Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
How? How do you smuggle a live civet out of a secure research lab, knowing that its absence will be spotted the next day? Do you think someone just slips it down their trousers and walks out, then takes the hour-long journey to the other side of the city to find someone who wants to buy a single civet?
If you’re going to steal, if you’re going to risk your entire career and suffering at the hands of China’s harsh penal system, you’d do the easier thing and nick a laptop, not a feckin’ civet.
Or just spill something on your way out for lunch and not be especially thorough about cleaning it. I remember walking past two bio-med professors in the run-up to lockdown and them both laughing about "Wouldn't surprise me - that lab is a total sh*t-show".
Again, the Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of a big city. If somebody went out to lunch after spilling something, you would see the pandemic beginning near the lab. We don’t. We see the pandemic beginning at the market.
Also, if someone had spilt something, you’d see the first human infections being genomically identical, whereas we see the first human infections being more diverse, which is consistent instead with a poll of infected animals in the wet market.
@Roger: you'd like to know my history, would you? Or do you just want to make some bitchy point?
My parents rented their flat. It had no central heating. The landlord was a bastard and neglected to look after it. After my father died, conditions were so bad that it was declared unfit for human habitation under the 1952 Housing Act. The landlord tried to evict my mother so he could sell it. It was one of the reasons I went into the law - so that I could fight back against people like him and help people like my mother. My first volunteering job was doing just that at the North Ken Law Centre. Both parents were born overseas. My father was Irish at a time when this was not fashionable and he was sneered at by the likes of people like you. I was orphaned at the age of 20.
Every job I ever got I got on merit on the basis of my qualities and what I had to offer. No-one in my family or their friends gave me a job (apart from one Saturday job when I was 16).
So I am entitled to be scornful of those people who game the property system in this country to benefit themselves and their children while sanctimoniously claiming to be against "privilege".
Is someone suggesting Phillipson 'gamed' the property system and criticising anyone for sanctimony really takes the biscuit
That was Rayner wasn't it ?
It seems Labour Ministers are pretty interchangeable under the rapier like scrutiny of cyclefree.
Phillipson helped her mother at a refuge and cyclefree characterises it as...." her only job before becoming an MP was in Mummy's charity. lol."
@Cyclefree is very well respected on here and provides informative threads and options
She is also fiercely defensive of women and right to be so
With respect, I cannot say the same about yourself
I say it as I find it. I choose who I respect. Following the crowd is for the feeble minded.
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
Not me.
When we went, after a nice journey up in a cable car got out, saw the queue, we turned around and went back down and wandered around Funchal. Not much there. A statue of Christiano Ronaldo, wild growing bananas and some gardens and that’s it.
Madeira is perfect for SKS. It’s rather dull.
Not just a statue but a Ronaldo museum.
A cathedral too and some beautiful hillside landscapes outside the city. Other than Ronaldo fans, Madeira is basically the most popular island in the region for pensioners for a reason (youngsters and party animals tend to go to Gran Canaria and families to Lanzarote)
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
Not me.
When we went, after a nice journey up in a cable car got out, saw the queue, we turned around and went back down and wandered around Funchal. Not much there. A statue of Christiano Ronaldo, wild growing bananas and some gardens and that’s it.
Madeira is perfect for SKS. It’s rather dull.
Not just a statue but a Ronaldo museum.
A cathedral too and some beautiful hillside landscapes outside the city. Other than Ronaldo fans, Madeira is basically the most popular island in the Canary Islands for pensioners for a reason (youngsters and party animals tend to go to Gran Canaria and families to Lanzarote)
Er... Madeira is nowhere near the Canary Islands and is in a different country
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
its more than a trundle, I have done it a couple of times, and never had to queue.
Its often done as part of a package, a bit like the fastpass at Disney, but I just took a taxi.
Madeira is a lovely place, and their Carnival is the best in europe. It helps if you like walking, as there are fantastic views
My wife and I have done it and cannot remember having to queue for it
It is good fun
Yes we did it too last Spring and did queue but not for too long, Starmer just put his kids on it anyway and got driven down the hill by car
Yv Madeira has one big problem. The Airport. You need strong nerves on a windy day.. sometimes you end up being landed in Portugal and waiting for calmer days....
If the Dems are suicidal enough to run Harris again by fixing the primary for her like they did for Hilary in 2016 then they deserve to lose.
It smacks of fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again.
When Trump ran in 2024 after losing in 2020, was that fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again?
And doubtless such simple Whatabouttery lies behind the "rationale" for Harris having another pop in 4 years time.
But here's the problem: he's a winner, and she's not.
Trump has won two elections in his life: 2016 and 2024 Presidential elections. And lost one: 2020.
Harris won District Attorney in 2002, a second term in 2007, California Attorney General in 2010, re-elected 2014. She then won the Senate seat in 2016. She then began a presidential campaign in 2020, pulled out, got made the VP nom, and won as part of the ticket with Biden in 2020. She lost in 2024.
Looks to me that Harris has a better win rate than Trump.
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
Not me.
When we went, after a nice journey up in a cable car got out, saw the queue, we turned around and went back down and wandered around Funchal. Not much there. A statue of Christiano Ronaldo, wild growing bananas and some gardens and that’s it.
Madeira is perfect for SKS. It’s rather dull.
Not just a statue but a Ronaldo museum.
A cathedral too and some beautiful hillside landscapes outside the city. Other than Ronaldo fans, Madeira is basically the most popular island in the Canary Islands for pensioners for a reason (youngsters and party animals tend to go to Gran Canaria and families to Lanzarote)
Er... Madeira is nowhere near the Canary Islands and is in a different country
Well technically it isn't but for British tourists they are basically the same thing, sunny islands off the North African coast
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
How? How do you smuggle a live civet out of a secure research lab, knowing that its absence will be spotted the next day? Do you think someone just slips it down their trousers and walks out, then takes the hour-long journey to the other side of the city to find someone who wants to buy a single civet?
If you’re going to steal, if you’re going to risk your entire career and suffering at the hands of China’s harsh penal system, you’d do the easier thing and nick a laptop, not a feckin’ civet.
Or just spill something on your way out for lunch and not be especially thorough about cleaning it. I remember walking past two bio-med professors in the run-up to lockdown and them both laughing about "Wouldn't surprise me - that lab is a total sh*t-show".
Again, the Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of a big city. If somebody went out to lunch after spilling something, you would see the pandemic beginning near the lab. We don’t. We see the pandemic beginning at the market.
Also, if someone had spilt something, you’d see the first human infections being genomically identical, whereas we see the first human infections being more diverse, which is consistent instead with a poll of infected animals in the wet market.
I presume lab workers shopped at the wet market along with everyone else, so lab worker with a snotty nose goes shopping...
If the Dems are suicidal enough to run Harris again by fixing the primary for her like they did for Hilary in 2016 then they deserve to lose.
It smacks of fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again.
It really doesn’t do any such thing. You’re projecting.
All that the current polling shows is that Harris was fairly popular with her own party. It’s only a couple of months since the election; bit early to expect them to move on.
Not really. Running a dreadful candidate twice is clearly barking but the fury and disbelief that she lost is still all too readily apparent. Her popularity within the party just adds to that, because it perfectly exemplifies the dichotomy between those who get it and the ignorant electorate.
As always for people like this @bondegezou is a fantastic yardstick, because he channels that perfectly.
I’m not arguing the Dems should stand Harris again. I was just pointing out your hypocrisy of criticising putting up a candidate who lost the previous time.
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
its more than a trundle, I have done it a couple of times, and never had to queue.
Its often done as part of a package, a bit like the fastpass at Disney, but I just took a taxi.
Madeira is a lovely place, and their Carnival is the best in europe. It helps if you like walking, as there are fantastic views
My wife and I have done it and cannot remember having to queue for it
It is good fun
Yes we did it too last Spring and did queue but not for too long, Starmer just put his kids on it anyway and got driven down the hill by car
Yv Madeira has one big problem. The Airport. You need strong nerves on a windy day.. sometimes you end up being landed in Portugal and waiting for calmer days....
Yeah, the airport is quite a wild ride, it took 3 attempts last time I went.
They do have an emergency runway on nearby and much flatter Porto Santo.
@Roger: you'd like to know my history, would you? Or do you just want to make some bitchy point?
My parents rented their flat. It had no central heating. The landlord was a bastard and neglected to look after it. After my father died, conditions were so bad that it was declared unfit for human habitation under the 1952 Housing Act. The landlord tried to evict my mother so he could sell it. It was one of the reasons I went into the law - so that I could fight back against people like him and help people like my mother. My first volunteering job was doing just that at the North Ken Law Centre. Both parents were born overseas. My father was Irish at a time when this was not fashionable and he was sneered at by the likes of people like you. I was orphaned at the age of 20.
Every job I ever got I got on merit on the basis of my qualities and what I had to offer. No-one in my family or their friends gave me a job (apart from one Saturday job when I was 16).
So I am entitled to be scornful of those people who game the property system in this country to benefit themselves and their children while sanctimoniously claiming to be against "privilege".
Is someone suggesting Phillipson 'gamed' the property system and criticising anyone for sanctimony really takes the biscuit
That was Rayner wasn't it ?
It seems Labour Ministers are pretty interchangeable under the rapier like scrutiny of cyclefree.
Phillipson helped her mother at a refuge and cyclefree characterises it as...." her only job before becoming an MP was in Mummy's charity. lol."
@Cyclefree is very well respected on here and provides informative threads and options
She is also fiercely defensive of women and right to be so
With respect, I cannot say the same about yourself
I say it as I find it. I choose who I respect. Following the crowd is for the feeble minded.
And we choose who we respect and @Cyclefree deserves respect
There’s a fair few usually sensible American conservatives who appear to have joined the Tommy Robinson fan club in the past 24 hours.
I can only suspect that they haven’t actually researched the case properly. American judges can and do lock people up for contempt of court, so it’s not like the concept doesn’t make sense to Amercians. “Secret” trials with reporting restrictions also happen in the US, for much the same reasons they happen anywhere else.
All very weird.
Perhaps this is how these 'sensible American conservatives' always act? React without actually knowing what they're talking about?
They might even fit in here on PB...
The losing of minds in America continues.
See the comedians on Reddit who are desperately sure that the recent bombings were both MAGA and fake and a false flag. All at the same time.
“Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.”
Did you see the comedian at Mar-a-Lago condemning open borders because he'd heard Fox say the killer hired the truck in Mexico two days earlier, but not noticed the retraction.
No. But that doesn’t surprise me, in the least. No doubt on Twatter, in response to bullshit posted on Twatter?
Or Trump's own Truth Social. TSE posted a screenshot on the last thread which is where I saw it.
If the Dems are suicidal enough to run Harris again by fixing the primary for her like they did for Hilary in 2016 then they deserve to lose.
It smacks of fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again.
When Trump ran in 2024 after losing in 2020, was that fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again?
And doubtless such simple Whatabouttery lies behind the "rationale" for Harris having another pop in 4 years time.
But here's the problem: he's a winner, and she's not.
Trump has won two elections in his life: 2016 and 2024 Presidential elections. And lost one: 2020.
Harris won District Attorney in 2002, a second term in 2007, California Attorney General in 2010, re-elected 2014. She then won the Senate seat in 2016. She then began a presidential campaign in 2020, pulled out, got made the VP nom, and won as part of the ticket with Biden in 2020. She lost in 2024.
Looks to me that Harris has a better win rate than Trump.
So Harris is good at winning elections in San Francisco and California.
Perhaps she should run for California Governor or San Francisco Mayor.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
How? How do you smuggle a live civet out of a secure research lab, knowing that its absence will be spotted the next day? Do you think someone just slips it down their trousers and walks out, then takes the hour-long journey to the other side of the city to find someone who wants to buy a single civet?
If you’re going to steal, if you’re going to risk your entire career and suffering at the hands of China’s harsh penal system, you’d do the easier thing and nick a laptop, not a feckin’ civet.
Or just spill something on your way out for lunch and not be especially thorough about cleaning it. I remember walking past two bio-med professors in the run-up to lockdown and them both laughing about "Wouldn't surprise me - that lab is a total sh*t-show".
But that’s just scientists joking. I doubt they really believed that.
A joke is only funny if it has some semblance of truth.
What do you get if you cross a sheep and a kangaroo?
A woolly jumper.
This joke is funny, but has no semblance of truth as it is impossible to cross a sheep and a kangaroo.
@Roger: you'd like to know my history, would you? Or do you just want to make some bitchy point?
My parents rented their flat. It had no central heating. The landlord was a bastard and neglected to look after it. After my father died, conditions were so bad that it was declared unfit for human habitation under the 1952 Housing Act. The landlord tried to evict my mother so he could sell it. It was one of the reasons I went into the law - so that I could fight back against people like him and help people like my mother. My first volunteering job was doing just that at the North Ken Law Centre. Both parents were born overseas. My father was Irish at a time when this was not fashionable and he was sneered at by the likes of people like you. I was orphaned at the age of 20.
Every job I ever got I got on merit on the basis of my qualities and what I had to offer. No-one in my family or their friends gave me a job (apart from one Saturday job when I was 16).
So I am entitled to be scornful of those people who game the property system in this country to benefit themselves and their children while sanctimoniously claiming to be against "privilege".
Is someone suggesting Phillipson 'gamed' the property system and criticising anyone for sanctimony really takes the biscuit
That was Rayner wasn't it ?
It seems Labour Ministers are pretty interchangeable under the rapier like scrutiny of cyclefree.
Phillipson helped her mother at a refuge and cyclefree characterises it as...." her only job before becoming an MP was in Mummy's charity. lol."
@Cyclefree is very well respected on here and provides informative threads and options
She is also fiercely defensive of women and right to be so
With respect, I cannot say the same about yourself
I say it as I find it. I choose who I respect. Following the crowd is for the feeble minded.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
How? How do you smuggle a live civet out of a secure research lab, knowing that its absence will be spotted the next day? Do you think someone just slips it down their trousers and walks out, then takes the hour-long journey to the other side of the city to find someone who wants to buy a single civet?
If you’re going to steal, if you’re going to risk your entire career and suffering at the hands of China’s harsh penal system, you’d do the easier thing and nick a laptop, not a feckin’ civet.
Or just spill something on your way out for lunch and not be especially thorough about cleaning it. I remember walking past two bio-med professors in the run-up to lockdown and them both laughing about "Wouldn't surprise me - that lab is a total sh*t-show".
Again, the Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of a big city. If somebody went out to lunch after spilling something, you would see the pandemic beginning near the lab. We don’t. We see the pandemic beginning at the market.
Also, if someone had spilt something, you’d see the first human infections being genomically identical, whereas we see the first human infections being more diverse, which is consistent instead with a poll of infected animals in the wet market.
Is there a good reason why you continue to trumpet the location of 'the Institute', when the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control is 300 yards from the market?
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
its more than a trundle, I have done it a couple of times, and never had to queue.
Its often done as part of a package, a bit like the fastpass at Disney, but I just took a taxi.
Madeira is a lovely place, and their Carnival is the best in europe. It helps if you like walking, as there are fantastic views
My wife and I have done it and cannot remember having to queue for it
It is good fun
Yes we did it too last Spring and did queue but not for too long, Starmer just put his kids on it anyway and got driven down the hill by car
Yv Madeira has one big problem. The Airport. You need strong nerves on a windy day.. sometimes you end up being landed in Portugal and waiting for calmer days....
If the Dems are suicidal enough to run Harris again by fixing the primary for her like they did for Hilary in 2016 then they deserve to lose.
It smacks of fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again.
It really doesn’t do any such thing. You’re projecting.
All that the current polling shows is that Harris was fairly popular with her own party. It’s only a couple of months since the election; bit early to expect them to move on.
Much depends on how far Trump managrs to piss off the MAGA base. Whilst they won't vote Harris in 2028, if she is proven right on how Trump would behave - and the disastrous consequences for blue-collar Americans - them staying home and Harris holding the voters she got in 2024 might well be enough.
Well anything is possible. I’m just saying her current polling is very little guide to what it’s likely to be in three years’ time.
And there are many other Democrats better placed to improve their position in that time.
If the Dems are suicidal enough to run Harris again by fixing the primary for her like they did for Hilary in 2016 then they deserve to lose.
It smacks of fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again.
When Trump ran in 2024 after losing in 2020, was that fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again?
And doubtless such simple Whatabouttery lies behind the "rationale" for Harris having another pop in 4 years time.
But here's the problem: he's a winner, and she's not.
Trump has won two elections in his life: 2016 and 2024 Presidential elections. And lost one: 2020.
Harris won District Attorney in 2002, a second term in 2007, California Attorney General in 2010, re-elected 2014. She then won the Senate seat in 2016. She then began a presidential campaign in 2020, pulled out, got made the VP nom, and won as part of the ticket with Biden in 2020. She lost in 2024.
Looks to me that Harris has a better win rate than Trump.
I’m sure Trump casts an envious glance at such an election winning colossus.
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
Not me.
When we went, after a nice journey up in a cable car got out, saw the queue, we turned around and went back down and wandered around Funchal. Not much there. A statue of Christiano Ronaldo, wild growing bananas and some gardens and that’s it.
Madeira is perfect for SKS. It’s rather dull.
Not just a statue but a Ronaldo museum.
A cathedral too and some beautiful hillside landscapes outside the city. Other than Ronaldo fans, Madeira is basically the most popular island in the region for pensioners for a reason (youngsters and party animals tend to go to Gran Canaria and families to Lanzarote)
He would have got more Guardian cred points if he’d gone to the Azores, says this volcano junkie.
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
Not me.
When we went, after a nice journey up in a cable car got out, saw the queue, we turned around and went back down and wandered around Funchal. Not much there. A statue of Christiano Ronaldo, wild growing bananas and some gardens and that’s it.
Madeira is perfect for SKS. It’s rather dull.
Not just a statue but a Ronaldo museum.
A cathedral too and some beautiful hillside landscapes outside the city. Other than Ronaldo fans, Madeira is basically the most popular island in the Canary Islands for pensioners for a reason (youngsters and party animals tend to go to Gran Canaria and families to Lanzarote)
Er... Madeira is nowhere near the Canary Islands and is in a different country
Well technically it isn't but for British tourists they are basically the same thing, sunny islands off the North African coast
You're struggling there! Madeira is basically the most popular island in the Canary Islands But keep up the fight.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
How? How do you smuggle a live civet out of a secure research lab, knowing that its absence will be spotted the next day? Do you think someone just slips it down their trousers and walks out, then takes the hour-long journey to the other side of the city to find someone who wants to buy a single civet?
If you’re going to steal, if you’re going to risk your entire career and suffering at the hands of China’s harsh penal system, you’d do the easier thing and nick a laptop, not a feckin’ civet.
Or just spill something on your way out for lunch and not be especially thorough about cleaning it. I remember walking past two bio-med professors in the run-up to lockdown and them both laughing about "Wouldn't surprise me - that lab is a total sh*t-show".
But that’s just scientists joking. I doubt they really believed that.
A joke is only funny if it has some semblance of truth.
What do you get if you cross a sheep and a kangaroo?
A woolly jumper.
This joke is funny, but has no semblance of truth as it is impossible to cross a sheep and a kangaroo.
QED.
Not if you do a bit of gene editing with Crispr it isn't.
Anyway, wrong joke category. I should have said "The" joke, which should have been obvious.
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
its more than a trundle, I have done it a couple of times, and never had to queue.
Its often done as part of a package, a bit like the fastpass at Disney, but I just took a taxi.
Madeira is a lovely place, and their Carnival is the best in europe. It helps if you like walking, as there are fantastic views
My wife and I have done it and cannot remember having to queue for it
It is good fun
Yes we did it too last Spring and did queue but not for too long, Starmer just put his kids on it anyway and got driven down the hill by car
Yv Madeira has one big problem. The Airport. You need strong nerves on a windy day.. sometimes you end up being landed in Portugal and waiting for calmer days....
Better by sea
A friend set off in his yacht to spend winter in the Caribbean. Got as far as Funchal and decided it was plenty good enough. Whether this reflects the superiority of Madeira over Antigua, or just the extra distance involved, I couldn't say.
I seem to remember that prior to the election, people were warning that if Mr Trump was elected there wouldn't be any more presidential elections. So you'd invest your money for years only to have the bet voided?
There are still elections in Russia, for all the difference it makes. For all dictators like autocracy, they still feel the need to abide by the outward appearance of democracy. Mostly, it's just that they want to appear popular, internally and to the world, but the near-global norm of elections must have some impact.
Indeed, though our own pretentions of democracy are somewhat questionable when we have a party in power with untrammelled ability to govern when said party only has the active endorsement of 20% of the eligible electorate.
Well, much as I'm not a fan of FPTP, any notion that we should be drawing an equivalence between Britain's political system and that of dictatorships like Russia is so absurd as to disqualify anyone making it from the debate.
If people choose not to vote, that is their right. Personally, I think it's a bad decision and people have a civic duty to inform themselves and participate but if they opt out, that simply gives those that don't more say.
I would actively encourage everyone to participate in the democratic process. And I think that democracy is safer and healthier the more people are involved to a greater extent.
But I think there's also room for a principled abstentionism. If you genuinely don't know which way to vote, then there's a logic for leaving the decision to the collective will of your fellow citizens, and trusting their judgement.
I haven't voted since 2010 now. Up to then I voted in every local , general and euro election. It is not a case for me of not knowing who to vote for but knowing that none of those on offer are worth voting for.
If the Dems are suicidal enough to run Harris again by fixing the primary for her like they did for Hilary in 2016 then they deserve to lose.
It smacks of fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again.
When Trump ran in 2024 after losing in 2020, was that fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again?
And doubtless such simple Whatabouttery lies behind the "rationale" for Harris having another pop in 4 years time.
But here's the problem: he's a winner, and she's not.
Trump has won two elections in his life: 2016 and 2024 Presidential elections. And lost one: 2020.
Harris won District Attorney in 2002, a second term in 2007, California Attorney General in 2010, re-elected 2014. She then won the Senate seat in 2016. She then began a presidential campaign in 2020, pulled out, got made the VP nom, and won as part of the ticket with Biden in 2020. She lost in 2024.
Looks to me that Harris has a better win rate than Trump.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
Not me.
When we went, after a nice journey up in a cable car got out, saw the queue, we turned around and went back down and wandered around Funchal. Not much there. A statue of Christiano Ronaldo, wild growing bananas and some gardens and that’s it.
Madeira is perfect for SKS. It’s rather dull.
Not just a statue but a Ronaldo museum.
A cathedral too and some beautiful hillside landscapes outside the city. Other than Ronaldo fans, Madeira is basically the most popular island in the Canary Islands for pensioners for a reason (youngsters and party animals tend to go to Gran Canaria and families to Lanzarote)
Er... Madeira is nowhere near the Canary Islands and is in a different country
Well technically it isn't but for British tourists they are basically the same thing, sunny islands off the North African coast
I don't think British tourists see Portuguese and Spanish islands as the same not least as they are 250 miles apart
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
How? How do you smuggle a live civet out of a secure research lab, knowing that its absence will be spotted the next day? Do you think someone just slips it down their trousers and walks out, then takes the hour-long journey to the other side of the city to find someone who wants to buy a single civet?
If you’re going to steal, if you’re going to risk your entire career and suffering at the hands of China’s harsh penal system, you’d do the easier thing and nick a laptop, not a feckin’ civet.
Or just spill something on your way out for lunch and not be especially thorough about cleaning it. I remember walking past two bio-med professors in the run-up to lockdown and them both laughing about "Wouldn't surprise me - that lab is a total sh*t-show".
But that’s just scientists joking. I doubt they really believed that.
A joke is only funny if it has some semblance of truth.
What do you get if you cross a sheep and a kangaroo?
A woolly jumper.
This joke is funny, but has no semblance of truth as it is impossible to cross a sheep and a kangaroo.
QED.
Q. How do you make an apple puff. A. Chase it round the garden That's not true either.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
I agree. One of the more unpleasant posts on here as is the one by cyclefree on the last thread. The one featuring the line.......
"......Philippson railing against inherited privilege when her only job before becoming an MP was in Mummy's charity. lol."
Yuck!
Hereditary privilege is a big thing in the labour party.
Here's Bridget Phillipson's CV. Maybe we could see cyclefree's if she thinks it's so deserving of ridicule?
It does feel rather laboured. I mean, I grew up in a house that had no heating upstairs, and went to a comprehensive school (one that was going through a bad patch) and then went off to uni, got a first, worked as a civil servant and a lecturer, then went into teaching and now run my own business.
None of that makes me poor or deserving of special praise. In fact, I'd say I have a pretty affluent background one way and another and I certainly wouldn't have dared to walk out of a well-paid teaching job no matter how miserable we all were and start on my own without a bit of capital behind me.
And although I had lots of help from my parents none of my actual work was for them.
{finds a double case of magnums of Chateaux De Chasseliere}
You ‘ad central heating?
Well, I say central 'eating, 'twas only an open fire that went up a chimney in t'middle of t'ouse, but to us it were like central heating.
(Yes, we really did have - and use - an open coal fire, but we did have proper central heating too.)
Grandad had a coal fire, and 5-year-old me had great fun sitting in front of it and using the poker to make sparks fly. We had a gas fire. Neither had central heating. No phone. No car. Black and white telly. But as Billy Connolly said, we didn't know we were poor.
When I was a child of 9 we moved to Berwick on Tweed in 1953 and the cold was penetrative in winter
My father used to go down to the living room first thing in the morning and light the coal fire which had a back boiler
We only had a two bar electric fire and eventually warm water, but it was notable that often with frost on the inside of our bedroom windows we got dressed under the bedclothes
My wife recounted the same story at her home in Lossiemouth, and in those days you just put on lots of layers, woolly hats and mittens, and got on with it
How times change, but at least we didn't suffer expensive heating bills, just dealt with the cold in our own way
Yes clearly lots of PBers made best they could in tough winters with few luxuries and no central heating, including you BigG.
Though we do seem to have gone a bit 4 Yorkshiremen this evening
We had a lovely old stone cottage on a farm land in the hills around Oxford. Gradually improved it. Still had the original interior doors - 6 oak planks, one across near the top and bottom and a diagonal to brace it. Complete with the original hand made wrought iron latches - like a garden gate latch. No heating system, and some of the electrics turned out to be paper insulated wire from before WWI.
If the Dems are suicidal enough to run Harris again by fixing the primary for her like they did for Hilary in 2016 then they deserve to lose.
It smacks of fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again.
When Trump ran in 2024 after losing in 2020, was that fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again?
And doubtless such simple Whatabouttery lies behind the "rationale" for Harris having another pop in 4 years time.
But here's the problem: he's a winner, and she's not.
Trump has won two elections in his life: 2016 and 2024 Presidential elections. And lost one: 2020.
Harris won District Attorney in 2002, a second term in 2007, California Attorney General in 2010, re-elected 2014. She then won the Senate seat in 2016. She then began a presidential campaign in 2020, pulled out, got made the VP nom, and won as part of the ticket with Biden in 2020. She lost in 2024.
Looks to me that Harris has a better win rate than Trump.
So Harris is good at winning elections in San Francisco and California.
Perhaps she should run for California Governor or San Francisco Mayor.
Governor is actually quite possible; SF already has a new mayor.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
If the Dems are suicidal enough to run Harris again by fixing the primary for her like they did for Hilary in 2016 then they deserve to lose.
It smacks of fury that the electorate gave the wrong answer and they should bloody well try the question again.
It really doesn’t do any such thing. You’re projecting.
All that the current polling shows is that Harris was fairly popular with her own party. It’s only a couple of months since the election; bit early to expect them to move on.
Not really. Running a dreadful candidate twice is clearly barking but the fury and disbelief that she lost is still all too readily apparent. Her popularity within the party just adds to that, because it perfectly exemplifies the dichotomy between those who get it and the ignorant electorate.
As always for people like this @bondegezou is a fantastic yardstick, because he channels that perfectly.
I’m not arguing the Dems should stand Harris again. I was just pointing out your hypocrisy of criticising putting up a candidate who lost the previous time.
No, there was no hypocrisy- although you were determined to try and contrived some.
The analogy might work for you had Trump never won a primary or a general election, say he'd failed in both 2016 and 2020 and was still stuck up for 2024, but unfortunately for you that isn't the case and Harris has never won a primary or a general.
Try choosing your battles or you will end up looking very silly.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
Lab leaks have happened and caused disease outbreaks. Most notably, the 1977 flu might have been a Russian lab leak, although it’s very hard to determine for sure.
Over time, the evidence that COVID-19 came from the wet market has increased. I might once have talked about the balance of probabilities. I wouldn’t now, in 2025. It is exceedingly unlikely that COVID-19 was anything other than a zoonotic event, just like the vast majority of novel disease pandemics.
I think most epidemiologists would broadly agree with the point you make at the end. It doesn’t matter much. We should try to avoid it happening again. Such a thing could happen from a lab leak and we should take appropriate caution to avoid that. It could also happen from a zoonotic event and we should try to avoid that.
It is unfortunate that a point of epidemiological investigation has, like so many other things, been captured by culture war nonsense, such that expressing a view on COVID-19 origins gets you labelled a paedophile enabler.
Some other things
1) Doing any kind of biological research around/by/with/or/from the Chinese government is immoral. 2) The kind of labs we are talking about have very little real bio-security. Forget the movies with space suits and airlocks.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
*Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology concludes that 'the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan' *It points to research on bats and respiratory diseases carried by the animals at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology *WCDC is just 300 yards from the seafood market and is adjacent to the hospital
I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest it's down to ignorance, but given that the Wuhan Centre For Disease Control was 300 yards from the wet market, do you see how your comments, particularly the bolded where you mention the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which I assume is on the other side of the city), look very much like a clumsy attempt to misdirect?
Nearly all the lab leak theories presented were about the WIV, which specialises in coronaviruses. All the claims about NIH funding and EcoHealth, that you were going on about upthread, about WIV. They were not about the WCDC. This is not me misdirecting, this is you misdirecting.
How many times has Starmer rolled out the "security" line now? The football box at the Arsenal? The Madeira queue-jump? His son needing a secure place in a nice flat for revision?
Misappropriating Oscar Wilde: to have a security need once might be considered a reasonable necessity, to do it thrice seems like a go-to-excuse for enjoying the fruits of office.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
Lab leaks have happened and caused disease outbreaks. Most notably, the 1977 flu might have been a Russian lab leak, although it’s very hard to determine for sure.
Over time, the evidence that COVID-19 came from the wet market has increased. I might once have talked about the balance of probabilities. I wouldn’t now, in 2025. It is exceedingly unlikely that COVID-19 was anything other than a zoonotic event, just like the vast majority of novel disease pandemics.
I think most epidemiologists would broadly agree with the point you make at the end. It doesn’t matter much. We should try to avoid it happening again. Such a thing could happen from a lab leak and we should take appropriate caution to avoid that. It could also happen from a zoonotic event and we should try to avoid that.
It is unfortunate that a point of epidemiological investigation has, like so many other things, been captured by culture war nonsense, such that expressing a view on COVID-19 origins gets you labelled a paedophile enabler.
Some other things
1) Doing any kind of biological research around/by/with/or/from the Chinese government is immoral. 2) The kind of labs we are talking about have very little real bio-security. Forget the movies with space suits and airlocks.
(1) Maybe. I don’t know. It’s tangential to the question at hand.
(2) The kind of labs we’re talking about have very stringent bio-security.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
@Roger: you'd like to know my history, would you? Or do you just want to make some bitchy point?
My parents rented their flat. It had no central heating. The landlord was a bastard and neglected to look after it. After my father died, conditions were so bad that it was declared unfit for human habitation under the 1952 Housing Act. The landlord tried to evict my mother so he could sell it. It was one of the reasons I went into the law - so that I could fight back against people like him and help people like my mother. My first volunteering job was doing just that at the North Ken Law Centre. Both parents were born overseas. My father was Irish at a time when this was not fashionable and he was sneered at by the likes of people like you. I was orphaned at the age of 20.
Every job I ever got I got on merit on the basis of my qualities and what I had to offer. No-one in my family or their friends gave me a job (apart from one Saturday job when I was 16).
So I am entitled to be scornful of those people who game the property system in this country to benefit themselves and their children while sanctimoniously claiming to be against "privilege".
Is someone suggesting Phillipson 'gamed' the property system and criticising anyone for sanctimony really takes the biscuit
That was Rayner wasn't it ?
It seems Labour Ministers are pretty interchangeable under the rapier like scrutiny of cyclefree.
Phillipson helped her mother at a refuge and cyclefree characterises it as...." her only job before becoming an MP was in Mummy's charity. lol."
@Cyclefree is very well respected on here and provides informative threads and options
She is also fiercely defensive of women and right to be so
With respect, I cannot say the same about yourself
I say it as I find it. I choose who I respect. Following the crowd is for the feeble minded.
Don't be so hard on yourself.
Look at your 'likes'. Only JohnO slightly disproves the rule but those on the right are much more likely to 'like' personally insulting posts than those on the left. That's how it is on here.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
Quick Google...
*Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology concludes that 'the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan' *It points to research on bats and respiratory diseases carried by the animals at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology *WCDC is just 300 yards from the seafood market and is adjacent to the hospital
I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest it's down to ignorance, but given that the Wuhan Centre For Disease Control was 300 yards from the wet market, do you see how your comments, particularly the bolded where you mention the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which I assume is on the other side of the city), look very much like a clumsy attempt to misdirect?
Nearly all the lab leak theories presented were about the WIV, which specialises in coronaviruses. All the claims about NIH funding and EcoHealth, that you were going on about upthread, about WIV. They were not about the WCDC. This is not me misdirecting, this is you misdirecting.
It most certainly isn't me misdirecting - I only dimly remembered this argument from last time, and pulled up the report. According to the authors of the source of the above story, the WCDC was studing coronaviruses, and had 605 live bats.
However, I'm glad you've at least addressed the question.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
Lab leaks have happened and caused disease outbreaks. Most notably, the 1977 flu might have been a Russian lab leak, although it’s very hard to determine for sure.
Over time, the evidence that COVID-19 came from the wet market has increased. I might once have talked about the balance of probabilities. I wouldn’t now, in 2025. It is exceedingly unlikely that COVID-19 was anything other than a zoonotic event, just like the vast majority of novel disease pandemics.
I think most epidemiologists would broadly agree with the point you make at the end. It doesn’t matter much. We should try to avoid it happening again. Such a thing could happen from a lab leak and we should take appropriate caution to avoid that. It could also happen from a zoonotic event and we should try to avoid that.
It is unfortunate that a point of epidemiological investigation has, like so many other things, been captured by culture war nonsense, such that expressing a view on COVID-19 origins gets you labelled a paedophile enabler.
Some other things
1) Doing any kind of biological research around/by/with/or/from the Chinese government is immoral. 2) The kind of labs we are talking about have very little real bio-security. Forget the movies with space suits and airlocks.
(1) Maybe. I don’t know. It’s tangential to the question at hand.
(2) The kind of labs we’re talking about have very stringent bio-security.
"Although Sir Jeremy has publicly backed the professionalism of Chinese researchers, in emails he privately admitted that research in Wuhan was like the "Wild West"."
Weird that despite his grave and private misgivings about Wuhan, he publicly supported the zoonodis theory, signed the now discredited Lancet Letter, and then got appointed head of WHO. How the heck does that happen?
How many times has Starmer rolled out the "security" line now? The football box at the Arsenal? The Madeira queue-jump? His son needing a secure place in a nice flat for revision?
Misappropriating Oscar Wilde: to have a security need once might be considered a reasonable necessity, to do it thrice seems like a go-to-excuse for enjoying the fruits of office.
Err, security for a head of state is pretty pointless if it can only be used once. PB has gone madder than normal in 2025!
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
Quick Google...
*Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology concludes that 'the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan' *It points to research on bats and respiratory diseases carried by the animals at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology *WCDC is just 300 yards from the seafood market and is adjacent to the hospital
I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest it's down to ignorance, but given that the Wuhan Centre For Disease Control was 300 yards from the wet market, do you see how your comments, particularly the bolded where you mention the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which I assume is on the other side of the city), look very much like a clumsy attempt to misdirect?
Nearly all the lab leak theories presented were about the WIV, which specialises in coronaviruses. All the claims about NIH funding and EcoHealth, that you were going on about upthread, about WIV. They were not about the WCDC. This is not me misdirecting, this is you misdirecting.
It most certainly isn't me misdirecting - I only dimly remembered this argument from last time, and pulled up the report. According to the authors of the source of the above story, the WCDC was studing coronaviruses, and had 605 live bats.
However, I'm glad you've at least addressed the question.
I'm curious too what the role of the Wuhan CDC would be? Eg is it comparable to America's CDC in getting called in to deal with novel viruses when people get sick?
If so it seems to me, just making it up, that an entirely plausible chain of events (especially given how contagious covid19 was) could be: someone in WIV gets sick -> sick individual(s) gets dealt with by Wuhan CDC -> virus escapes CDC to neighbouring market meters away -> the rest is history.
Could someone in her party send her the link? Or tell her about the Drew Review and Operation Stovewood by the NCA. Or the Jay report or what Dame Louise Casey has done?
Or remind her of what her fellow Cabinet Minister, Suellla Braverman, the Home Secretary to do in May 2023 when the final IICSA Report came out?
This is bandwagon jumping of the most tawdry kind instead of action - which she could have been asking for when she was an actual Cabinet Minister.
What magnificent results have these reports and enquiries produced?
The Drew Review was used to improve the approach of South Yorkshire Police.
Operation Stovewood: run by the NCA is the largest criminal enforcement investigation into non-family CSE. It has identified 1100 victims, has 50 investigations outstanding and has led to 36 convictions.
The Jay Report was used to improve services within Rotherham Council which was put into special measures. The council leader and head of children's services left.
It is something. By no means enough, of course.
But what actual use will yet another inquiry costing millions, reporting in a decade or so and telling us stuff we already know be? Because my suspicion is that this is not really about joining dots or understanding the manifold causes of male sexual violence - let alone taking effective action against it - but political point-scoring and a disguised fight about immigration, in which the needs of the victims - girls mostly - will largely be ignored.
We definitely dont need an enquiry....what we need is a police investigation and where people whether policeman, councillors or local government people or priests etc have covered up sexual abuse of young people then they need to be tried in a court of law for at least perversion of justice.
Enough of enquiries as we have seen with the PO one it is a way of letting the people responsible off
Here's the thing.
The bar for criminal prosecution is a high one, and (with few relatively few exceptions) requires mens rea - i.e. a guilty mind.
Inaction - even when it has terrible consequences - is very rarely a criminal offence.
Now there may be individuals in the care service or the council in Rotherham and Rochdale whose behaviour stepped over the line. But those people are inevitably low level, and were almost certainly carrying out the wishes of their bosses.
So you have a fundamental problem: the instructions (i.e. to care about "community relations" above all else) came from people without specific knowledge, and who therefore almost certainly have a defence. While those who behaviour stepped over the line are junior, and who were "just following orders".
There is an easier case to be made for criminal behaviour and charges to be brought in the Post Office case, because a large number of the legal profession chose to deliberately withhold evidence from the defence in court cases, to the extent that it would come under the heading of perverting the course of justice.
I was in particular minded of the one who destroyed all the records for the investigator for the Jay report and was quite happy and smug to tell the investigator so....if that is not perversion of the course of justice I don't know what is
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
This is a paper that strrves to prove Zoonosis in 2021. But they admit the truth, unlike you
And now I shall step out again. Busy times! Happy New Year to all PBers
hahahah you flagged it
I flagged it. You're being an antagonistic prig. The site is becoming virulent and most of the nasties need to stop or leave.
Er, that was my first comment since before Christmas, you dolt. I am really fucking busy on about seventy eight projects, and don't have time for PB. This is a rare visit, I am going to step away again in a minute
But if the site is become virulent of late - is it? - that ain't me, bro. Not been here. FWIW, to me, dropping in, PB seems quite normal, @bondegezou lying, @MaxPB and @Cyclefree talking sense, @Cookie making nicely lyrical poetic posts about the North with attached photos, @roger being @roger, @rcs1000 being geeky, @HYUFD being adamantine, PB is what it is, and all is well with the world
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
Lab leaks have happened and caused disease outbreaks. Most notably, the 1977 flu might have been a Russian lab leak, although it’s very hard to determine for sure.
Over time, the evidence that COVID-19 came from the wet market has increased. I might once have talked about the balance of probabilities. I wouldn’t now, in 2025. It is exceedingly unlikely that COVID-19 was anything other than a zoonotic event, just like the vast majority of novel disease pandemics.
I think most epidemiologists would broadly agree with the point you make at the end. It doesn’t matter much. We should try to avoid it happening again. Such a thing could happen from a lab leak and we should take appropriate caution to avoid that. It could also happen from a zoonotic event and we should try to avoid that.
It is unfortunate that a point of epidemiological investigation has, like so many other things, been captured by culture war nonsense, such that expressing a view on COVID-19 origins gets you labelled a paedophile enabler.
Some other things
1) Doing any kind of biological research around/by/with/or/from the Chinese government is immoral. 2) The kind of labs we are talking about have very little real bio-security. Forget the movies with space suits and airlocks.
That ship long sailed.
China probably leads the US in some areas of biological research. Over the next decade - unless the two countries go to full scale trade war, and such research collaborations are banned - US pharma will get a significant percentage of their new drugs from China.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
Quick Google...
*Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology concludes that 'the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan' *It points to research on bats and respiratory diseases carried by the animals at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology *WCDC is just 300 yards from the seafood market and is adjacent to the hospital
I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest it's down to ignorance, but given that the Wuhan Centre For Disease Control was 300 yards from the wet market, do you see how your comments, particularly the bolded where you mention the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which I assume is on the other side of the city), look very much like a clumsy attempt to misdirect?
Nearly all the lab leak theories presented were about the WIV, which specialises in coronaviruses. All the claims about NIH funding and EcoHealth, that you were going on about upthread, about WIV. They were not about the WCDC. This is not me misdirecting, this is you misdirecting.
It most certainly isn't me misdirecting - I only dimly remembered this argument from last time, and pulled up the report. According to the authors of the source of the above story, the WCDC was studing coronaviruses, and had 605 live bats.
However, I'm glad you've at least addressed the question.
I'm curious too what the role of the Wuhan CDC would be? Eg is it comparable to America's CDC in getting called in to deal with novel viruses when people get sick?
If so it seems to me, just making it up, that an entirely plausible chain of events (especially given how contagious covid19 was) could be: someone in WIV gets sick -> sick individual(s) gets dealt with by Wuhan CDC -> virus escapes CDC to neighbouring market meters away -> the rest is history.
Given that it seems to have been a scabby diseased bat hotel, I certainly hope its staff wasn't being called on to control any real disease outbreaks. Like getting a pyromaniac to attend house fires.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keepis it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
How many times has Starmer rolled out the "security" line now? The football box at the Arsenal? The Madeira queue-jump? His son needing a secure place in a nice flat for revision?
Misappropriating Oscar Wilde: to have a security need once might be considered a reasonable necessity, to do it thrice seems like a go-to-excuse for enjoying the fruits of office.
Starmer is a lawyer not a politician. As such, he asks is a thing legal? rather than is it politic?
But as I still believe Starmer will have resigned before the next election, I am not too fussed about what Madeiragate will do for his chances.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
I agree. One of the more unpleasant posts on here as is the one by cyclefree on the last thread. The one featuring the line.......
"......Philippson railing against inherited privilege when her only job before becoming an MP was in Mummy's charity. lol."
Yuck!
Hereditary privilege is a big thing in the labour party.
Here's Bridget Phillipson's CV. Maybe we could see cyclefree's if she thinks it's so deserving of ridicule?
It does feel rather laboured. I mean, I grew up in a house that had no heating upstairs, and went to a comprehensive school (one that was going through a bad patch) and then went off to uni, got a first, worked as a civil servant and a lecturer, then went into teaching and now run my own business.
None of that makes me poor or deserving of special praise. In fact, I'd say I have a pretty affluent background one way and another and I certainly wouldn't have dared to walk out of a well-paid teaching job no matter how miserable we all were and start on my own without a bit of capital behind me.
And although I had lots of help from my parents none of my actual work was for them.
{finds a double case of magnums of Chateaux De Chasseliere}
You ‘ad central heating?
Well, I say central 'eating, 'twas only an open fire that went up a chimney in t'middle of t'ouse, but to us it were like central heating.
(Yes, we really did have - and use - an open coal fire, but we did have proper central heating too.)
Grandad had a coal fire, and 5-year-old me had great fun sitting in front of it and using the poker to make sparks fly. We had a gas fire. Neither had central heating. No phone. No car. Black and white telly. But as Billy Connolly said, we didn't know we were poor.
When I was a child of 9 we moved to Berwick on Tweed in 1953 and the cold was penetrative in winter
My father used to go down to the living room first thing in the morning and light the coal fire which had a back boiler
We only had a two bar electric fire and eventually warm water, but it was notable that often with frost on the inside of our bedroom windows we got dressed under the bedclothes
My wife recounted the same story at her home in Lossiemouth, and in those days you just put on lots of layers, woolly hats and mittens, and got on with it
How times change, but at least we didn't suffer expensive heating bills, just dealt with the cold in our own way
Yes clearly lots of PBers made best they could in tough winters with few luxuries and no central heating, including you BigG.
Though we do seem to have gone a bit 4 Yorkshiremen this evening
We had a lovely old stone cottage on a farm land in the hills around Oxford. Gradually improved it. Still had the original interior doors - 6 oak planks, one across near the top and bottom and a diagonal to brace it. Complete with the original hand made wrought iron latches - like a garden gate latch. No heating system, and some of the electrics turned out to be paper insulated wire from before WWI.
Stonesfield "Slate" roof?
Friends of ours had a similar old house, in Cumnor I think it was.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
You think anyone would worry about selling a few animals on the side?
[Note the lawyer who blew the whistle on it was un-personed by the Chinese government.]
I mean, it’s not from a research lab and it’s not civets, but, yes, that is a horrendous story of corruption in China.
A: We know for a fact that corruption is possible in China.
B: We know for a fact that the government covers it up to save face.
C: We know for a fact that the government has done its utmost to save face over Covid19's origins.
Yet you still maintain that corruption here is implausible/impossible?
Ruling out corruption as an option is utterly insane. We both know it happens, and we know its covered up.
I have not said that corruption is impossible. What I am saying is that the evidence from the early genomic variation in human cases, from the pattern of early human cases and from environmental DNA samples is that the virus came from the wet market. That’s clear.
So, how did the virus get to the wet market? We don’t know. It’s probably impossible to ever know for certain. The obvious likely route is that the wet market got animals from the wild and some wild-caught animal brought it in.
Lab leak theory enthusiasts began by claiming that the coincidence of the outbreak starting in Wuhan, which also houses the country’s premier research institute that studies coronaviruses, was too much to believe, ergo it came from the WIV. There were claims of early cases being near the WIV (debunked) and of WIV staff being mysteriously ill (debunked). Now it has become clear that the pandemic began in the market, some have tried to rescue the lab leak theory with a new 2-stage, Occam’s-razor-defying theory: it went from a lab leak to the wet market animals and then onwards. This looks like an attempt to rescue a losing argument rather than any sort of sensible analysis of probabilities.
So, lab leak theory v. 2: it goes from WIV to the wet market. Big problem there is that they are nowhere near each other. So, some lab leak enthusiasts either stick with all of their theories about the WIV, Fauci being evil, blah blah, and just ignore the problem. A different faction have latched on to a different research building, even though that breaks all the other parts of the theory about the WIV.
I’m afraid it’s getting to my bed time now I’m back at work. If you have further questions, I’ll try to address them tomorrow.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
This is a paper that strrves to prove Zoonosis in 2021. But they admit the truth, unlike you
And now I shall step out again. Busy times! Happy New Year to all PBers
Ok who looked in the mirror and said Leon, Leon, Leon?
Leon, probably.
Not me dood, I am genuinely super busy, maybe busier than I have ever been. This is good, lots of work, and I enjoy it, and there is travel coming up, but I sincerely do not have time for long PB arguments. This is my first chill moment in many days, when I haven't been sneezing (I had a lurgy, gone now, DV) or furiously knapping and scribbling
Indeed, I need an early night, such is the scale of my toil!
How many times has Starmer rolled out the "security" line now? The football box at the Arsenal? The Madeira queue-jump? His son needing a secure place in a nice flat for revision?
Misappropriating Oscar Wilde: to have a security need once might be considered a reasonable necessity, to do it thrice seems like a go-to-excuse for enjoying the fruits of office.
Err, security for a head of state is pretty pointless if it can only be used once. PB has gone madder than normal in 2025!
God forbid he ever slipped his security to vanish off to meet the KGB in an Italian Villa and turned up drunk and dishevelled in a deserted Railway Station
Well done to the 20 Broxtowe Councillors who quit Labour today.
Having dared to criticise dear leader of WFA decision and failure to drop the 2 child benefit cap. 10 of their number were barred by Evans and SKS from standing again.
The SKS project will eat itself and SKS will be subject to a challenge by Streetingites and other ambitious Centrist knobs well before GE 2029 as SKSs popularity numbers get forever worse.
Shite Right Wing PM to be replaced by Shit Right wing PM by 2027
I don't think raising employers NI and hitting farmers with inheritance tax and scrapping the remaining hereditary peers in the Lords and putting VAT on private schools and giving a huge payrise to train drivers and GPs is exactly rightwing.
So Starmer is just Shite, though I agree if he still looks like losing Labour's majority in 2028/29 Labour MPs might try and replace him with the more New Labour Streeting (albeit with the risk of getting the even more leftwing Rayner)
"farmers"
Do be accurate. You mean landowners.
I mean farmers who own their farms
Most unlike you not to be solicitous for the wealthy, and in your view ideally aristocratic, landowner.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
You think anyone would worry about selling a few animals on the side?
[Note the lawyer who blew the whistle on it was un-personed by the Chinese government.]
I mean, it’s not from a research lab and it’s not civets, but, yes, that is a horrendous story of corruption in China.
A: We know for a fact that corruption is possible in China.
B: We know for a fact that the government covers it up to save face.
C: We know for a fact that the government has done its utmost to save face over Covid19's origins.
Yet you still maintain that corruption here is implausible/impossible?
Ruling out corruption as an option is utterly insane. We both know it happens, and we know its covered up.
I have not said that corruption is impossible. What I am saying is that the evidence from the early genomic variation in human cases, from the pattern of early human cases and from environmental DNA samples is that the virus came from the wet market. That’s clear.
So, how did the virus get to the wet market? We don’t know. It’s probably impossible to ever know for certain. The obvious likely route is that the wet market got animals from the wild and some wild-caught animal brought it in.
Lab leak theory enthusiasts began by claiming that the coincidence of the outbreak starting in Wuhan, which also houses the country’s premier research institute that studies coronaviruses, was too much to believe, ergo it came from the WIV. There were claims of early cases being near the WIV (debunked) and of WIV staff being mysteriously ill (debunked). Now it has become clear that the pandemic began in the market, some have tried to rescue the lab leak theory with a new 2-stage, Occam’s-razor-defying theory: it went from a lab leak to the wet market animals and then onwards. This looks like an attempt to rescue a losing argument rather than any sort of sensible analysis of probabilities.
So, lab leak theory v. 2: it goes from WIV to the wet market. Big problem there is that they are nowhere near each other. So, some lab leak enthusiasts either stick with all of their theories about the WIV, Fauci being evil, blah blah, and just ignore the problem. A different faction have latched on to a different research building, even though that breaks all the other parts of the theory about the WIV.
I’m afraid it’s getting to my bed time now I’m back at work. If you have further questions, I’ll try to address them tomorrow.
You are a pitiful, cowardly liar. And we've proved your lies on here, today
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
its more than a trundle, I have done it a couple of times, and never had to queue.
Its often done as part of a package, a bit like the fastpass at Disney, but I just took a taxi.
Madeira is a lovely place, and their Carnival is the best in europe. It helps if you like walking, as there are fantastic views
My wife and I have done it and cannot remember having to queue for it
It is good fun
Yes we did it too last Spring and did queue but not for too long, Starmer just put his kids on it anyway and got driven down the hill by car
Yv Madeira has one big problem. The Airport. You need strong nerves on a windy day.. sometimes you end up being landed in Portugal and waiting for calmer days....
Better by sea
A friend set off in his yacht to spend winter in the Caribbean. Got as far as Funchal and decided it was plenty good enough. Whether this reflects the superiority of Madeira over Antigua, or just the extra distance involved, I couldn't say.
In the least surprising news of 2025, Sara Sharif's murderer has been attacked in prison. One is not sympathetic but the state ought to keep inmates safe, which means safe from each other.
By coincidence, Rory Stewart spoke of having seen this of key in the start/end of year The Rest is Politics (spoilers: Labour should stop offending groups with civil service-suggested policies; Ed Davey should find a serious purpose for the LibDems (is a return for the newly jobless Nick Clegg on the cards?); Kemi should own and move on from the previous government's actions). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwBO8nrzCt8
In the least surprising news of 2025, Sara Sharif's murderer has been attacked in prison. One is not sympathetic but the state ought to keep inmates safe, which means safe from each other.
By coincidence, Rory Stewart spoke of having seen this of key in the start/end of year The Rest is Politics (spoilers: Labour should stop offending groups with civil service-suggested policies; Ed Davey should find a serious purpose for the LibDems (is a return for the newly jobless Nick Clegg on the cards?); Kemi should own and move on from the previous government's actions). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwBO8nrzCt8
Somehow I suspect the Tories aren't likely to take advice from Campbell that they should spend more time taking ownership and apologising for the current state of the country :-)
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
Lab leaks have happened and caused disease outbreaks. Most notably, the 1977 flu might have been a Russian lab leak, although it’s very hard to determine for sure.
Over time, the evidence that COVID-19 came from the wet market has increased. I might once have talked about the balance of probabilities. I wouldn’t now, in 2025. It is exceedingly unlikely that COVID-19 was anything other than a zoonotic event, just like the vast majority of novel disease pandemics.
I think most epidemiologists would broadly agree with the point you make at the end. It doesn’t matter much. We should try to avoid it happening again. Such a thing could happen from a lab leak and we should take appropriate caution to avoid that. It could also happen from a zoonotic event and we should try to avoid that.
It is unfortunate that a point of epidemiological investigation has, like so many other things, been captured by culture war nonsense, such that expressing a view on COVID-19 origins gets you labelled a paedophile enabler.
Some other things
1) Doing any kind of biological research around/by/with/or/from the Chinese government is immoral. 2) The kind of labs we are talking about have very little real bio-security. Forget the movies with space suits and airlocks.
(1) Maybe. I don’t know. It’s tangential to the question at hand.
(2) The kind of labs we’re talking about have very stringent bio-security.
What actual level of biosecurity? 2 is “run it like a sane chemistry lab - nasties in the fume cupboard, and no sandwiches in the fridges.”
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keepis it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
This is a paper that strrves to prove Zoonosis in 2021. But they admit the truth, unlike you
And now I shall step out again. Busy times! Happy New Year to all PBers
hahahah you flagged it
I flagged it. You're being an antagonistic prig. The site is becoming virulent and most of the nasties need to stop or leave.
I do not like any poster seeking the banning of another or indeed others
This site is moderated appropriately and mindful of legalities
If you so dislike a post or poster just move on to the next post
As the site has survived for so long the moderators must be on to something. My perception is the disagreements are becoming more visceral and the posters noticeably angrier. I'm not sure the moderators will want to, but, IMO to coddle posters who just rage at others is to allow the forum to devolve and then majority will leave.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
How? How do you smuggle a live civet out of a secure research lab, knowing that its absence will be spotted the next day? Do you think someone just slips it down their trousers and walks out, then takes the hour-long journey to the other side of the city to find someone who wants to buy a single civet?
If you’re going to steal, if you’re going to risk your entire career and suffering at the hands of China’s harsh penal system, you’d do the easier thing and nick a laptop, not a feckin’ civet.
Or just spill something on your way out for lunch and not be especially thorough about cleaning it. I remember walking past two bio-med professors in the run-up to lockdown and them both laughing about "Wouldn't surprise me - that lab is a total sh*t-show".
But that’s just scientists joking. I doubt they really believed that.
A joke is only funny if it has some semblance of truth.
What do you get if you cross a sheep and a kangaroo?
A woolly jumper.
This joke is funny, but has no semblance of truth as it is impossible to cross a sheep and a kangaroo.
QED.
Q. How do you make an apple puff. A. Chase it round the garden That's not true either.
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
its more than a trundle, I have done it a couple of times, and never had to queue.
Its often done as part of a package, a bit like the fastpass at Disney, but I just took a taxi.
Madeira is a lovely place, and their Carnival is the best in europe. It helps if you like walking, as there are fantastic views
My wife and I have done it and cannot remember having to queue for it
It is good fun
Yes we did it too last Spring and did queue but not for too long, Starmer just put his kids on it anyway and got driven down the hill by car
Yv Madeira has one big problem. The Airport. You need strong nerves on a windy day.. sometimes you end up being landed in Portugal and waiting for calmer days....
To the best of my knowledge Funchal has never seen a major prang, in spite of the cliff six inches from your wing-tip. Unlike the more commodious Tenerife which is the current world record holder (583). I doubt that will ever be beaten, but if it were my money would be on San Francisco, with two pairs of active runways at right-angles to each other. The more you think about foreign airports the more you dream about a staycation.
How many times has Starmer rolled out the "security" line now? The football box at the Arsenal? The Madeira queue-jump? His son needing a secure place in a nice flat for revision?
Misappropriating Oscar Wilde: to have a security need once might be considered a reasonable necessity, to do it thrice seems like a go-to-excuse for enjoying the fruits of office.
Starmer is a lawyer not a politician. As such, he asks is a thing legal? rather than is it politic?
But as I still believe Starmer will have resigned before the next election, I am not too fussed about what Madeiragate will do for his chances.
God forbid he gets in a sledge on wheels, goes 50 yards until he's out of sight and then gets out and back in to his Ministerial Car dressed on and old shirt, tight shorts knee length socks and dress shoes
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keepis it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
This is a paper that strrves to prove Zoonosis in 2021. But they admit the truth, unlike you
And now I shall step out again. Busy times! Happy New Year to all PBers
hahahah you flagged it
I flagged it. You're being an antagonistic prig. The site is becoming virulent and most of the nasties need to stop or leave.
You keep pleading that you don't flag posts yet you have now admitted to flagging a post that was simply a post you disagreed with. It was not a post worthy of a flag. And if you are going to defend yourself by claiming the poster was nasty to Leon, have you ever seen any of Leon's posts after he's had an early start at Happy Hour?
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keepis it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
This is a paper that strrves to prove Zoonosis in 2021. But they admit the truth, unlike you
And now I shall step out again. Busy times! Happy New Year to all PBers
hahahah you flagged it
I flagged it. You're being an antagonistic prig. The site is becoming virulent and most of the nasties need to stop or leave.
I do not like any poster seeking the banning of another or indeed others
This site is moderated appropriately and mindful of legalities
If you so dislike a post or poster just move on to the next post
As the site has survived for so long the moderators must be on to something. My perception is the disagreements are becoming more visceral and the posters noticeably angrier. I'm not sure the moderators will want to, but, IMO to coddle posters who just rage at others is to allow the forum to devolve and then majority will leave.
To be fair to the site I've not noticed posters being angrier than usual or angrier than elsewhere. It's still a site where an uncommitted middle exists who back people up against unbalanced attacks.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keepis it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
And nothing bad happened, right up to the one incident where something bad happened.
That's the same calculation that is behind every unnatural disaster.
Indeed.
That @bondegezou can't comprehend why people might engage in such corruption, which is rampant in parts of the world, rather puts into question his entire judgment on the probabilities on this subject.
When you're ruling out something that is common as "why would it happen" then the rest of your logic utterly falls apart.
Please provide evidence that lab civet theft is common.
Of course there is corruption in the world, but try to come up with some sort of vaguely plausible or evidence-based corruption. To the best of our knowledge, there were no viruses in the Wuhan Institute that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. There were no animal tests going on of anything that could be ancestral to SARS-CoV-2. The Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of the city, so even if anything infected got out, you have to explain how it gets to the other side of the city without infecting anything along the way.
We know the wet market sources animals from the wild. We know wild animals sometimes carry bugs we’ve not encountered before. So, what is more likely? Some hare-brained animal theft scheme from the hardest place to nick animals in the city, or a wild animal with a cough?
OK, jumping into Leon mode here, he has called out your comments on the location of the lab (other side of the city) as a proven lie. You didn't reply to his rebuttal then - are you insisting that the lab was on the other side of the city?
I don’t generally waste time rebutting Leon’s ravings. I’d be here all day.
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
Just passing by. Checked your endless screed of effete fibs. Max has identified you correctly as a liar, a fraud and a pathetic shill. I didn't feel a need to add to it
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
This is a paper that strrves to prove Zoonosis in 2021. But they admit the truth, unlike you
And now I shall step out again. Busy times! Happy New Year to all PBers
hahahah you flagged it
I flagged it. You're being an antagonistic prig. The site is becoming virulent and most of the nasties need to stop or leave.
I do not like any poster seeking the banning of another or indeed others
This site is moderated appropriately and mindful of legalities
If you so dislike a post or poster just move on to the next post
As the site has survived for so long the moderators must be on to something. My perception is the disagreements are becoming more visceral and the posters noticeably angrier. I'm not sure the moderators will want to, but, IMO to coddle posters who just rage at others is to allow the forum to devolve and then majority will leave.
To be fair to the site I've not noticed posters being angrier than usual or angrier than elsewhere. It's still a site where an uncommitted middle exists who back people up against unbalanced attacks.
(I messed up the quotes in that post - it was from Nick Palmer rather than Alex)
As the site has survived for so long the moderators must be on to something. My perception is the disagreements are becoming more visceral and the posters noticeably angrier. I'm not sure the moderators will want to, but, IMO to coddle posters who just rage at others is to allow the forum to devolve and then majority will leave.
The change is because before the election there was fairly wide agreement that the government was crap and most right/centre right people accepted it, now with Labour in power the government is just as bad if not worse and those on the left don't want to admit it when we on the right point it out. They're in a constant state of denial about how shit Labour are and the lack of acceptance around it has made PB more combative and it will remain that way until they accept it.
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
How? How do you smuggle a live civet out of a secure research lab, knowing that its absence will be spotted the next day? Do you think someone just slips it down their trousers and walks out, then takes the hour-long journey to the other side of the city to find someone who wants to buy a single civet?
If you’re going to steal, if you’re going to risk your entire career and suffering at the hands of China’s harsh penal system, you’d do the easier thing and nick a laptop, not a feckin’ civet.
Or just spill something on your way out for lunch and not be especially thorough about cleaning it. I remember walking past two bio-med professors in the run-up to lockdown and them both laughing about "Wouldn't surprise me - that lab is a total sh*t-show".
But that’s just scientists joking. I doubt they really believed that.
A joke is only funny if it has some semblance of truth.
What do you get if you cross a sheep and a kangaroo?
A woolly jumper.
This joke is funny, but has no semblance of truth as it is impossible to cross a sheep and a kangaroo.
QED.
Q. How do you make an apple puff. A. Chase it round the garden That's not true either.
OTOH, how do you make a Venetian blind? Stick your fingers in his eyes is absolutely true.
You keep pleading that you don't flag posts yet you have now admitted to flagging a post that was simply a post you disagreed with. It was not a post worthy of a flag. And if you are going to defend yourself by claiming the poster was nasty to Leon, have you ever seen any of Leon's posts after he's had an early start at Happy Hour?
In the least surprising news of 2025, Sara Sharif's murderer has been attacked in prison. One is not sympathetic but the state ought to keep inmates safe, which means safe from each other.
By coincidence, Rory Stewart spoke of having seen this of key in the start/end of year The Rest is Politics (spoilers: Labour should stop offending groups with civil service-suggested policies; Ed Davey should find a serious purpose for the LibDems (is a return for the newly jobless Nick Clegg on the cards?); Kemi should own and move on from the previous government's actions). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwBO8nrzCt8
Somehow I suspect the Tories aren't likely to take advice from Campbell that they should spend more time taking ownership and apologising for the current state of the country :-)
I hadn't seen the news that Clegg had lost his highly remunerated position running the corporate whitewash for a company that has monetised teen suicide and hate speech, to name a few of its many sins.
You keep pleading that you don't flag posts yet you have now admitted to flagging a post that was simply a post you disagreed with. It was not a post worthy of a flag. And if you are going to defend yourself by claiming the poster was nasty to Leon, have you ever seen any of Leon's posts after he's had an early start at Happy Hour?
The quotes are all ballsed.... G is not to blame.
Thanks @MightyAlex and @Mexicanpete owes me an apology as I have not nor would I at anytime flag anyone
You keep pleading that you don't flag posts yet you have now admitted to flagging a post that was simply a post you disagreed with. It was not a post worthy of a flag. And if you are going to defend yourself by claiming the poster was nasty to Leon, have you ever seen any of Leon's posts after he's had an early start at Happy Hour?
Have to say I'm really enjoying Elon Musk trolling the Labour government and ministers. It's very enjoyable seeing the boot on the other foot after 14 years of Labour surrogates in the BBC, charities and think tanks attacking the Tory government under the guise of neutrality. Hope he keeps it up and uses the giant bully pulpit of Twitter to constantly hurt Labour and Starmer.
Are you also enjoying Musk's recent membership of the Tommy Robinson fan club?
I'm not really that fussed, as long as it hurts Labour and contributes their demise. The party that covers up rape gangs because they need their votes, seems like a solid brand for them.
Shame on you Max.
Tommy Robinson very nearly derailed one criminal trial of some of the rapists with his antics. Thus showing that he couldn't give a stuff about the victims because if that trial had been derailed they would either have seen the rapists go free or have to go through the whole ghastly experience of giving evidence all over again.
He doesn't give two hoots about children who are sexually abused. He uses it as away of grifting money from deluded supporters and attacking Muslims and people from Pakistan. He's a tawdry racist and Musk supporting him without bothering to research the reality of the man speaks very ill of him.
And yet if it were up to the likes of @bondegezou the whole thing would never have come to light and all of the people trying to whistleblow would have been shut down and threatened. The rape gangs would still be out there continuing with tacit support from the police and Labour councils to avoid "community tensions". It's the establishment that covered it up and is trying it's hardest to keep the story out of the media to protect themselves for all of the failures. So if Musk is ruffling their feathers then more power to him. Every single person who was involved in covering up the rape gangs or thought that the cover up was "justified" in the name of "community relations" should not only be nowhere near any kind of power, they should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Labour is protecting their own councillors and voters by covering it up and if Musk makes some of their lives more difficult or difficult enough that they top themselves then that's a good outcome. They oversaw the rape and coverup of thousands of girls being raped because the rapists were Muslim and they didn't want to upset Muslim voters. In any other country all of those people responsible would be hounded to suicide, here we just tut at the people trying to get them put in prison.
If you are going to make unpleasant accusations, what about you try to explain yourself, Max? In what way would the likes of me have stopped this coming to light? What makes you think that I would cover up horrendous illegal activity like this? How am I responsible for any of this or anything like this?
Because it was people like you who covered it up. Can you honestly, really honestly, look back and say that you would have been a whistle blower had you seen what was going on? This is your ilk that has covered it up in the name of "community relations" and they looked the other way or in some cases prosecuted parents who wanted their children out of the hands of these rapists. I don't believe, from the posts you have written on here, that you would have been a whistle blower. In fact I believe you would have been an active participant in the cover up and justified it as being a "lesser evil" than "racists" targeting Muslims who perpetrated this evil.
Who knows what other people would do, but you're leveling a pretty harsh accusation.
Yes, I realise it's a harsh accusation but he's also the guy who attempts to shut down all discussion of the lab leak,
(snip)
Rubbish. He did not ''attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak". He had a different view on it that you and Leon, and argued his view just as passionately as you two did.
No I mean from at the time of the pandemic when he was shutting down the discussion as "racist" and "listen to the experts and stfu" after that dodgy letter in the Lancet.
I honestly cannot remember that, but it was crazy times. However: are you sure you are not shutting down debate now with your absolute 100% certainty that it was them evil Chinese in their lab?
Not shutting it down, I just think that people who are adamant it wasn't a lab leak are part of the establishment who would be quite happy to cover things up. I've always said I'm open to the idea of it not being a lab leak, I just don't see these outlandish "a bat kissed a pangolin and then a Chinese guy had sex with the pangolin" ideas as realistic.
I believe I've seen him write posts where he says it could be a lab leak, but he thinks, on the balance of probabilities, it was a 'natural' occurrence from the wet market. I daresay he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people like Leon, who are so incredibly adamant, in their 'expert' view, that it was a lab leak, that anyone who argues it may not have been sound entrenched the other way.
My own somewhat controversial view: we'll probably never know for sure where it originated, and it does not matter much. It could have come from either the wet market or lab; so in future we need to try to ensure that it cannot occur in either again. Close the wet markets and similar, and tighten restrictions and procedures at labs.
I recently had a walk around a wet market and frankly we're lucky we haven't something much worse than Covid out of one. Perhaps a sensible first step would not be to have any wet markets close to pathogen labs...
I always thought that the lab leak was most likely to have occurred via illicit sales of animals from the lab to the wet market, so that both were involved in the origin of the virus.
Unfortunately, China's preoccupation with saving face means that we will never have the rigorous investigation into the origins of the virus that we would expect to have in a democratic country.
Why on Earth would a top scientific research lab break the most basic rules to sell animals to a wet market for piddling amounts of money?
The lab itself wouldn't be doing it, but low paid junior staff in the lab might do so.
How? How do you smuggle a live civet out of a secure research lab, knowing that its absence will be spotted the next day? Do you think someone just slips it down their trousers and walks out, then takes the hour-long journey to the other side of the city to find someone who wants to buy a single civet?
If you’re going to steal, if you’re going to risk your entire career and suffering at the hands of China’s harsh penal system, you’d do the easier thing and nick a laptop, not a feckin’ civet.
Or just spill something on your way out for lunch and not be especially thorough about cleaning it. I remember walking past two bio-med professors in the run-up to lockdown and them both laughing about "Wouldn't surprise me - that lab is a total sh*t-show".
Again, the Institute and the wet market are on opposite sides of a big city. If somebody went out to lunch after spilling something, you would see the pandemic beginning near the lab. We don’t. We see the pandemic beginning at the market.
Also, if someone had spilt something, you’d see the first human infections being genomically identical, whereas we see the first human infections being more diverse, which is consistent instead with a poll of infected animals in the wet market.
I guess no-one can take a light-hearted comment on this subject.
Does he want to start a war with the British people?
I hate to stick up for Sir Queue Skipper, but who waits 3 hours to trundle down a hill in a wicker basket?
its more than a trundle, I have done it a couple of times, and never had to queue.
Its often done as part of a package, a bit like the fastpass at Disney, but I just took a taxi.
Madeira is a lovely place, and their Carnival is the best in europe. It helps if you like walking, as there are fantastic views
My wife and I have done it and cannot remember having to queue for it
It is good fun
Yes we did it too last Spring and did queue but not for too long, Starmer just put his kids on it anyway and got driven down the hill by car
Yv Madeira has one big problem. The Airport. You need strong nerves on a windy day.. sometimes you end up being landed in Portugal and waiting for calmer days....
To the best of my knowledge Funchal has never seen a major prang, in spite of the cliff six inches from your wing-tip. Unlike the more commodious Tenerife which is the current world record holder (583). I doubt that will ever be beaten, but if it were my money would be on San Francisco, with two pairs of active runways at right-angles to each other. The more you think about foreign airports the more you dream about a staycation.
Here's a link to the notorious Funchal Airport Disaster of 1977.
How many times has Starmer rolled out the "security" line now? The football box at the Arsenal? The Madeira queue-jump? His son needing a secure place in a nice flat for revision?
Misappropriating Oscar Wilde: to have a security need once might be considered a reasonable necessity, to do it thrice seems like a go-to-excuse for enjoying the fruits of office.
Starmer is a lawyer not a politician. As such, he asks is a thing legal? rather than is it politic?
But as I still believe Starmer will have resigned before the next election, I am not too fussed about what Madeiragate will do for his chances.
God forbid he gets in a sledge on wheels, goes 50 yards until he's out of sight and then gets out and back in to his Ministerial Car dressed on and old shirt, tight shorts knee length socks and dress shoes
He didn't go on the sled, his children did, and he collected them at the bottom
To be honest there is so much Starmer is in trouble on but this is not one
Comments
Also, if someone had spilt something, you’d see the first human infections being genomically identical, whereas we see the first human infections being more diverse, which is consistent instead with a poll of infected animals in the wet market.
A cathedral too and some beautiful hillside landscapes outside the city. Other than Ronaldo fans, Madeira is basically the most popular island in the region for pensioners for a reason (youngsters and party animals tend to go to Gran Canaria and families to Lanzarote)
I am sure you enjoyed reading again how Starmer treats the plebs.
Madeira has one big problem. The Airport. You need strong nerves on a windy day.. sometimes you end up being landed in Portugal and waiting for calmer days....
Harris won District Attorney in 2002, a second term in 2007, California Attorney General in 2010, re-elected 2014. She then won the Senate seat in 2016. She then began a presidential campaign in 2020, pulled out, got made the VP nom, and won as part of the ticket with Biden in 2020. She lost in 2024.
Looks to me that Harris has a better win rate than Trump.
They do have an emergency runway on nearby and much flatter Porto Santo.
Why even read that?
Perhaps she should run for California Governor or San Francisco Mayor.
A woolly jumper.
This joke is funny, but has no semblance of truth as it is impossible to cross a sheep and a kangaroo.
QED.
I’m just saying her current polling is very little guide to what it’s likely to be in three years’ time.
And there are many other Democrats better placed to improve their position in that time.
Anyway, wrong joke category. I should have said "The" joke, which should have been obvious.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1874928488333115426?s=61
However, as you have asked politely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab people generally people put forth as a putative source, is on the other side of the city to the wet market.
There is another research building near the wet market that some lab theory enthusiasts leapt on as a solution to this problem to their theory. I try not to spend too much time considering what is in Leon’s mind, but I think that’s the place he was talking about. The only problem is that all the other parts of the theory then don’t work. That place wasn’t doing coronavirus research.
That's not true either.
The analogy might work for you had Trump never won a primary or a general election, say he'd failed in both 2016 and 2020 and was still stuck up for 2024, but unfortunately for you that isn't the case and Harris has never won a primary or a general.
Try choosing your battles or you will end up looking very silly.
1) Doing any kind of biological research around/by/with/or/from the Chinese government is immoral.
2) The kind of labs we are talking about have very little real bio-security. Forget the movies with space suits and airlocks.
Secrets and lies. Secrets and lies.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/las-vegas-cybertruck-bomber-matthew-livelsberger-was-a-trump-supporter-source/
Also:
Clark County, Nevada sheriff, Kevin McMahill told media that the driver suffered a gunshot wound to the head before the explosion...
Strange times.
Misappropriating Oscar Wilde: to have a security need once might be considered a reasonable necessity, to do it thrice seems like a go-to-excuse for enjoying the fruits of office.
However this one lie, that you just made, stood out as so utterly blatant I had to step in
"That place [the Wuhan CDC] wasn’t doing coronavirus research"
It was
"At least two institutions in Wuhan work on coronaviruses: the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The WIV houses several laboratory complexes"
The Wuhan CDC kept bats, it was part of the overall work on coronaviruses, and it was 300 yards from the market, and it functioned at a BSL-2 safety level, regarded as "Wild West" by Jeremy Farrar, then of the Wellcome Institute
https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/SIPRIYB21c12sI.pdf
This is a paper that strrves to prove Zoonosis in 2021. But they admit the truth, unlike you
And now I shall step out again. Busy times! Happy New Year to all PBers
B: We know for a fact that the government covers it up to save face.
C: We know for a fact that the government has done its utmost to save face over Covid19's origins.
Yet you still maintain that corruption here is implausible/impossible?
Ruling out corruption as an option is utterly insane. We both know it happens, and we know its covered up.
(2) The kind of labs we’re talking about have very stringent bio-security.
However, I'm glad you've at least addressed the question.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/13/sir-jeremy-farrar-appointed-who-chief-scientist-despite-covid/
Weird that despite his grave and private misgivings about Wuhan, he publicly supported the zoonodis theory, signed the now discredited Lancet Letter, and then got appointed head of WHO. How the heck does that happen?
If so it seems to me, just making it up, that an entirely plausible chain of events (especially given how contagious covid19 was) could be: someone in WIV gets sick -> sick individual(s) gets dealt with by Wuhan CDC -> virus escapes CDC to neighbouring market meters away -> the rest is history.
But if the site is become virulent of late - is it? - that ain't me, bro. Not been here. FWIW, to me, dropping in, PB seems quite normal, @bondegezou lying, @MaxPB and @Cyclefree talking sense, @Cookie making nicely lyrical poetic posts about the North with attached photos, @roger being @roger, @rcs1000 being geeky, @HYUFD being adamantine, PB is what it is, and all is well with the world
China probably leads the US in some areas of biological research. Over the next decade - unless the two countries go to full scale trade war, and such research collaborations are banned - US pharma will get a significant percentage of their new drugs from China.
Blockquote not working but I would say the following
I do not like any poster seeking the banning of another or indeed others
This site is moderated appropriately and mindful of legalities
If you so dislike a post or poster just move on to the next post
But as I still believe Starmer will have resigned before the next election, I am not too fussed about what Madeiragate will do for his chances.
(I couldn't really follow it but it was all a bit odd)
Friends of ours had a similar old house, in Cumnor I think it was.
So, how did the virus get to the wet market? We don’t know. It’s probably impossible to ever know for certain. The obvious likely route is that the wet market got animals from the wild and some wild-caught animal brought it in.
Lab leak theory enthusiasts began by claiming that the coincidence of the outbreak starting in Wuhan, which also houses the country’s premier research institute that studies coronaviruses, was too much to believe, ergo it came from the WIV. There were claims of early cases being near the WIV (debunked) and of WIV staff being mysteriously ill (debunked). Now it has become clear that the pandemic began in the market, some have tried to rescue the lab leak theory with a new 2-stage, Occam’s-razor-defying theory: it went from a lab leak to the wet market animals and then onwards. This looks like an attempt to rescue a losing argument rather than any sort of sensible analysis of probabilities.
So, lab leak theory v. 2: it goes from WIV to the wet market. Big problem there is that they are nowhere near each other. So, some lab leak enthusiasts either stick with all of their theories about the WIV, Fauci being evil, blah blah, and just ignore the problem. A different faction have latched on to a different research building, even though that breaks all the other parts of the theory about the WIV.
I’m afraid it’s getting to my bed time now I’m back at work. If you have further questions, I’ll try to address them tomorrow.
Indeed, I need an early night, such is the scale of my toil!
Nightynight all
(Oh, and PS: you are being pricks to each other so stop it. Log off for a bit and go do something else. The site will still be there in the morning)
Goodnight
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/32571000/sara-sharif-killer-dad-attacked-tuna-tin-prison/
In the least surprising news of 2025, Sara Sharif's murderer has been attacked in prison. One is not sympathetic but the state ought to keep inmates safe, which means safe from each other.
By coincidence, Rory Stewart spoke of having seen this of key in the start/end of year The Rest is Politics (spoilers: Labour should stop offending groups with civil service-suggested policies; Ed Davey should find a serious purpose for the LibDems (is a return for the newly jobless Nick Clegg on the cards?); Kemi should own and move on from the previous government's actions).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwBO8nrzCt8
It’s not Project Wildfire.
This site is moderated appropriately and mindful of legalities
If you so dislike a post or poster just move on to the next post
As the site has survived for so long the moderators must be on to something. My perception is the disagreements are becoming more visceral and the posters noticeably angrier. I'm not sure the moderators will want to, but, IMO to coddle posters who just rage at others is to allow the forum to devolve and then majority will leave.
You keep pleading that you don't flag posts yet you have now admitted to flagging a post that was simply a post you disagreed with. It was not a post worthy of a flag. And if you are going to defend yourself by claiming the poster was nasty to Leon, have you ever seen any of Leon's posts after he's had an early start at Happy Hour?
To be fair to the site I've not noticed posters being angrier than usual or angrier than elsewhere. It's still a site where an uncommitted middle exists who back people up against unbalanced attacks.
(I messed up the quotes in that post - it was from Nick Palmer rather than Alex)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAP_Flight_425
To be honest there is so much Starmer is in trouble on but this is not one