Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

So far the polling’s not looking bad for LizT – politicalbetting.com

1468910

Comments

  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    edited September 2022

    Yes she did. You don't understand Theresa May's deal if you think it didn't involve new Irish Sea border checks.

    You are right of course that even under the superb deal she managed to reach, there would still have been some very limited checks. Far less than those Boris signed up to, though.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,919
    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    The famous American transgender clinic exposed in that video has just taken down its entire website. The whole damn thing

    https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health

    Vanished

    Given that Tucker Carlson is calling on his viewers to commit acts of terrorism against gender identity clinics, can you blame them?

    This is the same playbook used against abortion clinics: make outrageous claims & then leave the rest to stochastic terrorism.
    What is this fashionable new word on the Victim Left. "Stochastic". You see it everywhere

    Consider the murder of Jo Cox. This was an entirely forseeable consequence of the ramping up of accusation by certain pro-Leave groups accusing remainers of being traitors: It was inevitable that somewhere within the fascist elements active in Britain at the time there would be someone who heard the message loud and clear and acted upon it.

    Did those pro-Leave groups intend for an MP to die? Probably not. Was it a forseeable outcome of their choice of words? Yes.

    Or, alternatively, the way ISIS used their propaganda to stir up anti-Western sentiment amongst Muslims in the west - they had no control over who & where any attacks might happen, but they knew that with enough effective propaganda targetted at the right people, such attacks would become inevitable.

    That’s stochastic terrorism. For political groups inside countries it allows deniability, whilst taking advantage of the mentally vulnerable to do ones dirty work. For those acting from the outside, it allows them to provoke attacks without the risk of compromising their own operatives.

    The summary on Wikipedia is decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism

  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    NICE don't authorise drugs for use.

    OK, it's a bit complicated! The MHRA authorises drugs. The MHRA has authorised puberty blockers... for certain uses. However, doctors can and routinely do use all sorts of drugs for purposes other than which they are licensed. (On the grounds that the drugs have been authorised for some use, ergo we know they're reasonably safe, and that their usage to date has also proven them safe.) The checks on whether doctors are making sensible prescribing/treatment decisions are either at the level of the individual practitioner or at the level of the service. The service is covered by the CQC. Individual practitioners are covered by licensing and, ultimately, the threat of being done for malpractice if they can't justify their decision(s), which would be judged against the Bolam standard.

    NICE assesses cost effectiveness and recommends best treatments. NICE has a massive backlog and there are many aspects of medicine where there is no NICE guidance at present. NICE generally concentrates on the bigger stuff and the numbers here are pretty small. NICE could be asked to recommend best practice in this area. (Maybe they have been? I don't know.)
    Thank you. Helpful.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,599



    {snip}

    And you think we can stand up to Serbia, Saddam and Putin with ~2% defence spending?

    The evidence to date is that we can.

    - Serbia has stopped trying to conquer the neighbourhood.
    - Saddam is dead.
    - Putin is having tantrums about his tiny pee pee being laughed at.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,151

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
    NICE:

    This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.

    https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf

    Thanks.

    So NICE were asked, by Cass, and produced that, which will influence future care, but obviously this came too late in terms of what was happening at the Tavistock.

    (This doesn't appear to be a formal NICE guideline, I couldn't see it on the NICE website, but I don't think that really matters.)

    I note it says that one male puberty blocker *is* licensed for gender dysphoria, which I hadn't realised.

    Let's look at the full conclusion there:

    "Any potential benefits of gender-affirming hormones must be weighed against the largely
    unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments in children and adolescents with
    gender dysphoria.

    "Results from 5 uncontrolled, observational studies suggest that, in children and adolescents
    with gender dysphoria, gender-affirming hormones are likely to improve symptoms of gender
    dysphoria, and may also improve depression, anxiety, quality of life, suicidality, and
    psychosocial functioning. The impact of treatment on body image is unclear. All results were
    of very low certainty using modified GRADE.

    [...]

    "This review did not identify sub-groups of patients who may benefit more from gender-affirming hormones.
    No cost-effectiveness evidence was found to determine whether gender-affirming hormones
    are a cost-effective treatment for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria"

    So, they're saying the evidence is crap ("All results were of very low certainty using modified GRADE."), but what evidence there is seems positive ("gender-affirming hormones are likely to improve symptoms of gender dysphoria, and may also improve depression, anxiety, quality of life, suicidality, and psychosocial functioning"). That is not a conclusion that says never use these drugs. That is a conclusion that says, we need more research on using these drugs and clinicians should proceed with caution. The Cass report indeed recommends further research, which seems very sensible.

    Any legal cases against the clinic or individual doctors are going to hit the Bolam standard. There's enough in that NICE report to bolster a defence on those grounds.

  • Because contrary to your belief the agreement doesn't put a border there, it explicitly states that NI is a sovereign part of the United Kingdom.

    Great, well you'd better tell the ERG and put their minds at rest, then. They seem to be terribly worried about it.
    Also, we need an answer to the big question: if the agreement didn't put the border there, what did? Because we can obfuscate around this for ever and the reality that there IS a customs border remains absolute...

  • AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/
  • Phil said:

    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    The famous American transgender clinic exposed in that video has just taken down its entire website. The whole damn thing

    https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health

    Vanished

    Given that Tucker Carlson is calling on his viewers to commit acts of terrorism against gender identity clinics, can you blame them?

    This is the same playbook used against abortion clinics: make outrageous claims & then leave the rest to stochastic terrorism.
    What is this fashionable new word on the Victim Left. "Stochastic". You see it everywhere

    Consider the murder of Jo Cox. This was an entirely forseeable consequence of the ramping up of accusation by certain pro-Leave groups accusing remainers of being traitors: It was inevitable that somewhere within the fascist elements active in Britain at the time there would be someone who heard the message loud and clear and acted upon it.

    Did those pro-Leave groups intend for an MP to die? Probably not. Was it a forseeable outcome of their choice of words? Yes.

    Or, alternatively, the way ISIS used their propaganda to stir up anti-Western sentiment amongst Muslims in the west - they had no control over who & where any attacks might happen, but they knew that with enough effective propaganda targetted at the right people, such attacks would become inevitable.

    That’s stochastic terrorism. For political groups inside countries it allows deniability, whilst taking advantage of the mentally vulnerable to do ones dirty work. For those acting from the outside, it allows them to provoke attacks without the risk of compromising their own operatives.

    The summary on Wikipedia is decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism

    Stochastic just means random. It isn't a new word.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,919

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
    NICE:

    This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.

    https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf

    That’s par for the course for a lot of drugs frankly.

    These drugs were being used for exactly the thing they were made to be prescribed for, there are far worse off-label uses: That use may or may not have been a bad idea, but it is exactly what the drugs were for.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Ahahaha


    So it is basically Full Mobilisation but they are pretending it isn't

    That leaves roads, boats and rail

    A ferry to Turkey?
  • paulyork64paulyork64 Posts: 2,461

    Due to security reasons, Latvia will not issue humanitarian or other types of visas to those Russian citizens who avoid mobilization, nor will it change the border crossing restrictions for Russian citizens with Schengen visas introduced since September 19th,

    says Latvian FM.


    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1572529226435424256

    Is the road to Kaliningrad unclosable?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,874


    Because contrary to your belief the agreement doesn't put a border there, it explicitly states that NI is a sovereign part of the United Kingdom.

    Great, well you'd better tell the ERG and put their minds at rest, then. They seem to be terribly worried about it.
    There are issues, issues that can be resolved via domestic legislation like the NI Protocol Bill.

    That is what sovereignty and taking back control is all about, evolving over time and Parliament doing its job.
    Quite how you come to the conclusion that domestic legislation can unilaterally 'resolve' alleged issues with an international treaty is one of those mysteries to which I think we'll never find an answer. You do realise that there are two parties to the NIP, I take it?
    The end state will surely be a vastly expanded trusted trader scheme and vastly reduced checking of lorries. Both sides have been dicks about the whole thing to be honest. I think we are getting closer now - rumours before the queen died of just such an outcome looming into view.

    Personal view - Biden should wind his neck in about NI. I don't give a stuff about how many yanks claim to be 'Irish'. They aren't Irish, they are American. I expect I've got Norse, Danish, French, Norman, ancestry - doesn't give me the right to intervene in hoe Norway, Denmark, France, Normandy etc conduct there trade.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,919

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    The famous American transgender clinic exposed in that video has just taken down its entire website. The whole damn thing

    https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health

    Vanished

    Given that Tucker Carlson is calling on his viewers to commit acts of terrorism against gender identity clinics, can you blame them?

    This is the same playbook used against abortion clinics: make outrageous claims & then leave the rest to stochastic terrorism.
    What is this fashionable new word on the Victim Left. "Stochastic". You see it everywhere

    Consider the murder of Jo Cox. This was an entirely forseeable consequence of the ramping up of accusation by certain pro-Leave groups accusing remainers of being traitors: It was inevitable that somewhere within the fascist elements active in Britain at the time there would be someone who heard the message loud and clear and acted upon it.

    Did those pro-Leave groups intend for an MP to die? Probably not. Was it a forseeable outcome of their choice of words? Yes.

    Or, alternatively, the way ISIS used their propaganda to stir up anti-Western sentiment amongst Muslims in the west - they had no control over who & where any attacks might happen, but they knew that with enough effective propaganda targetted at the right people, such attacks would become inevitable.

    That’s stochastic terrorism. For political groups inside countries it allows deniability, whilst taking advantage of the mentally vulnerable to do ones dirty work. For those acting from the outside, it allows them to provoke attacks without the risk of compromising their own operatives.

    The summary on Wikipedia is decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism

    Stochastic just means random. It isn't a new word.
    Indeed, but “Stochastic Terrorism” is a relatively recent coinage, as Leon notes.

    The premier current example of this kind of deniable incitement to violence is Trump of course, which is probably why you’re seeing it used a lot on the left right now. But in the past it’s been applied to ISIS & other ideological groups.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,599
    Leon said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Ahahaha


    So it is basically Full Mobilisation but they are pretending it isn't

    That leaves roads, boats and rail

    A ferry to Turkey?
    Not necessarily - but think about it.

    They say they are calling up 300,000 men. But not who.

    So any 18-to-65 year old could be in the... line of fire?

    They may well want people with particular skills. So it may not just be "bring me all the 18 year olds, then the 19...."

    So anyone in that age range may want to get out. Just to be sure.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    Leon said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Ahahaha


    So it is basically Full Mobilisation but they are pretending it isn't

    No, no, no

    These men are not mobilised.

    They are un-mobilised.

    Prevented from mobilising their asses out of Russia...
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,814

    For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
    Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)

    Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.

    These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in.
    800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.

    The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot.
    Grim grim grim

    But at least we'd have Leon reassuring us that our thin soup was the equal of anything France or Italy could produce.
    Leons tour of subsistence feeding centres! A must read for all irradiated PBers
    Leon lives in inner London so like me he would be one of the lucky millions to die immediately.
    And I mean lucky.
    Likeliest London strikes would be Whitehall, Northolt, away from those you'd probably be 'ok'. An all out assault on the UK in 2022 would be somewhere between 10 to 20 warheads if they all got through/worked.
    A large majority uk wide would survive to suffer the aftermath
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,874
    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    The famous American transgender clinic exposed in that video has just taken down its entire website. The whole damn thing

    https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health

    Vanished

    Given that Tucker Carlson is calling on his viewers to commit acts of terrorism against gender identity clinics, can you blame them?

    This is the same playbook used against abortion clinics: make outrageous claims & then leave the rest to stochastic terrorism.
    What is this fashionable new word on the Victim Left. "Stochastic". You see it everywhere

    Consider the murder of Jo Cox. This was an entirely forseeable consequence of the ramping up of accusation by certain pro-Leave groups accusing remainers of being traitors: It was inevitable that somewhere within the fascist elements active in Britain at the time there would be someone who heard the message loud and clear and acted upon it.

    Did those pro-Leave groups intend for an MP to die? Probably not. Was it a forseeable outcome of their choice of words? Yes.

    Or, alternatively, the way ISIS used their propaganda to stir up anti-Western sentiment amongst Muslims in the west - they had no control over who & where any attacks might happen, but they knew that with enough effective propaganda targetted at the right people, such attacks would become inevitable.

    That’s stochastic terrorism. For political groups inside countries it allows deniability, whilst taking advantage of the mentally vulnerable to do ones dirty work. For those acting from the outside, it allows them to provoke attacks without the risk of compromising their own operatives.

    The summary on Wikipedia is decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism

    Stochastic being used out of context by social scientists is the same as their use of quantum, without understanding that either.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    Which, by the way, is the good thing about the US.

    If someone does something stupid - like this - then they get sued into oblivion. In 18 months, no hospital in the US which performs sex change operations on under 18s will be able to get insurance.
  • For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
    Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)

    Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.

    These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in.
    800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.

    The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot.
    Grim grim grim

    My father was, in the mid 80s, Provost Marshal Navy (basically Chief Constable of the Royal Navy). Included in that post was the role of post-nuclear war military governor for south central England (not sure of the exact boundaries he'd have been in charge of). He went on a course about plans, and his role and responsibilities. He came back utterly depressed and somewhat terrified, and having been (understandably as a RN lifer) completely pro-nuclear weapons, did a 180 and was anti for the rest of his life. He did want the cash spent on other goodies for the RN however.
  • Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
    NICE:

    This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.

    https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf



    Any legal cases against the clinic or individual doctors are going to hit the Bolam standard. There's enough in that NICE report to bolster a defence on those grounds.
    Given the long term effects are “unknown” how is a patient able to give informed consent, even if they pass Gillick (which some may not)?
  • paulyork64paulyork64 Posts: 2,461
    Leon said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Ahahaha


    So it is basically Full Mobilisation but they are pretending it isn't

    That leaves roads, boats and rail

    A ferry to Turkey?
    Up to 65 is a bit desperate. I'm 57 and I guess I could fight if I had to but I'd be a bit shit at it.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    The famous American transgender clinic exposed in that video has just taken down its entire website. The whole damn thing

    https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health

    Vanished

    Given that Tucker Carlson is calling on his viewers to commit acts of terrorism against gender identity clinics, can you blame them?

    This is the same playbook used against abortion clinics: make outrageous claims & then leave the rest to stochastic terrorism.
    What is this fashionable new word on the Victim Left. "Stochastic". You see it everywhere

    Consider the murder of Jo Cox. This was an entirely forseeable consequence of the ramping up of accusation by certain pro-Leave groups accusing remainers of being traitors: It was inevitable that somewhere within the fascist elements active in Britain at the time there would be someone who heard the message loud and clear and acted upon it.

    Did those pro-Leave groups intend for an MP to die? Probably not. Was it a forseeable outcome of their choice of words? Yes.

    Or, alternatively, the way ISIS used their propaganda to stir up anti-Western sentiment amongst Muslims in the west - they had no control over who & where any attacks might happen, but they knew that with enough effective propaganda targetted at the right people, such attacks would become inevitable.

    That’s stochastic terrorism. For political groups inside countries it allows deniability, whilst taking advantage of the mentally vulnerable to do ones dirty work. For those acting from the outside, it allows them to provoke attacks without the risk of compromising their own operatives.

    The summary on Wikipedia is decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism

    Whatever. Just stop mutilating the bodies of children for profit and we're all good
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Leon said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Ahahaha


    So it is basically Full Mobilisation but they are pretending it isn't

    That leaves roads, boats and rail

    A ferry to Turkey?
    Up to 65 is a bit desperate. I'm 57 and I guess I could fight if I had to but I'd be a bit shit at it.
    Volkssturm.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Leon said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Ahahaha


    So it is basically Full Mobilisation but they are pretending it isn't

    That leaves roads, boats and rail

    A ferry to Turkey?
    Up to 65 is a bit desperate. I'm 57 and I guess I could fight if I had to but I'd be a bit shit at it.
    Likewise. I was hoping for a desk job. Maybe in charge of wine supplies. I'm REALLY good at monitoring those

    Or I could do propaganda and pretend that we have more soldiers than we do. Multiply them online. I'm good at that as well

    Don't fancy the front line, in western Poland. TBH
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,599

    For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
    Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)

    Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.

    These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in.
    800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.

    The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot.
    Grim grim grim

    My father was, in the mid 80s, Provost Marshal Navy (basically Chief Constable of the Royal Navy). Included in that post was the role of post-nuclear war military governor for south central England (not sure of the exact boundaries he'd have been in charge of). He went on a course about plans, and his role and responsibilities. He came back utterly depressed and somewhat terrified, and having been (understandably as a RN lifer) completely pro-nuclear weapons, did a 180 and was anti for the rest of his life. He did want the cash spent on other goodies for the RN however.
    The only slight problem with unilateral nuclear disarmament is whether a potential opponent thinks that nuking people without nukes is OK or not.

    The USSR war plans included nuking Australia and New Zealand. And Ireland. Just in case. Because why not?
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    Due to security reasons, Latvia will not issue humanitarian or other types of visas to those Russian citizens who avoid mobilization, nor will it change the border crossing restrictions for Russian citizens with Schengen visas introduced since September 19th,

    says Latvian FM.


    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1572529226435424256

    Is the road to Kaliningrad unclosable?
    You can do the Southern route if Poland will let you in but random stops on the motorway by Omon or local cops are very common in Russia and Belarus even in times of non-SMO.

    I once ran out of bribery euros on a Moscow to Minsk drive and was reduced to bribing the final set of Belarussian cops near Vitebsk with my sunglasses.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,151

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
    NICE:

    This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.

    https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf

    Any legal cases against the clinic or individual doctors are going to hit the Bolam standard. There's enough in that NICE report to bolster a defence on those grounds.
    Given the long term effects are “unknown” how is a patient able to give informed consent, even if they pass Gillick (which some may not)?
    You say to the patient, simplifying somewhat, "We don't know what the long-term effects are. Are you OK with that?" Informed consent does not require that there are no unknowns, just that the patient is aware of the unknowns. Medicine would grind to a halt if you required there to be no unknowns.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728

    For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
    Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)

    Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.

    These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in.
    800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.

    The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot.
    Grim grim grim

    My father was, in the mid 80s, Provost Marshal Navy (basically Chief Constable of the Royal Navy). Included in that post was the role of post-nuclear war military governor for south central England (not sure of the exact boundaries he'd have been in charge of). He went on a course about plans, and his role and responsibilities. He came back utterly depressed and somewhat terrified, and having been (understandably as a RN lifer) completely pro-nuclear weapons, did a 180 and was anti for the rest of his life. He did want the cash spent on other goodies for the RN however.
    I visited the "Secret Nuclear Bunker", helpfully signposted from the M6

    The scariest room is the office space, with a desk for each coordinator, with no real idea what might be left for them to coordinate...
  • rcs1000 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    Which, by the way, is the good thing about the US.

    If someone does something stupid - like this - then they get sued into oblivion. In 18 months, no hospital in the US which performs sex change operations on under 18s will be able to get insurance.
    Which will probably be the single biggest factor reversing this trade. It all comes down to the money factor.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,814

    For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
    Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)

    Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.

    These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in.
    800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.

    The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot.
    Grim grim grim

    My father was, in the mid 80s, Provost Marshal Navy (basically Chief Constable of the Royal Navy). Included in that post was the role of post-nuclear war military governor for south central England (not sure of the exact boundaries he'd have been in charge of). He went on a course about plans, and his role and responsibilities. He came back utterly depressed and somewhat terrified, and having been (understandably as a RN lifer) completely pro-nuclear weapons, did a 180 and was anti for the rest of his life. He did want the cash spent on other goodies for the RN however.
    Square Leg apparently provoked a lot of 'whats the f***** point'? Reactions given how utterly bleak it looked.
    Of course we had 35,000 nukes worldwide on hair trigger back then
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Putin has kicked off absolute chaos, and painfully destabilised his regime - even more

    Any Russian man with any sense and any money will now try and escape Russia, this could be millions of people. Carnage at the borders. How do you stop it? Shoot them as they scale the wire? Your own people?

    I think this calls for a rare all-caps

    BRACE
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    "25 mile car queue at Russian Finland border. At 50 ft per car, 2 occupants, that's 2000 reservists per mile = 50,000 in just this line. In six days 300,000 will have voted with their feet."

    https://twitter.com/gmeller/status/1572596942470799360?s=20&t=dwMPX0n3JFI_TuBIyHYy_g
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,599
    Leon said:

    Putin has kicked off absolute chaos, and painfully destabilised his regime - even more

    Any Russian man with any sense and any money will now try and escape Russia, this could be millions of people. Carnage at the borders. How do you stop it? Shoot them as they scale the wire? Your own people?

    I think this calls for a rare all-caps

    BRACE

    "Shoot them as they scale the wire? Your own people?"

    Well, he does yearn for the Goode Olde Days of the Soviet Union.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxUdL0CGgOU
  • Phil said:

    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    The famous American transgender clinic exposed in that video has just taken down its entire website. The whole damn thing

    https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health

    Vanished

    Given that Tucker Carlson is calling on his viewers to commit acts of terrorism against gender identity clinics, can you blame them?

    This is the same playbook used against abortion clinics: make outrageous claims & then leave the rest to stochastic terrorism.
    What is this fashionable new word on the Victim Left. "Stochastic". You see it everywhere

    Consider the murder of Jo Cox. This was an entirely forseeable consequence of the ramping up of accusation by certain pro-Leave groups accusing remainers of being traitors: It was inevitable that somewhere within the fascist elements active in Britain at the time there would be someone who heard the message loud and clear and acted upon it.

    Did those pro-Leave groups intend for an MP to die? Probably not. Was it a forseeable outcome of their choice of words? Yes.

    Or, alternatively, the way ISIS used their propaganda to stir up anti-Western sentiment amongst Muslims in the west - they had no control over who & where any attacks might happen, but they knew that with enough effective propaganda targetted at the right people, such attacks would become inevitable.

    That’s stochastic terrorism. For political groups inside countries it allows deniability, whilst taking advantage of the mentally vulnerable to do ones dirty work. For those acting from the outside, it allows them to provoke attacks without the risk of compromising their own operatives.

    The summary on Wikipedia is decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism
    Was it stochastic terrorism when various people accused Boris Johnson's government of mass murder during covid?
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,814

    For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
    Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)

    Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.

    These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in.
    800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.

    The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot.
    Grim grim grim

    My father was, in the mid 80s, Provost Marshal Navy (basically Chief Constable of the Royal Navy). Included in that post was the role of post-nuclear war military governor for south central England (not sure of the exact boundaries he'd have been in charge of). He went on a course about plans, and his role and responsibilities. He came back utterly depressed and somewhat terrified, and having been (understandably as a RN lifer) completely pro-nuclear weapons, did a 180 and was anti for the rest of his life. He did want the cash spent on other goodies for the RN however.
    I think South Central btw was Hampshire, Surrey, West Sussex
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,599
    Leon said:

    "25 mile car queue at Russian Finland border. At 50 ft per car, 2 occupants, that's 2000 reservists per mile = 50,000 in just this line. In six days 300,000 will have voted with their feet."

    https://twitter.com/gmeller/status/1572596942470799360?s=20&t=dwMPX0n3JFI_TuBIyHYy_g

    How many could pass a coffin in 4 days?

    {too soon?}
  • Eabhal said:

    So, with the new rates cap + the £400 relief, my energy bill will be cut by 65% from October 1st for 6 months (from what I'm currently on).

    A huge saving for me, which I don't really need. Deeply unfair.

    My bill from EDF arrived today. It says my monthly payment will go from £265 to £298. Which to be honest is way less than I was expecting.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Dura_Ace said:

    It's almost physically painful listening to JRM talking about the caps in terms of pounds per megawatt. There's a bit of me itching to yell, "It's a megawatt-hour, you humanities-educated fool! What do you think the h stands for in MWh? Don't you understand the difference between energy and power? No, of course you don't, yet here you are making critical decisions about issues that you barely comprehend."

    Shouldn't he be using BTUs?
    I always liked the way BTUs (which are the amount of heat needed to raise a pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit) were 1:1 with cubic feet of natural gas.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    You can still get a ferry from southern Russia, across the Black Sea to Turkey

    http://anapaweb.ru/anapa/seaport/siflait.php

    Unless the ships are full. I have a feeling they will certainly be "busy"
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    edited September 2022
    Leon said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Ahahaha


    So it is basically Full Mobilisation but they are pretending it isn't

    That leaves roads, boats and rail

    A ferry to Turkey?
    No, it's not full mobilisation.
    But it is an attempt to remove the option of refusing deployment - which, for example, all temporary conscripts had up until now.

    Russia simply doesn't have the capacity (command, training, weapons, bases etc) to enact a true full scale mobilisation.
    Good thread here:
    https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1572573086490464256

  • Because contrary to your belief the agreement doesn't put a border there, it explicitly states that NI is a sovereign part of the United Kingdom.

    Great, well you'd better tell the ERG and put their minds at rest, then. They seem to be terribly worried about it.
    There are issues, issues that can be resolved via domestic legislation like the NI Protocol Bill.

    That is what sovereignty and taking back control is all about, evolving over time and Parliament doing its job.
    Quite how you come to the conclusion that domestic legislation can unilaterally 'resolve' alleged issues with an international treaty is one of those mysteries to which I think we'll never find an answer. You do realise that there are two parties to the NIP, I take it?
    Because we are a sovereign country domestic legislation can unilaterally resolve domestic issues.

    If the other party has objections to our domestic law they're entitled to take whatever matters that they can do, but our domestic law applies to our domestic country, which the NI is part of.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
    NICE:

    This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.

    https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf

    Any legal cases against the clinic or individual doctors are going to hit the Bolam standard. There's enough in that NICE report to bolster a defence on those grounds.
    Given the long term effects are “unknown” how is a patient able to give informed consent, even if they pass Gillick (which some may not)?
    You say to the patient, simplifying somewhat, "We don't know what the long-term effects are. Are you OK with that?" Informed consent does not require that there are no unknowns, just that the patient is aware of the unknowns. Medicine would grind to a halt if you required there to be no unknowns.
    You'd never run another clinical trial, for instance. And therefore never license another new medicine.
    Which would be sub-optimal.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Pulpstar said:

    eek said:

    MISTY said:

    MISTY said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Mr. Sandpit, Starmer isn't that.

    But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems.
    1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra.
    2) Cost of living is a problem for many people.
    3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.

    Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.

    This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
    Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
    Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.

    With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.

    Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.

    The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.

    But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
    I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
    The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.

    As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
    While I’m here, here’s a nice FT article: https://www.ft.com/content/a9be9db6-a91e-48e4-8d69-4bbfff7e0f5f

    You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.

    The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
    Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.

    Direct benefits for the affluent
    The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]

    According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]

    Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]


    I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.

    Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
    Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.

    There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
    Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.

    Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
    I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!

    Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
    Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.

    Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
    Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
    That seems to have been done. 👍

    The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.

    Good riddance.
    Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
    Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.

    The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
    Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.

    I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
    Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.

    But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
    Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
    Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
    It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.

    Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.

    Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍

    If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
    If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.

    Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.

    I've always pondered - how does our budget compare to say the USA, France, Germany, Japan. Do we spend more or less on schools, health, social care. Where do other nations save compared to us & vice versa ?
    The problem with those comparisons is that some places are highly federal (like the US, where there is practically no central spending on education), while others are extremely centralized (like France).
  • DynamoDynamo Posts: 651

    Dynamo said:

    For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
    Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)

    Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.

    These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in.
    800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.

    The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot.
    Grim grim grim

    It's interesting to look at perceptions between say the late 1950s and the mid 1980s of what a nuclear war between major powers would look like, and then compare them with perceptions now. One thing that has gone for a complete burton is the idea of nuclear winter. Nowadays if it's mentioned at all it can even be dismissed as KGB propaganda. Which is ironic, given all the shouting about climate change supposedly caused by types of human action that aren't nuclear warfare.


    "Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation."

    Sounds like Covid marshal heaven! :)
    Square Leg was heavily criticised for being too bleak and 'society ending' (very much as suggested by the end of Threads'), they wanted more of an idea on survival and reconstruction after a more limited exchange, such as today's even all out war would be.
    Nuclear winter was predicated on soot from urban infernos/firestorms. Modern building design lessens that risk considerably
    The idea may have returned. See this article published last month in Nature Food:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0

    Abstract:

    "Atmospheric soot loadings from nuclear weapon detonation would cause disruptions to the Earth’s climate, limiting terrestrial and aquatic food production. (...) We estimate more than 2 billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia (...)"

    They look at a range of different soot mass scenarios.

    First time I've seen teragram used instead of megatonne. I guess they want to avoid confusion with explosive yield.

    "Teragram" might be a good bet for Word Of The Year 2023.
  • Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
    NICE:

    This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.

    https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf

    Any legal cases against the clinic or individual doctors are going to hit the Bolam standard. There's enough in that NICE report to bolster a defence on those grounds.
    Given the long term effects are “unknown” how is a patient able to give informed consent, even if they pass Gillick (which some may not)?
    You say to the patient, simplifying somewhat, "We don't know what the long-term effects are. Are you OK with that?" Informed consent does not require that there are no unknowns, just that the patient is aware of the unknowns. Medicine would grind to a halt if you required there to be no unknowns.
    The interim Cass report suggests that was not done at Tavistock and there was little evidence of the clinicians considering long term effects - such was the drive of “affirmative care”. I’m sure it will all come out in the wash. “Truth is the daughter of time”.

    Do you have a view of the WPATH 8 guidelines?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    MISTY said:

    MISTY said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Mr. Sandpit, Starmer isn't that.

    But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems.
    1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra.
    2) Cost of living is a problem for many people.
    3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.

    Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.

    This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
    Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
    Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.

    With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.

    Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.

    The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.

    But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
    I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
    The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.

    As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
    While I’m here, here’s a nice FT article: https://www.ft.com/content/a9be9db6-a91e-48e4-8d69-4bbfff7e0f5f

    You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.

    The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
    Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.

    Direct benefits for the affluent
    The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]

    According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]

    Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]


    I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.

    Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
    Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.

    There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
    Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.

    Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
    I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!

    Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
    Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.

    Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
    Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
    That seems to have been done. 👍

    The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.

    Good riddance.
    Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
    Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.

    The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
    Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.

    I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
    Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.

    But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
    Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
    Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
    It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.

    Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.

    Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍

    If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
    If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.

    Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.

    There need to be a zero-based spending review, it’s long overdue.
    Spending in most government departments has been in real terms decline for some time: the problem is that pensions and healthcare are basically locked in to rise dramatically in the next decade.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,151
    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    Whoever is responsible I hope they are scrutinising this very closely:

    https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/wpath/

    The Standards of Care are not official standards, but are influential around the world. WPATH calls them “internationally accepted guidelines”. The NHS refers to the WPATH Standards of Care in a variety of medical documents (including the previous service specification for the Tavistock Gender and Identity Development Service clinic). The Scottish government also relies on them in its decision-making. The Standards of Care featured heavily in the significant case of Bell v Tavistock. These guidelines have been used by numerous private health clinics throughout the UK, to justify irreversible treatment on children and young people…..

    …..The guidelines have removed any minimum age limit for a child to be given puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or sex-reassignment surgery (so long as that child has reached ‘Tanner Stage 2’ of puberty, which can be as young as nine years old)….

    Abandonment of mental-health safeguarding – The guidelines explicitly state that therapy or counselling should “never be mandatory” before prescribing irreversible medication or surgery, including for children. Therapeutic professionals are told that they must not impose their own narratives or preconceptions, yet are also told that they must be “gender affirming”. These principles are fundamentally incompatible.
    The more important point to note is that many of the people behind W-PATH are not doctors at all and some of those who are have very clear conflicts of interest. More worryingly it has worked closely with some very odd individuals, who really should be nowhere near medical care of any kind - see for instance the person who was apparently involved in writing the chapter on eunuchs.

    The wider point is perhaps this: even the medical establishment is not immune from fads or for allowing ideologies to influence treatment. See the sterilisation of "simple-minded" women during the 20th century or the treatment of homosexuality, considered a mental disorder at one time. So it really matters to get care which is based on sound and properly tested evidence not as a result of wish fulfilment or ideology of self-interest. The evidence in the Keira Bell case is really interesting on this aspect, as is the Court's reaction, even if the decision - on the issue of Gillick competence - was the right one.
    W-PATH is an international, interdisciplinary body. Most of them are doctors. This is the current executive committee: https://www.wpath.org/about/EC-BOD You will see nearly all of them are MDs or MBBSs (i.e., doctors). The four people there who aren't are a JD, a PsyD and a PhD, plus a medical student representative. These would appear to be relevant qualifications.

    You're right about fads, of course. Doctors can be wrong about things. Doctors often are wrong about things.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    Leon said:

    You can still get a ferry from southern Russia, across the Black Sea to Turkey

    http://anapaweb.ru/anapa/seaport/siflait.php

    Unless the ships are full. I have a feeling they will certainly be "busy"

    Could Britain not cherry pick people with skills, training and talent and give them work visas? doctors, nurses, scientists, engineers etc. They have many talented people. Better than robbing them off poor countries to fill our skill shortages.

    Or we could go the Ali G route and let in da fit ones.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
    NICE:

    This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.

    https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf

    Any legal cases against the clinic or individual doctors are going to hit the Bolam standard. There's enough in that NICE report to bolster a defence on those grounds.
    Given the long term effects are “unknown” how is a patient able to give informed consent, even if they pass Gillick (which some may not)?
    You say to the patient, simplifying somewhat, "We don't know what the long-term effects are. Are you OK with that?" Informed consent does not require that there are no unknowns, just that the patient is aware of the unknowns. Medicine would grind to a halt if you required there to be no unknowns.
    It's not quite as simple as that when you are dealing with children though. One of the possible side effects of all these drugs and surgery is that it may not be possible to have orgasms or satisfactory sexual function later. How can a prepubertal child consent to a treatment which may impair their sexual function as an adult when they have had no experience of sexual function at all?

    It is a very delicate, sensitive and complicated area of medicine - which is one reason why it is so important not to have those who are pushing for or against it for ideological or other non-medical reasons anywhere near the decisions.

    And that those medical reasons are subject to the most rigorous scrutiny and testing and oversight.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    MISTY said:

    MISTY said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Mr. Sandpit, Starmer isn't that.

    But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems.
    1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra.
    2) Cost of living is a problem for many people.
    3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.

    Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.

    This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
    Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
    Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.

    With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.

    Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.

    The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.

    But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
    I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
    The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.

    As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
    While I’m here, here’s a nice FT article: https://www.ft.com/content/a9be9db6-a91e-48e4-8d69-4bbfff7e0f5f

    You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.

    The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
    Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.

    Direct benefits for the affluent
    The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]

    According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]

    Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]


    I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.

    Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
    Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.

    There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
    Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.

    Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
    I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!

    Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
    Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.

    Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
    Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
    That seems to have been done. 👍

    The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.

    Good riddance.
    Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
    Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.

    The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
    Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.

    I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
    Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.

    But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
    Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
    Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
    It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.

    Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.

    Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍

    If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
    If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.

    Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.

    There need to be a zero-based spending review, it’s long overdue.
    Spending in most government departments has been in real terms decline for some time: the problem is that pensions and healthcare are basically locked in to rise dramatically in the next decade.
    And if you suggest potentially handling the pensions and healthcare issue differently, as I did earlier, then people will accuse you of wanting to kill old people.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Twitter claims Russian railways have been given the same instructions as the airlines. Do not sell international tickets to men between 18-65

    Tho I am not sure how many Russian railways cross still-open borders anyway. The Trans-Siberian which dips down into Mongolia and China? Is that border even open?
  • RazedabodeRazedabode Posts: 2,973
    Leon said:

    Twitter claims Russian railways have been given the same instructions as the airlines. Do not sell international tickets to men between 18-65

    Tho I am not sure how many Russian railways cross still-open borders anyway. The Trans-Siberian which dips down into Mongolia and China? Is that border even open?

    What a horrifying situation. The public may be pro Putin at the moment, but you do have to wonder if reality is about to hit.

    I just feel sorry for the numbers who will be sent to their deaths. And for what?
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    Dura_Ace said:

    AlistairM said:

    Sandpit said:

    AlistairM said:

    Two B-52s having left from RAF Fairford this morning are currently flying up through the length of Norway. I'm sure intended to give Moscow pause for thought.

    https://www.flightradar24.com/RUMOR12/2d8bfd83

    There’s been a few of those around Eastern Europe recently, last couple of weeks.

    A step up from the usual NATO surveillance planes and drones hanging around the Ukraine borders, that have been a feature of this conflict, just to remind Putin who he’s up against.

    The occasional airbourne USAF F-35 too, just in case something needs shooting down in a hurry. Can’t see that one up today though - but that doesn’t mean it’s not there!
    The B-52s are flying circuits over northern Sweden now.
    Quadruple dose of Imodium all round! If you have to crap on a Buff, you have to bag it and take it with you like a dog.
    You know some clever dogs
  • "How to break an arm" is trending on Russian Google.

    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1572593191899041792
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    MISTY said:

    Leon said:

    You can still get a ferry from southern Russia, across the Black Sea to Turkey

    http://anapaweb.ru/anapa/seaport/siflait.php

    Unless the ships are full. I have a feeling they will certainly be "busy"

    Could Britain not cherry pick people with skills, training and talent and give them work visas? doctors, nurses, scientists, engineers etc. They have many talented people. Better than robbing them off poor countries to fill our skill shortages.

    Or we could go the Ali G route and let in da fit ones.
    Despite the fact that we are apparently locked in a total war of extinction with Russia (in the minds of tories) the UK is still issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens. So they could come here and claim asylum if they wanted.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    edited September 2022
    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    The famous American transgender clinic exposed in that video has just taken down its entire website. The whole damn thing

    https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health

    Vanished

    Given that Tucker Carlson is calling on his viewers to commit acts of terrorism against gender identity clinics, can you blame them?

    This is the same playbook used against abortion clinics: make outrageous claims & then leave the rest to stochastic terrorism.
    What is this fashionable new word on the Victim Left. "Stochastic". You see it everywhere

    Consider the murder of Jo Cox. This was an entirely forseeable consequence of the ramping up of accusation by certain pro-Leave groups accusing remainers of being traitors: It was inevitable that somewhere within the fascist elements active in Britain at the time there would be someone who heard the message loud and clear and acted upon it.

    Did those pro-Leave groups intend for an MP to die? Probably not. Was it a forseeable outcome of their choice of words? Yes.

    Or, alternatively, the way ISIS used their propaganda to stir up anti-Western sentiment amongst Muslims in the west - they had no control over who & where any attacks might happen, but they knew that with enough effective propaganda targetted at the right people, such attacks would become inevitable.

    That’s stochastic terrorism. For political groups inside countries it allows deniability, whilst taking advantage of the mentally vulnerable to do ones dirty work. For those acting from the outside, it allows them to provoke attacks without the risk of compromising their own operatives.

    The summary on Wikipedia is decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism

    Presumably "stochastic" could also be used for those using violent words against women for standing up for their rights while then distancing themselves from a lunatic arrested and charged with assault and possession of a knife at a women's right meeting. As has happened in the last few days.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,874

    "How to break an arm" is trending on Russian Google.

    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1572593191899041792

    Direct them to the WW2 classic 'Escape to Victory'
  • paulyork64paulyork64 Posts: 2,461
    Leon said:

    Twitter claims Russian railways have been given the same instructions as the airlines. Do not sell international tickets to men between 18-65

    Tho I am not sure how many Russian railways cross still-open borders anyway. The Trans-Siberian which dips down into Mongolia and China? Is that border even open?

    They could just steal motorbikes and jump them over the border wire.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,151

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
    NICE:

    This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.

    https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf

    Any legal cases against the clinic or individual doctors are going to hit the Bolam standard. There's enough in that NICE report to bolster a defence on those grounds.
    Given the long term effects are “unknown” how is a patient able to give informed consent, even if they pass Gillick (which some may not)?
    You say to the patient, simplifying somewhat, "We don't know what the long-term effects are. Are you OK with that?" Informed consent does not require that there are no unknowns, just that the patient is aware of the unknowns. Medicine would grind to a halt if you required there to be no unknowns.
    The interim Cass report suggests that was not done at Tavistock and there was little evidence of the clinicians considering long term effects - such was the drive of “affirmative care”. I’m sure it will all come out in the wash. “Truth is the daughter of time”.

    Do you have a view of the WPATH 8 guidelines?
    If informed consent was not obtained, then they can be sued for that. IANAL, but I understand it can be a difficult thing to prove. Informed consent doesn't mean that you explain absolutely everything in detail. You have to prove that something should've been raised and then that it wasn't, which is 2 steps. As you say, it will come out in the wash.

    I do not have a view of WPATH 8 guidelines. I do not know whether the Tavistock did the right things or not. I am not a clinician and would probably be a terrible one. I merely offer some comment as someone who works in health research. The Cass report seems to me to be valuable.
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,004
    Dura_Ace said:

    As with many things in Russia the flight ban means nothing if you have money as you can bribe your way into or out of anything. It's very efficient and one of the things I miss most about living there. I find British officials can occasionally be swayed with a cash emolument but they are so fucking awkward about it that it's embarrassing for both parties. Exception: any MoT station frequented by minicab drivers. Those are always unabashed temples of high functioning corruption.

    I'd suggest that is perhaps one of the reasons Russia is in so much trouble now.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1572588027406614528
    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    👀
    If gas prices stay high (possible) and govt has to extend its business support scheme for a full two years - as per the household energy guarantee (possible) then my back-of-envelope sums suggest the combined cost of these schemes could come to a quarter of a trillion pounds.


  • Leon said:

    Twitter claims Russian railways have been given the same instructions as the airlines. Do not sell international tickets to men between 18-65

    Tho I am not sure how many Russian railways cross still-open borders anyway. The Trans-Siberian which dips down into Mongolia and China? Is that border even open?

    Yes, I think it is, at least for vehicle traffic (not sure about trains). Reports here of cars queuing at the border:

    https://twitter.com/SabFis3/status/1572602423591505922
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    Dura_Ace said:

    MISTY said:

    Leon said:

    You can still get a ferry from southern Russia, across the Black Sea to Turkey

    http://anapaweb.ru/anapa/seaport/siflait.php

    Unless the ships are full. I have a feeling they will certainly be "busy"

    Could Britain not cherry pick people with skills, training and talent and give them work visas? doctors, nurses, scientists, engineers etc. They have many talented people. Better than robbing them off poor countries to fill our skill shortages.

    Or we could go the Ali G route and let in da fit ones.
    Despite the fact that we are apparently locked in a total war of extinction with Russia (in the minds of tories) the UK is still issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens. So they could come here and claim asylum if they wanted.
    If that is true, then it is a story that several main stream media outlets would be interested in, I would have thought.

    'Fury as (fill in distorted truth as appropriate).

  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,874
    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    The famous American transgender clinic exposed in that video has just taken down its entire website. The whole damn thing

    https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health

    Vanished

    Given that Tucker Carlson is calling on his viewers to commit acts of terrorism against gender identity clinics, can you blame them?

    This is the same playbook used against abortion clinics: make outrageous claims & then leave the rest to stochastic terrorism.
    What is this fashionable new word on the Victim Left. "Stochastic". You see it everywhere

    Consider the murder of Jo Cox. This was an entirely forseeable consequence of the ramping up of accusation by certain pro-Leave groups accusing remainers of being traitors: It was inevitable that somewhere within the fascist elements active in Britain at the time there would be someone who heard the message loud and clear and acted upon it.

    Did those pro-Leave groups intend for an MP to die? Probably not. Was it a forseeable outcome of their choice of words? Yes.

    Or, alternatively, the way ISIS used their propaganda to stir up anti-Western sentiment amongst Muslims in the west - they had no control over who & where any attacks might happen, but they knew that with enough effective propaganda targetted at the right people, such attacks would become inevitable.

    That’s stochastic terrorism. For political groups inside countries it allows deniability, whilst taking advantage of the mentally vulnerable to do ones dirty work. For those acting from the outside, it allows them to provoke attacks without the risk of compromising their own operatives.

    The summary on Wikipedia is decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism

    Presumably "stochastic" could also be used for those using violent words against women for standing up for their rights while then distancing themselves from a lunatic arrested and charged with assault and possession of a knife at a women's right meeting. As has happened in the last few days.
    Or stop using words that have specific scientific meanings to make your work sound more scientific.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    Cyclefree said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Presumably they'll be building a wall next to stop people getting out .......

    They must have some old plans they could dust down and use.
    Seems to me it’s all about messaging to Ukraine and it’s supporters though - the one thing we are not supplying Ukraine enough of Russia signalling it can take this deep with 🥺

    My understanding of end of First World War was the amount of running out of fighters wore heavily on governments of the protagonists - it wasn’t a clear military win but stalemate and amount of your own casualties draining the pool to call on leading to truce and talks.

    particularly if Kremlin now choose more limited seize and hold options, with a much smaller front to defend, switching from attack to defend, then today for me is all about Russia signalling it’s up for a very long one ☹️
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go.



    I know a former British gymnast, and she was prescribed puberty blockers to get her another year or two of competing.

  • Leon said:

    Twitter claims Russian railways have been given the same instructions as the airlines. Do not sell international tickets to men between 18-65

    Tho I am not sure how many Russian railways cross still-open borders anyway. The Trans-Siberian which dips down into Mongolia and China? Is that border even open?

    What a horrifying situation. The public may be pro Putin at the moment, but you do have to wonder if reality is about to hit.

    I just feel sorry for the numbers who will be sent to their deaths. And for what?
    The mad thing is just how out of touch Putin is about all this, he clearly is lashing out like a misbehaving toddler having a tantrum. He is acting like he expects the world to be intimidated by him, and six months ago many people were and were talking about the need to be "realistic" about Russia and giving them an "off ramp".

    But the curtain has been pulled back and the whole world is basically rolling their eyes at Putin's tantrum today. No nation, not even Germany, really seems threatened anymore. From Wallace to von der Leyen and more people are responding patiently that this is a sign of Putin's desperation, rather than being afraid.

    Putin has long acted like a bully, but the worst thing for a bully is when people stop being afraid of them. Once that aura of invincibility is gone, its almost impossible to get it back.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,874
    rcs1000 said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go.



    I know a former British gymnast, and she was prescribed puberty blockers to get her another year or two of competing.

    One of the reasons that I would ban U18 year olds from any gynmastic competitions. Some horrific things done by some countries in the quest for medal glory.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    eek said:

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1572588027406614528
    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    👀
    If gas prices stay high (possible) and govt has to extend its business support scheme for a full two years - as per the household energy guarantee (possible) then my back-of-envelope sums suggest the combined cost of these schemes could come to a quarter of a trillion pounds.


    Is that why you are called eek, to bring us messages like that 😟
  • It's almost physically painful listening to JRM talking about the caps in terms of pounds per megawatt. There's a bit of me itching to yell, "It's a megawatt-hour, you humanities-educated fool! What do you think the h stands for in MWh? Don't you understand the difference between energy and power? No, of course you don't, yet here you are making critical decisions about issues that you barely comprehend."

    We need to shut down these second rate institutions and stop the mickey mouse degrees....
    Just the mickey mouse degrees would do. Those of us who had labs at 9am always regarded them as such.
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Oxford Street's US-themed sweet shops to face stricter rules

    Measures proposed include increasing the fee to register a company at Companies House from £12 to £50,

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-62972510

    Yeah that will deter multi-million quid money laundering....

    There's a bunch of them around Leicester Sq as well. I also saw one or two in Seville, it's not an entirely London thing

    They are really odd. Garish and vulgar, and seldom full of customers

    Speculation that they are money launderers?
    Private Eye have been on this for 3+ years now. Everything about them is as bent as a nine bob note. Run by Afghani nationals, constantly dissolving companies and reforming. The suggestion is flushing dirty money from Afghanistan. Been at it for 15 years now, but with COVID etc, seen number of outlets skyrocket.
    It started with the souvenir shops:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/cnkcaz/private_eye_on_west_end_souvenir_shops/

    Hundreds of companies, most of whom are controlled by a handful of people, and are dissolved before they file accounts.
    My favourite piece of alleged money laundering:

    https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/perth-kinross/699447/former-gaddafi-insider-accused-of-offloading-stolen-cash-into-taymouth-castle/

    A perfectly maintained golf course with the greens cut daily. No golfers. At all.


    There's something that smells very similar here in the Flatlands but on a smaller scale.
    A golf course is actually quite a smart one. They can say that they’re selling ‘memberships’ to people mostly based overseas, and the lack of day-to-day business means they can sell an awful lot of them before the course gets so busy they complain they can’t book a tee time!

    Needs a fair amount of money spent on it though, a full team of green keepers and their equipment doesn’t come cheap.
    Surely you would start up a green keeping company that you contract to do the grounds maintenance at a strangely inflated price?

    Similar to the development company that builds the 'luxury golf lodges' that are sold off plan but strangely never completed?

    Theoretically, of course.

    I think Taymouth has been sold several times since the Gaddafi accusations and is now owned by a large US business, but still hasn't opened. It may do eventually, you never know.
    It's been bought by an American family flush with cash from selling their Patron Tequila brand to Bacardi. They (should) actually invest and live part of the year in the area.
    Sounds hopeful. If I lived in Kenmore I'd be pretty fed up with the whole affair!

    It is a spectacular building and location, although you have to suspect maintaining a building of that age and design will be quite expensive.

    The golf course is pretty decent too - a James Braid original. Not a championship layout these days but a good course in the classic style.

    There's certainly a business there, although perhaps not one I'll be affording.
    My impression of Kenmore is that very few people have actually 'lived' there for some time. There's a small enclave up the hill. The rest is all holiday accommodation. I think it's good for the area that someone is doing something. They've bought the Hotel (which was bad), and a lot of other local property.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,919
    edited September 2022
    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Leon said:

    The famous American transgender clinic exposed in that video has just taken down its entire website. The whole damn thing

    https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/clinic/clinic-transgender-health

    Vanished

    Given that Tucker Carlson is calling on his viewers to commit acts of terrorism against gender identity clinics, can you blame them?

    This is the same playbook used against abortion clinics: make outrageous claims & then leave the rest to stochastic terrorism.
    What is this fashionable new word on the Victim Left. "Stochastic". You see it everywhere

    Consider the murder of Jo Cox. This was an entirely forseeable consequence of the ramping up of accusation by certain pro-Leave groups accusing remainers of being traitors: It was inevitable that somewhere within the fascist elements active in Britain at the time there would be someone who heard the message loud and clear and acted upon it.

    Did those pro-Leave groups intend for an MP to die? Probably not. Was it a forseeable outcome of their choice of words? Yes.

    Or, alternatively, the way ISIS used their propaganda to stir up anti-Western sentiment amongst Muslims in the west - they had no control over who & where any attacks might happen, but they knew that with enough effective propaganda targetted at the right people, such attacks would become inevitable.

    That’s stochastic terrorism. For political groups inside countries it allows deniability, whilst taking advantage of the mentally vulnerable to do ones dirty work. For those acting from the outside, it allows them to provoke attacks without the risk of compromising their own operatives.

    The summary on Wikipedia is decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism

    Presumably "stochastic" could also be used for those using violent words against women for standing up for their rights while then distancing themselves from a lunatic arrested and charged with assault and possession of a knife at a women's right meeting. As has happened in the last few days.
    If we’re talking about Brighton here, then this GC women thinks he had nothing to do with either side: https://twitter.com/JocastaMoney/status/1572515479734091776

    (I think I have her allegiance correct, but could be wrong...)

    So he was just a drunk from the pub, not someone who deliberately brought a knife to a demo (on either side). Bringing a knife to a demo is a stupid idea: there are bound to be police everywhere & there’s a high risk of you being caught.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,874

    Cyclefree said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Presumably they'll be building a wall next to stop people getting out .......

    They must have some old plans they could dust down and use.
    Seems to me it’s all about messaging to Ukraine and it’s supporters though - the one thing we are not supplying Ukraine enough of Russia signalling it can take this deep with 🥺

    My understanding of end of First World War was the amount of running out of fighters wore heavily on governments of the protagonists - it wasn’t a clear military win but stalemate and amount of your own casualties draining the pool to call on leading to truce and talks.

    particularly if Kremlin now choose more limited seize and hold options, with a much smaller front to defend, switching from attack to defend, then today for me is all about Russia signalling it’s up for a very long one ☹️
    Nope - go and read some history. Germany capitulated when the army was just about still intact. Another few months and the allies would have been in Berlin, just as in 1945 (except all coming from the west). For sure the French and British (Empire) had lost a lot of men, and strategy and tactics had evolved to use arms not men, but with the US entry into the war there was not going to be a shortage of manpower.
    In hindsight it was Germany agreeing to the Armistice that ultimately allowed the myth of the Stab in the Back to take hold - in 1918 German troops still fought outside the Reich, not so much in May 1945.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    Whoever is responsible I hope they are scrutinising this very closely:

    https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/wpath/

    The Standards of Care are not official standards, but are influential around the world. WPATH calls them “internationally accepted guidelines”. The NHS refers to the WPATH Standards of Care in a variety of medical documents (including the previous service specification for the Tavistock Gender and Identity Development Service clinic). The Scottish government also relies on them in its decision-making. The Standards of Care featured heavily in the significant case of Bell v Tavistock. These guidelines have been used by numerous private health clinics throughout the UK, to justify irreversible treatment on children and young people…..

    …..The guidelines have removed any minimum age limit for a child to be given puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or sex-reassignment surgery (so long as that child has reached ‘Tanner Stage 2’ of puberty, which can be as young as nine years old)….

    Abandonment of mental-health safeguarding – The guidelines explicitly state that therapy or counselling should “never be mandatory” before prescribing irreversible medication or surgery, including for children. Therapeutic professionals are told that they must not impose their own narratives or preconceptions, yet are also told that they must be “gender affirming”. These principles are fundamentally incompatible.
    The more important point to note is that many of the people behind W-PATH are not doctors at all and some of those who are have very clear conflicts of interest. More worryingly it has worked closely with some very odd individuals, who really should be nowhere near medical care of any kind - see for instance the person who was apparently involved in writing the chapter on eunuchs.

    The wider point is perhaps this: even the medical establishment is not immune from fads or for allowing ideologies to influence treatment. See the sterilisation of "simple-minded" women during the 20th century or the treatment of homosexuality, considered a mental disorder at one time. So it really matters to get care which is based on sound and properly tested evidence not as a result of wish fulfilment or ideology of self-interest. The evidence in the Keira Bell case is really interesting on this aspect, as is the Court's reaction, even if the decision - on the issue of Gillick competence - was the right one.
    W-PATH is an international, interdisciplinary body. Most of them are doctors. This is the current executive committee: https://www.wpath.org/about/EC-BOD You will see nearly all of them are MDs or MBBSs (i.e., doctors). The four people there who aren't are a JD, a PsyD and a PhD, plus a medical student representative. These would appear to be relevant qualifications.

    You're right about fads, of course. Doctors can be wrong about things. Doctors often are wrong about things.
    It rather depends on what their speciality is and whether they have a financial or other interest in the recommendations they are making. Conflicts of interest make for bad decisions, whether by doctors or anyone else.
  • I wonder if Dynamo is going to break his arm today?
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,814
    eek said:

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1572588027406614528
    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    👀
    If gas prices stay high (possible) and govt has to extend its business support scheme for a full two years - as per the household energy guarantee (possible) then my back-of-envelope sums suggest the combined cost of these schemes could come to a quarter of a trillion pounds.


    We could pay that off with a one month tax on journos using that fucking 'eyes on' emoji
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    EXCL: Lib Dem leader Ed Davey scathing about Liz Truss's approach on the economy: "The failure to have an OBR assessment shows the economy is being run by ideology, not a plan" - interview by @peterwalker99
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/21/liz-truss-government-conservatives-ed-davey-liberal-democrats
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,138
    One particularly nasty aspect of Russia's current annexation plans is that it can, after those "referendums", start to conscript Ukrainians in the occupied territories to go into the fight with their countrymen. It's been the Russian model throughout the history of its empire: invade and annex an area, then conscript its young men to invade and annex the next one.

    I would hope that if they attempted something similar in the newly occupied territories they'd start to see a fair few friendly fire incidents.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    Anyway barely 2 weeks since our Head of State, probably one of our last links with WW2 dies, we find ourselves reliving one of WW2's consequences, a state trying to close its borders to stop its young men fleeing.

    Just brilliant.
  • eek said:

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1572588027406614528
    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    👀
    If gas prices stay high (possible) and govt has to extend its business support scheme for a full two years - as per the household energy guarantee (possible) then my back-of-envelope sums suggest the combined cost of these schemes could come to a quarter of a trillion pounds.


    We could pay that off with a one month tax on journos using that fucking 'eyes on' emoji
    Don't forget 🚨🚨🚨
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    "How to break an arm" is trending on Russian Google.

    https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1572593191899041792

    lol. It is darkly funny

    There is hope here, as well. If enough Russians freak out, Putin will wobble
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    Credit default swaps are a form of insurance against default - so they give a sense of how concerned investors are about an issuer's ability to service its debts.
    Earlier this year the UK’s sovereign CDS spread was among lowest in developed world.
    That all changed in Aug
    Red line https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1572605889974083584/photo/1
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,919
    TimS said:

    One particularly nasty aspect of Russia's current annexation plans is that it can, after those "referendums", start to conscript Ukrainians in the occupied territories to go into the fight with their countrymen. It's been the Russian model throughout the history of its empire: invade and annex an area, then conscript its young men to invade and annex the next one.

    I would hope that if they attempted something similar in the newly occupied territories they'd start to see a fair few friendly fire incidents.

    They were already doing this.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,814

    eek said:

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1572588027406614528
    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    👀
    If gas prices stay high (possible) and govt has to extend its business support scheme for a full two years - as per the household energy guarantee (possible) then my back-of-envelope sums suggest the combined cost of these schemes could come to a quarter of a trillion pounds.


    We could pay that off with a one month tax on journos using that fucking 'eyes on' emoji
    Don't forget 🚨🚨🚨
    Thats for the tax cuts!
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415

    eek said:

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1572588027406614528
    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    👀
    If gas prices stay high (possible) and govt has to extend its business support scheme for a full two years - as per the household energy guarantee (possible) then my back-of-envelope sums suggest the combined cost of these schemes could come to a quarter of a trillion pounds.


    We could pay that off with a one month tax on journos using that fucking 'eyes on' emoji
    Could we?
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,151
    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Phil said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology


    American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it

    "Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""


    "Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"

    https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1572313523232931840?s=20&t=KWigxdGdSfnRBOqe_Fu_Zg


    How have we allowed this madness to prosper?

    They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
    There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
    I was referring to law suits in the US.

    As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.

    Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.

    I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
    Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
    I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
    They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
    NICE:

    This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.

    https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf

    Any legal cases against the clinic or individual doctors are going to hit the Bolam standard. There's enough in that NICE report to bolster a defence on those grounds.
    Given the long term effects are “unknown” how is a patient able to give informed consent, even if they pass Gillick (which some may not)?
    You say to the patient, simplifying somewhat, "We don't know what the long-term effects are. Are you OK with that?" Informed consent does not require that there are no unknowns, just that the patient is aware of the unknowns. Medicine would grind to a halt if you required there to be no unknowns.
    It's not quite as simple as that when you are dealing with children though. One of the possible side effects of all these drugs and surgery is that it may not be possible to have orgasms or satisfactory sexual function later. How can a prepubertal child consent to a treatment which may impair their sexual function as an adult when they have had no experience of sexual function at all?

    It is a very delicate, sensitive and complicated area of medicine - which is one reason why it is so important not to have those who are pushing for or against it for ideological or other non-medical reasons anywhere near the decisions.

    And that those medical reasons are subject to the most rigorous scrutiny and testing and oversight.
    Sure, it's a very difficult and sensitive area. I am glad I'm not in those clinicians' shoes.

    I was writing specifically about the puberty blockers. There would, I presume, be separate consent procedures for taking the puberty blockers and for any other drugs or surgery. I believe it is surgery that is most likely to have an impact on sexual function, but surgery is not done on children (in the UK). I'm not aware of the puberty blockers being thought to have long-term impacts on sexual function. Worry there appears to be focused on bone density, blood pressure, weight and lipid profile.

    All healthcare needs to be subject to rigorous scrutiny, testing and oversight - absolutely agreed. This is one very difficult context, but I suggest it is not unprecedented in its complexity. Consent is a difficult concept when you get into it. Let's say it is recommended that you should have a leg amputated. (Hopefully this is an entirely hypothetical example, but it's something that can happen.) Can someone who hasn't had a leg amputated ever fully understand what it is like to have had a leg amputated? Such decisions are inherently difficult. Some of us may one day face a medical decision where one of the options is death (a lot sooner if Bart becomes PM) and none of us can ever know what that is like! And yet the thing about medicine is that you sometimes can't put off these decisions.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,730
    edited September 2022

    Leon said:

    Putin has kicked off absolute chaos, and painfully destabilised his regime - even more

    Any Russian man with any sense and any money will now try and escape Russia, this could be millions of people. Carnage at the borders. How do you stop it? Shoot them as they scale the wire? Your own people?

    I think this calls for a rare all-caps

    BRACE

    "Shoot them as they scale the wire? Your own people?"

    Well, he does yearn for the Goode Olde Days of the Soviet Union.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxUdL0CGgOU
    Saves the Ukrainians a job, and reduces still further the amount of ammunition that could be sent to the front line.

    I'm sure they will be grateful.

    Young Russian men? And their parents, spouses and children? Rather less so.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415

    Cyclefree said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Presumably they'll be building a wall next to stop people getting out .......

    They must have some old plans they could dust down and use.
    Seems to me it’s all about messaging to Ukraine and it’s supporters though - the one thing we are not supplying Ukraine enough of Russia signalling it can take this deep with 🥺

    My understanding of end of First World War was the amount of running out of fighters wore heavily on governments of the protagonists - it wasn’t a clear military win but stalemate and amount of your own casualties draining the pool to call on leading to truce and talks.

    particularly if Kremlin now choose more limited seize and hold options, with a much smaller front to defend, switching from attack to defend, then today for me is all about Russia signalling it’s up for a very long one ☹️
    Nope - go and read some history. Germany capitulated when the army was just about still intact. Another few months and the allies would have been in Berlin, just as in 1945 (except all coming from the west). For sure the French and British (Empire) had lost a lot of men, and strategy and tactics had evolved to use arms not men, but with the US entry into the war there was not going to be a shortage of manpower.
    In hindsight it was Germany agreeing to the Armistice that ultimately allowed the myth of the Stab in the Back to take hold - in 1918 German troops still fought outside the Reich, not so much in May 1945.
    As Syrians rocked up on the beaches of Greece, the locals shouted get back and fight for your country you cowardly twits. How are the Ukrainians making new lives in places like UK thought of by those still fighting back home? What seems to me is not everyone is made the same, not everyone is made for the fight are they?

    I’m up for a fight for England if invaded, not run away, though I am not at all sure how I would do my hair for fighting, it would be mostly in a hat would it? But what would we think of those who fled England for new lives in Canada and Australia the more it went on?
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,814
    Scott_xP said:

    EXCL: Lib Dem leader Ed Davey scathing about Liz Truss's approach on the economy: "The failure to have an OBR assessment shows the economy is being run by ideology, not a plan" - interview by @peterwalker99
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/21/liz-truss-government-conservatives-ed-davey-liberal-democrats

    Tories will be morified, mortified i tells thee if the argument is about whether theres a forecast or not
  • Scott_xP said:

    #Breaking: just in - The traffic jam at the border with #Russia/#Finland has pilled up to 35KM and is rising by the hour, it is the only border who is still open for Russian civilians with shengen visas, after #Putin announced he will send 300.000 new troops to #Ukraine. https://twitter.com/sotiridi/status/1572568782748680194/video/1


    Philski Schofieldski is the first name through
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,599

    Cyclefree said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Presumably they'll be building a wall next to stop people getting out .......

    They must have some old plans they could dust down and use.
    Seems to me it’s all about messaging to Ukraine and it’s supporters though - the one thing we are not supplying Ukraine enough of Russia signalling it can take this deep with 🥺

    My understanding of end of First World War was the amount of running out of fighters wore heavily on governments of the protagonists - it wasn’t a clear military win but stalemate and amount of your own casualties draining the pool to call on leading to truce and talks.

    particularly if Kremlin now choose more limited seize and hold options, with a much smaller front to defend, switching from attack to defend, then today for me is all about Russia signalling it’s up for a very long one ☹️
    Nope - go and read some history. Germany capitulated when the army was just about still intact. Another few months and the allies would have been in Berlin, just as in 1945 (except all coming from the west). For sure the French and British (Empire) had lost a lot of men, and strategy and tactics had evolved to use arms not men, but with the US entry into the war there was not going to be a shortage of manpower.
    In hindsight it was Germany agreeing to the Armistice that ultimately allowed the myth of the Stab in the Back to take hold - in 1918 German troops still fought outside the Reich, not so much in May 1945.
    Ironically the Germans quit at a fairly sensible point - they had definitely lost the war, but the war was still outside Germany.

    The pictures of the Destroyed Zone are something else. Even into the mid 1920s...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,599
    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    Putin has kicked off absolute chaos, and painfully destabilised his regime - even more

    Any Russian man with any sense and any money will now try and escape Russia, this could be millions of people. Carnage at the borders. How do you stop it? Shoot them as they scale the wire? Your own people?

    I think this calls for a rare all-caps

    BRACE

    "Shoot them as they scale the wire? Your own people?"

    Well, he does yearn for the Goode Olde Days of the Soviet Union.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxUdL0CGgOU
    Saves the Ukrainians a job, and reduces still further the amount of ammunition that could be sent to the front line.

    I'm sure they will be grateful.

    Young Russian men? And their parents, spouses and children? Rather less so.
    A close Russian relative still cries when she talks about the crippled young men begging, after Afghanistan.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Live cam of the Russo-Finnish border. The one on the right is Russians trying to get into Finland. It changes every 2 minutes

    https://exclusiveforcar.com/en/services/border-queue

    At some point the Russians will have to close this, as well
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415

    Cyclefree said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Presumably they'll be building a wall next to stop people getting out .......

    They must have some old plans they could dust down and use.
    Seems to me it’s all about messaging to Ukraine and it’s supporters though - the one thing we are not supplying Ukraine enough of Russia signalling it can take this deep with 🥺

    My understanding of end of First World War was the amount of running out of fighters wore heavily on governments of the protagonists - it wasn’t a clear military win but stalemate and amount of your own casualties draining the pool to call on leading to truce and talks.

    particularly if Kremlin now choose more limited seize and hold options, with a much smaller front to defend, switching from attack to defend, then today for me is all about Russia signalling it’s up for a very long one ☹️
    Nope - go and read some history. Germany capitulated when the army was just about still intact. Another few months and the allies would have been in Berlin, just as in 1945 (except all coming from the west). For sure the French and British (Empire) had lost a lot of men, and strategy and tactics had evolved to use arms not men, but with the US entry into the war there was not going to be a shortage of manpower.
    In hindsight it was Germany agreeing to the Armistice that ultimately allowed the myth of the Stab in the Back to take hold - in 1918 German troops still fought outside the Reich, not so much in May 1945.
    Shortage of Ukrainian manpower in a long conflict is at the heart of what Russia is signalling today isn’t it?
  • For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
    Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)

    Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.

    These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in.
    800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.

    The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot.
    Grim grim grim

    But at least we'd have Leon reassuring us that our thin soup was the equal of anything France or Italy could produce.
    Leons tour of subsistence feeding centres! A must read for all irradiated PBers
    Leon lives in inner London so like me he would be one of the lucky millions to die immediately.
    And I mean lucky.
    Likeliest London strikes would be Whitehall, Northolt, away from those you'd probably be 'ok'. An all out assault on the UK in 2022 would be somewhere between 10 to 20 warheads if they all got through/worked.
    A large majority uk wide would survive to suffer the aftermath
    A nuclear attack on Whitehall would certainly be one way of breaking with Treasury orthodoxy.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,730

    Cyclefree said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Presumably they'll be building a wall next to stop people getting out .......

    They must have some old plans they could dust down and use.
    Seems to me it’s all about messaging to Ukraine and it’s supporters though - the one thing we are not supplying Ukraine enough of Russia signalling it can take this deep with 🥺

    My understanding of end of First World War was the amount of running out of fighters wore heavily on governments of the protagonists - it wasn’t a clear military win but stalemate and amount of your own casualties draining the pool to call on leading to truce and talks.

    particularly if Kremlin now choose more limited seize and hold options, with a much smaller front to defend, switching from attack to defend, then today for me is all about Russia signalling it’s up for a very long one ☹️
    Nope - go and read some history. Germany capitulated when the army was just about still intact. Another few months and the allies would have been in Berlin, just as in 1945 (except all coming from the west). For sure the French and British (Empire) had lost a lot of men, and strategy and tactics had evolved to use arms not men, but with the US entry into the war there was not going to be a shortage of manpower.
    In hindsight it was Germany agreeing to the Armistice that ultimately allowed the myth of the Stab in the Back to take hold - in 1918 German troops still fought outside the Reich, not so much in May 1945.
    Ironically the Germans quit at a fairly sensible point - they had definitely lost the war, but the war was still outside Germany.

    The pictures of the Destroyed Zone are something else. Even into the mid 1920s...
    Also the longer they fought, the more of their people literally starved to death.
  • Scott_xP said:

    ** Chopper's Politics Newsletter today **
    Liz Truss told by ERG MPs to "stand up for the territorial integrity of the UK" and that "sovereignty within the UK is non-negotiable" over the Northern Ireland Protocol when she meets US President Joe Biden at 6pm
    http://telegraph.co.uk/politicsnewsletter https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1572585334927667200/photo/1

    Errr do they know who introduced and voted for the Northern Ireland Protocol?

    The territorial integrity left the building a while back.
    The level of sneering stupidity is almost preposterous. They want Liz to "stand up" to Biden. In America. At their first meeting. On an issue where the US position is clear, rationale and long-established, and the UK position an utter joke?

    Yeah. Go get 'em Liz.
    The UK position is that we favour a negotiated solution, and welcome the US getting behind that effort, but if one side refuses to negotiate, unilateral action is an option. I'm not sure why you feel that Liz should change that after a grilling from Uncle Joe.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    eek said:

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1572588027406614528
    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    👀
    If gas prices stay high (possible) and govt has to extend its business support scheme for a full two years - as per the household energy guarantee (possible) then my back-of-envelope sums suggest the combined cost of these schemes could come to a quarter of a trillion pounds.


    Is that why you are called eek, to bring us messages like that 😟
    No but it's was my reaction to that tweet as well....
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,730

    Cyclefree said:


    AIRLIVE @airlivenet

    BREAKING Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65


    https://www.airlive.net/breaking-russian-airlines-ordered-to-stop-selling-tickets-to-russian-men-aged-18-to-65/

    Presumably they'll be building a wall next to stop people getting out .......

    They must have some old plans they could dust down and use.
    Seems to me it’s all about messaging to Ukraine and it’s supporters though - the one thing we are not supplying Ukraine enough of Russia signalling it can take this deep with 🥺

    My understanding of end of First World War was the amount of running out of fighters wore heavily on governments of the protagonists - it wasn’t a clear military win but stalemate and amount of your own casualties draining the pool to call on leading to truce and talks.

    particularly if Kremlin now choose more limited seize and hold options, with a much smaller front to defend, switching from attack to defend, then today for me is all about Russia signalling it’s up for a very long one ☹️
    Nope - go and read some history. Germany capitulated when the army was just about still intact. Another few months and the allies would have been in Berlin, just as in 1945 (except all coming from the west). For sure the French and British (Empire) had lost a lot of men, and strategy and tactics had evolved to use arms not men, but with the US entry into the war there was not going to be a shortage of manpower.
    In hindsight it was Germany agreeing to the Armistice that ultimately allowed the myth of the Stab in the Back to take hold - in 1918 German troops still fought outside the Reich, not so much in May 1945.
    Shortage of Ukrainian manpower in a long conflict is at the heart of what Russia is signalling today isn’t it?
    Judging by the comments of our favourite Russian apologist, they're actually signalling the shortage of Putin's manhood.
This discussion has been closed.