared to do it take their place. There is no point taking an athlete like that and not pushing them and coming up with a 4th place when they could have got Gold. They will have wasted their time by doing a lot but not enough.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/30/nobel-prize-fails-modern-science
Opinion is split on the matter, though. I was watching Channel 4's coverage and both Webber and Coulthard thought it was down to Hamilton (NB both are former Red Bull drivers, but given the photograph linked previously I do think they're correct).
The word "driven" begins to describe it.
Given the list - "free time, hobbies, reading, mucking about on bikes, holidays, dipping their toes at the seaside, taking their driving test, snogging pretty girls, studying, partaking of a lager shandy, smelling the flowers"
vs
"Training until you throw up. Then training some more."
The Olympic grade athletes will chose B every single time. This is what they *want* - to a degree that can seem like selfish monomania to outsiders.
Red Bullies are only upset because of the outcome. If it had been Lewis in the wall, they’d have been loudly cheering.
"We are working very close with the European Commission in order to reach a settlement," said Ruud Dobber, AstraZeneca's vice president of biopharmaceuticals, on a call with journalists. "We don't think it's useful for both parties to continue this, and I'm very hopeful that in the next few weeks, we will come to an agreement."
The European Commission declined to comment.
https://www.politico.eu/article/astrazeneca-official-hopeful-to-settle-eu-court-case-on-vaccines-contract-in-weeks/
It is just what reporters do when a Brit wins. It's nice not woke.
“Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they’re rather stupid.”
Edit: And even more apt, for Patel:
“Sacked? Certainly not. I am never sacked!”
Don't undersell your boy by suggesting he offered his umbrella as a prop for a chat-up line.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Politician_of_the_Year
Mr. Sandpit, indeed. I just hope luck evens up over the course of the season. It's tight and Verstappen should be comfortably ahead, but now has only a narrow lead.
As Sunder mentioned in the first reply to the Goodwin tweet.
Personally I am a big fan of immigration. I am married to the daughter of immigrants. I have three beautiful kids who are grandchildren of immigrants. I work for a business created by an immigrant. Many of my friends, neighbours and colleagues are immigrants. The idea that immigration is one of the great problems facing us as a country is for the birds.
Most will still not quite achieve this as sport is uncertain and cruel (its why its so interesting to many especially those who are competitive) but once initial disappointment is over generally most athletes if they have given everything will have benefited from the programme . Even GB will have as to get medals you need a greater pool trying to get medals (sort of maths really)
https://www.gofundme.com/f/funding-beth-olympic-dream
Amazing. What a story.
https://twitter.com/FreakyYDV/status/1416843477065871360
Mr. Pete, you're right. At that point they're almost side-by-side. But they don't make contact at that point.
“ Public Health England data suggests about 51,724 pregnant women have received one Covid vaccine in England so far. Of these, around 20,648 have had their second dose.
This is out of approximately 606,500 pregnant women in England in 2020-21, based on estimates from GP records.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58014779
I was assured that one of the few (only?) Brexit wins would be reduced salience of “immigration” as an issue.