The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Even the left-wing US media? John Bolton is a right wing Neocon. His main policy difference with Trump (under whom he served in his first term) is that he is anti-Russia and wants to bomb everyone.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
D-Day couldn’t have been a year earlier. The landing craft and associated specialist vessels were emitter being built or designed.
Let alone the specialist vehicles (Hobart’s Funnies)
As it was there was barely enough.
James Holland and Al Murray make the point that the allies plans were usually 6 months ahead of what they could practically deliver. Six more months to build landing craft, tanks etc. Six more months of degrading the defences etc. To suggest D-Day could have gone in June 1943 is to fail to understand the logistics of the war, such as the long tail from US factories to the front. Besides, the 2nd front in Europe was opened in Italy, and the bombing war intensified throughout 1943 (Battle of the Ruhr, Battle of Berlin - into 1944).
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Even the left-wing US media? John Bolton is a right wing Neocon. His main policy difference with Trump (under whom he served in his first term) is that he is anti-Russia and wants to bomb everyone.
Even the Trump sceptical media, then.
There's certainly a case that can be made against Bolton - though it's massively weaker than the one against Trump for his reckless and lawless handling of far more classified material. But that the case was brought at all was very clearly as a result of presidential animus,
The cases against Comey and James would, in any other circumstances, be laughable, and laughed out of court.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
What actually happened was that by late 43, both had created the capability to hit an area a mile across with a goat shotgun. Reliably.
When this was turned on rail yards and fuel production, the German economy rapidly stopped.
Further, with Oboe, precision *blind* bomb in came into existence - guaranteed destruction of point targets.
Harris’s big mistake was not realising that the improvements he had masterminded and orchestrated had changed the strategic mission back to the “panacea” targets.
To protect that famous British value of deciding what other people are allowed wear.
I think people should be allowed to wear what they want, with one limitation. There are some situations were you should be obliged to show your head without scarf, hat etc - e.g. proving who you are.
I think Islam is tremendously regressive socially - the idea of women as second class citizens as per Afghanistan is totally against western values. And things like the burqa act as a devisive symbol of this. But I wouldn't ban it.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
D-Day couldn’t have been a year earlier. The landing craft and associated specialist vessels were emitter being built or designed.
Let alone the specialist vehicles (Hobart’s Funnies)
As it was there was barely enough.
James Holland and Al Murray make the point that the allies plans were usually 6 months ahead of what they could practically deliver. Six more months to build landing craft, tanks etc. Six more months of degrading the defences etc. To suggest D-Day could have gone in June 1943 is to fail to understand the logistics of the war, such as the long tail from US factories to the front. Besides, the 2nd front in Europe was opened in Italy, and the bombing war intensified throughout 1943 (Battle of the Ruhr, Battle of Berlin - into 1944).
Italy is what I meant by Churchill's inability to read a map. He was forever starting battles in mountainous areas that made sense on flat terrain.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
What actually happened was that by late 43, both had created the capability to hit an area a mile across with a goat shotgun. Reliably.
When this was turned on rail yards and fuel production, the German economy rapidly stopped.
Further, with Oboe, precision *blind* bomb in came into existence - guaranteed destruction of point targets.
Harris’s big mistake was not realising that the improvements he had masterminded and orchestrated had changed the strategic mission back to the “panacea” targets.
True. I also think he really wanted to destroy every German city he could.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Even the left-wing US media? John Bolton is a right wing Neocon. His main policy difference with Trump (under whom he served in his first term) is that he is anti-Russia and wants to bomb everyone.
Even the Trump sceptical media, then.
There's certainly a case that can be made against Bolton - though it's massively weaker than the one against Trump for his reckless and lawless handling of far more classified material. But that the case was brought at all was very clearly as a result of presidential animus,
The cases against Comey and James would, in any other circumstances, be laughable, and laughed out of court.
My guess is that Halligan is more likely to lose her job than she is to have any success in prosecuting James.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna--lindsey-halligan-here ...Lindsey Halligan—the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia—was texting me. As it turned out, she was texting me about a criminal case she is pursuing against one of the president’s perceived political enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James.
So began my two-day text correspondence with the woman President Donald Trump had installed, in no small part, to bring the very prosecution she was now discussing with me by text message.
Over the next 33 hours, Halligan texted me again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Through the whole of our correspondence, however, there is something Halligan never said: She never said a word suggesting that she was not “on the record.”
It is not uncommon for federal prosecutors to communicate with the press, both through formal channels and sometimes informally. My exchange with Halligan, however, was highly unusual in a number of respects. She initiated a conversation with me, a reporter she barely knew, to discuss an ongoing prosecution that she is personally handling. She mostly criticized my reporting—or, more precisely, my summary of someone else’s reporting. But several of her messages contained language that touch on grand jury matters, even as she insisted that she could not reveal such information, which is protected from disclosure by prosecutors under federal law...
Halligan's failure to record those Signal messages - which touched on grand jury evidence - is in itself a Brady violation, for example. The entire exchange is wildly unprofessional on her part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_disclosure
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
D-Day couldn’t have been a year earlier. The landing craft and associated specialist vessels were emitter being built or designed.
Let alone the specialist vehicles (Hobart’s Funnies)
As it was there was barely enough.
James Holland and Al Murray make the point that the allies plans were usually 6 months ahead of what they could practically deliver. Six more months to build landing craft, tanks etc. Six more months of degrading the defences etc. To suggest D-Day could have gone in June 1943 is to fail to understand the logistics of the war, such as the long tail from US factories to the front. Besides, the 2nd front in Europe was opened in Italy, and the bombing war intensified throughout 1943 (Battle of the Ruhr, Battle of Berlin - into 1944).
Italy is what I meant by Churchill's inability to read a map. He was forever starting battles in mountainous areas that made sense on flat terrain.
I don't think Churchill chose where to invade Italy.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Comey is innocent of the specific charges leveled at him, and that is now clear as the indictments have been unsealed.
He appeared before the Senate twice. In his first appearance, he was asked if he authorised or encouraged his Deputy Andrew McCabe to leak information. He denied it.
In his second appearance, Ted Cruz asks if he authorized or encouraged anyone to release information.
Comey says he stands by his earlier testimony.
Cruz moves on.
It now appears that Comey at least knew that his friend Andrew Richmond leaked information.
The problem is that (a) Comey is being prosecuted for lying to Congress, and (b) that Ted Cruz is not a great interregator, and didn't realise that the question Comey answered is not the same one Cruz asked.
What Comey said was misleading, but literally true. He was never asked about Andrew Richmond. He only ever denied regarding Andrew McCabe.
US law is very clear; perjury is not just being misleading, it requires actual lying. We can now see why so many Prosecutors refused to bring the case against Comey.
To protect that famous British value of deciding what other people are allowed wear.
I think people should be allowed to wear what they want, with one limitation. There are some situations were you should be obliged to show your head without scarf, hat etc - e.g. proving who you are.
I think Islam is tremendously regressive socially - the idea of women as second class citizens as per Afghanistan is totally against western values. And things like the burqa act as a devisive symbol of this. But I wouldn't ban it.
Sure I don't like the burqa either, nor am I fan of seeing someone with 50 piercings in their face or their whole body covered in tattoos. But those are my preferences, which others may or may not share. But there is no need for our preferences to be made law in terms of clothing, outside of identification as you say, which would already be the case at passport control for example, and at the discretion of the judge in court. No change in the law is needed for that purpose either.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Yeah that’s about right.
Tish James is in big trouble, Bolton may or may not be in trouble, Comey is diffficult to pin down and probably walks.
I think you might be letting your partisanship get in the way here. I suspect Bolton is in the biggest spot of bother followed by James followed by Comey. None should be, oh and I believe Schiff or Jack Smith is next. Newsom is in at about number ten on the list. Charges are yet to made up.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Comey is innocent of the specific charges leveled at him, and that is now clear as the indictments have been unsealed.
He appeared before the Senate twice. In his first appearance, he was asked if he authorised or encouraged his Deputy Andrew McCabe to leak information. He denied it.
In his second appearance, Ted Cruz asks if he authorized or encouraged anyone to release information.
Comey says he stands by his earlier testimony.
Cruz moves on.
It now appears that Comey at least knew that his friend Andrew Richmond leaked information.
The problem is that (a) Comey is being prosecuted for lying to Congress, and (b) that Ted Cruz is not a great interregator, and didn't realise that the question Comey answered is not the same one Cruz asked.
What Comey said was misleading, but literally true. He was never asked about Andrew Richmond. He only ever denied regarding Andrew McCabe.
US law is very clear; perjury is not just being misleading, it requires actual lying. We can now see why so many Prosecutors refused to bring the case against Comey.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
Quick tangential question - why do schools rely on sample papers/past papers so much? Drives us made at Uni as we educate students to apply principles and understanding yet they all want multiple example papers for everything.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
In Johnson's defence he did throw Acland-Hood and Sir Gavin Fireplace-Salesman under the bus.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
Hm, arguably not so much revisionism as considering the alternatives: by implication, any thesis that, for instance, Harris - or his superiors - did a good job has to consider whether there were obvious alternatives to the particular expenditure of productive capacity, materials, and - just as important - trained crews.
For instance, despite the much improved support of the Army in the Desert and in NWE, the treatment of tac air leaves a question whether the RAF and USAAF were more interested in fighting their private wars. it's curious and interesting that (whatever might have been designed by anyone*) neither the RAF nor the USAF deployed a purpose-built ground attack machine to compare with the Il-2 Sturmovik and Hs129 in between the RFC/RAF Salamander of 1918 and the A-10 of more recent years (which was basically a modernised Sturmovik). Typhoons and P-47s were primarily fighter (anti-air) machines, adopted expediently and more or less adapted for ground attack. I'm not entirely convinced myself that it is an issue, partly because the fighters were safer in mixed combat if jumped by enemy fighters, like it was safer to do artillery spotting from either an Auster or a Spit than a Lysander.
*Such as the variant of the Lysander with two wings and a huge rear turret for strafing the invasion beaches in 1940.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
Quick tangential question - why do schools rely on sample papers/past papers so much? Drives us made at Uni as we educate students to apply principles and understanding yet they all want multiple example papers for everything.
Because recent generations of educators have been more focussed on what to think, rather than how to think?
Most of your students aren’t there to learn how to think, they’re there to get a degree, a piece of paper that they’ve paid tens of thousands for, and expect their educators to facilitate the issuance of that piece of paper.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
Quick tangential question - why do schools rely on sample papers/past papers so much? Drives us made at Uni as we educate students to apply principles and understanding yet they all want multiple example papers for everything.
Because the way the exam system is set up to be so prescriptive in this country, especially for essay based subjects, the most effective way - arguably the only truly effective way - to revise for public exams is to do masses of past papers.
It shouldn't be that way, but it is. As @Dura_Ace once noted, it has a tendency to kill any affection a child had for the subject stone dead, but it gets them good grades.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
In Johnson's defence he did throw Acland-Hood and Sir Gavin Fireplace-Salesman under the bus.
Good.
Can we now throw him under an advancing Russian tank division please?
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
Quick tangential question - why do schools rely on sample papers/past papers so much? Drives us made at Uni as we educate students to apply principles and understanding yet they all want multiple example papers for everything.
Because everything depends on passing the test. One reason for grade inflation is relentless focus on exam technique. What university you get into, what jobs you get, all depend on high grades.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
The enquiry only seems bothered about pint scoring and blame apportioning. Waste of time.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
Quick tangential question - why do schools rely on sample papers/past papers so much? Drives us made at Uni as we educate students to apply principles and understanding yet they all want multiple example papers for everything.
Because recent generations of educators have been more focussed on what to think, rather than how to think?
Most of your students aren’t there to learn how to think, they’re there to get a degree, a piece of paper that they’ve paid tens of thousands for, and expect their educators to facilitate the issuance of that piece of paper.
It must have changed over the last forty years. My lecturers didn't facilitate anything. You scribbled down notes on their insane ramblings and read some books to make sense of it.
The notion, certainly back in the day, that lecturers taught was laughable. Lecturing and tutoring simply punctuated their research.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
Quick tangential question - why do schools rely on sample papers/past papers so much? Drives us made at Uni as we educate students to apply principles and understanding yet they all want multiple example papers for everything.
Because recent generations of educators have been more focussed on what to think, rather than how to think?
Most of your students aren’t there to learn how to think, they’re there to get a degree, a piece of paper that they’ve paid tens of thousands for, and expect their educators to facilitate the issuance of that piece of paper.
It must have changed over the last forty years. My lecturers didn't facilitate anything. You scribbled down notes on their insane ramblings and read some books to make sense of it.
The notion, certainly back in the day, that lecturers taught was laughable. Lecturing and tutoring simply punctuated their research.
Perhaps some of mine were better. But I remember being delighted when one of my tutors actually diverged from animal behaviour per se to give some explanation of good essay technique. I recently found my tattered photocopy of his A4 sheet amongst my university exam papers.
Much commoner now, I believe, and a good thing too.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
A serious enquiry would ask why there was no guidance from the centre on managing containment of the virus. We didn't have any information on isolating, or pupil movement, or cleaning at all. Or why masking was brought in and out at random intervals, and the bizarre advice that people should only wear them while eating lunch (yes, that was one piece of advice we did receive)
There might also be questions about the inconsistency in online learning and how that can be addressed. Or access to technology and how we should be looking to bridge that gap.
There should be serious questions asked about the performance of the assessment system (which is highly relevant, because one reason it collapsed in ruin was due to Gove's botched curriculum review, which Labour are set to repeat).
There should also be questions about why the Permanent Secretary was sacked for the mistakes of ministers, especially as he had done a decent job on the whole* and his successor is a total cretin who has failed spectacularly in every job she has had, this one being no exception even when she wasn't drunk at work (which she was on at least one occasion during lockdown).
I haven't seen a single question on any of these, which suggests they don't know what the real issues were.
*That's me, saying something positive about a former civil servant at the DfE. He must be practically the reincarnation of John Anderson.
Slightly edited because the advice was bizarre but not that bizarre.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
Quick tangential question - why do schools rely on sample papers/past papers so much? Drives us made at Uni as we educate students to apply principles and understanding yet they all want multiple example papers for everything.
Because the way the exam system is set up to be so prescriptive in this country, especially for essay based subjects, the most effective way - arguably the only truly effective way - to revise for public exams is to do masses of past papers.
It shouldn't be that way, but it is. As @Dura_Ace once noted, it has a tendency to kill any affection a child had for the subject stone dead, but it gets them good grades.
The most stupid school practice for subjecticide is teaching Shakespeare by having Year 10 take it in turns to read lines in a dull monotone, when they can watch world class drama performed by world class actors gratis, free and for nothing on the electric television.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Yeah that’s about right.
Tish James is in big trouble, Bolton may or may not be in trouble, Comey is diffficult to pin down and probably walks.
I think you might be letting your partisanship get in the way here. I suspect Bolton is in the biggest spot of bother followed by James followed by Comey. None should be, oh and I believe Schiff or Jack Smith is next. Newsom is in at about number ten on the list. Charges are yet to made up.
Well the Democrats made the last eight or nine years about putting anyone remotely connected to Donald Trump in jail, now they appear surprised that a Trump administration is using the same tactics against them.
Personally I don’t like the US system of electing prosecutors and judges being appointed politically, the UK system works much better most of the time.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
No revisionism from me. I did and I would again on the knowledge available. I even credited Johnson with his early action ( albeit a few days later than was optimal) explained in his performance this morning. Shooting Johnson down in flames with the benefit of hindsight is disingenuous.
One of our recent lockdown naysayers did of course at the time hi-tail it to a safe house in Wales.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
No revisionism from me. I did and I would again on the knowledge available. I even credited Johnson with his early action ( albeit a few days later than was optimal) explained in his performance this morning. Shooting Johnson down in flames with the benefit of hindsight is disingenuous.
One of our recent lockdown naysayers did of course at the time hi-tail it to a safe house in Wales.
The mess of the first year lockdown in March to some extent was forgiveable. It was unusual and there was limited information to act on.
The disaster over exams was not, as Scotland had shown what was going to happen before England did exactly the same thing a week later with exactly the same result, because Nick Gibb, whom I have not heard from but who was actually responsible, is a fucking moron with the intellectual flexibility of a bridge girder and the imagination of a slug.
The second lockdown was an unforgivable shambles because it was ultimately caused by the refusal to do anything other than keep schools fully open even though it was impossible to do so.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Comey is innocent of the specific charges leveled at him, and that is now clear as the indictments have been unsealed.
He appeared before the Senate twice. In his first appearance, he was asked if he authorised or encouraged his Deputy Andrew McCabe to leak information. He denied it.
In his second appearance, Ted Cruz asks if he authorized or encouraged anyone to release information.
Comey says he stands by his earlier testimony.
Cruz moves on.
It now appears that Comey at least knew that his friend Andrew Richmond leaked information.
The problem is that (a) Comey is being prosecuted for lying to Congress, and (b) that Ted Cruz is not a great interregator, and didn't realise that the question Comey answered is not the same one Cruz asked.
What Comey said was misleading, but literally true. He was never asked about Andrew Richmond. He only ever denied regarding Andrew McCabe.
US law is very clear; perjury is not just being misleading, it requires actual lying. We can now see why so many Prosecutors refused to bring the case against Comey.
They also altered a piece of evidence in the indictment, which suggests that either Halligan, or Cruz, or both lied in what they presented to the court. That would also be perjury. It's also possible to claim that they are both simply incompetent idiots, of course.
..The indictment misstates the exchange between Senator Cruz and Mr. Comey. Senator Cruz asked Mr. Comey to affirm or deny prior testimony that he authorized “someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about . . . the Clinton Administration.” But Hillary Clinton was not elected, and Senator Grassley’s original questioning in 2017 related to the “Clinton investigation.” See FBI Oversight Transcript at 5, Exhibit B. The indictment nonetheless mischaracterizes Mr. Comey as stating that he “had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1,” ECF No. 1 at 1 (emphasis added). Thus, the indictment replaces Senator Cruz’s reference to the “Clinton Administration” with a reference to “PERSON 1” (Hillary Clinton) and misleadingly attributes statements to Mr. Comey that he did not in fact make during his September 30, 2020, testimony. 8
Further, the indictment omits Senator Cruz’s words that explicitly narrow the focus of his questions to Mr. McCabe and misleadingly implies that the questioning related to Mr. Richman. In fact, Mr. Comey’s September 2020 exchange with Senator Cruz made no reference whatsoever to Mr. Richman, who ultimately appears in the indictment as PERSON 3. Instead, the context of the exchange confirms that Senator Cruz was asking about leaks by Mr. McCabe—indeed, Senator Cruz asked Mr. Comey whether he or Mr. McCabe was “telling the truth.” In other words, the indictment presents an inaccurate description of the testimony at the heart of this case.. https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/20/60-pages-of-animus-jim-comeys-motions-to-dismiss-his-prosecution/
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
The enquiry only seems bothered about pint scoring and blame apportioning. Waste of time.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Yeah that’s about right.
Tish James is in big trouble, Bolton may or may not be in trouble, Comey is diffficult to pin down and probably walks.
I think you might be letting your partisanship get in the way here. I suspect Bolton is in the biggest spot of bother followed by James followed by Comey. None should be, oh and I believe Schiff or Jack Smith is next. Newsom is in at about number ten on the list. Charges are yet to made up.
Well the Democrats made the last eight or nine years about putting anyone remotely connected to Donald Trump in jail, now they appear surprised that a Trump administration is using the same tactics against them.
Personally I don’t like the US system of electing prosecutors and judges being appointed politically, the UK system works much better most of the time.
It is very wrong of the US system to prosecute criminals. How dare they?
The issue was not going after Trump for the crimes he and his associates have committed. The issue is they are now in power and determined to get back at those who have gone after them. It's the behaviour of a playground bully furious that somebody got them put in detention.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
The enquiry only seems bothered about pint scoring and blame apportioning. Waste of time.
Nowt wrong with scoring pints.
Johnson and Williamson downed more than a few at those lockdown parties.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
The enquiry only seems bothered about pint scoring and blame apportioning. Waste of time.
It’s been said many times, but they should have had someone with accident and incident investigatory experience lead the enquiry.
Instead it’s being led by politics and law, which is almost guaranteed not to learn the right lessons. Next time around, the politicians will think no further than trying to cover their own arses at the enquiry.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Yeah that’s about right.
Tish James is in big trouble, Bolton may or may not be in trouble, Comey is diffficult to pin down and probably walks.
I think you might be letting your partisanship get in the way here. I suspect Bolton is in the biggest spot of bother followed by James followed by Comey. None should be, oh and I believe Schiff or Jack Smith is next. Newsom is in at about number ten on the list. Charges are yet to made up.
Well the Democrats made the last eight or nine years about putting anyone remotely connected to Donald Trump in jail, now they appear surprised that a Trump administration is using the same tactics against them.
Personally I don’t like the US system of electing prosecutors and judges being appointed politically, the UK system works much better most of the time.
Citations needed.
You can't count January 6th rioters as innocents slung I'm jail by political opponents. Trying to "hang Mike Pence" is not legal I don't believe. Manafort and others admitted their Russian adjacency.
The gravest error was not fully pursuing a man with a bathroom full of stolen state secrets.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
Hm, arguably not so much revisionism as considering the alternatives: by implication, any thesis that, for instance, Harris - or his superiors - did a good job has to consider whether there were obvious alternatives to the particular expenditure of productive capacity, materials, and - just as important - trained crews.
For instance, despite the much improved support of the Army in the Desert and in NWE, the treatment of tac air leaves a question whether the RAF and USAAF were more interested in fighting their private wars. it's curious and interesting that (whatever might have been designed by anyone*) neither the RAF nor the USAF deployed a purpose-built ground attack machine to compare with the Il-2 Sturmovik and Hs129 in between the RFC/RAF Salamander of 1918 and the A-10 of more recent years (which was basically a modernised Sturmovik). Typhoons and P-47s were primarily fighter (anti-air) machines, adopted expediently and more or less adapted for ground attack. I'm not entirely convinced myself that it is an issue, partly because the fighters were safer in mixed combat if jumped by enemy fighters, like it was safer to do artillery spotting from either an Auster or a Spit than a Lysander.
And similarly, the F16 probably makes more sense for ground attack these days, and the A10 is obsolete (arguably always was).
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
You mean, it's not as clear cut as - say - declaring a property to have multiple different values for tax and mortgage? Or indeed multiple different purposes?
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
Hm, arguably not so much revisionism as considering the alternatives: by implication, any thesis that, for instance, Harris - or his superiors - did a good job has to consider whether there were obvious alternatives to the particular expenditure of productive capacity, materials, and - just as important - trained crews.
For instance, despite the much improved support of the Army in the Desert and in NWE, the treatment of tac air leaves a question whether the RAF and USAAF were more interested in fighting their private wars. it's curious and interesting that (whatever might have been designed by anyone*) neither the RAF nor the USAF deployed a purpose-built ground attack machine to compare with the Il-2 Sturmovik and Hs129 in between the RFC/RAF Salamander of 1918 and the A-10 of more recent years (which was basically a modernised Sturmovik). Typhoons and P-47s were primarily fighter (anti-air) machines, adopted expediently and more or less adapted for ground attack. I'm not entirely convinced myself that it is an issue, partly because the fighters were safer in mixed combat if jumped by enemy fighters, like it was safer to do artillery spotting from either an Auster or a Spit than a Lysander.
And similarly, the F16 probably makes more sense for ground attack these days, and the A10 is obsolete (arguably always was).
The A-10
The awesome gun that required you to fly through the killing zone of a ZSU-23 to actually use it.
Ed Rasimus (who experienced all the fun of close support in Vietnam) told how, when fly the first F16, they used the bombing computer to loft bombs so acurateky that they could hit individual tank targets in exercises. While not coming within miles of the target. This is before PGMs.
The umpires in such exercises ruled that actual hits with the bombs on the tank targets were “invalid” since they didn’t fly over the target.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
No revisionism from me. I did and I would again on the knowledge available. I even credited Johnson with his early action ( albeit a few days later than was optimal) explained in his performance this morning. Shooting Johnson down in flames with the benefit of hindsight is disingenuous.
One of our recent lockdown naysayers did of course at the time hi-tail it to a safe house in Wales.
The mess of the first year lockdown in March to some extent was forgiveable. It was unusual and there was limited information to act on.
The disaster over exams was not, as Scotland had shown what was going to happen before England did exactly the same thing a week later with exactly the same result, because Nick Gibb, whom I have not heard from but who was actually responsible, is a fucking moron with the intellectual flexibility of a bridge girder and the imagination of a slug.
The second lockdown was an unforgivable shambles because it was ultimately caused by the refusal to do anything other than keep schools fully open even though it was impossible to do so.
In Johnson's defence the chaos of the first lockdown was down to the uniqueness of the situation and the fact that he had something more important (writing a book about Shakespeare at Chequers) to do, so he couldn't attend Cobra meetings.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
No revisionism from me. I did and I would again on the knowledge available. I even credited Johnson with his early action ( albeit a few days later than was optimal) explained in his performance this morning. Shooting Johnson down in flames with the benefit of hindsight is disingenuous.
One of our recent lockdown naysayers did of course at the time hi-tail it to a safe house in Wales.
The mess of the first year lockdown in March to some extent was forgiveable. It was unusual and there was limited information to act on.
The disaster over exams was not, as Scotland had shown what was going to happen before England did exactly the same thing a week later with exactly the same result, because Nick Gibb, whom I have not heard from but who was actually responsible, is a fucking moron with the intellectual flexibility of a bridge girder and the imagination of a slug.
The second lockdown was an unforgivable shambles because it was ultimately caused by the refusal to do anything other than keep schools fully open even though it was impossible to do so.
In Johnson's defence the chaos of the first lockdown was down to the uniqueness of the situation and the fact that he had something more important (writing a book about Shakespeare at Chequers) to do, so he couldn't attend Cobra meetings.
In Johnson's defence, I can't imagine that he would have added anything useful to any COBRA meetings.
Rather less in his defence, he appointed that numpty Cummings to a position of power who thought he did have useful things to contribute.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
Can't we put Jesse Watters and eleven of his friends ( Ok, I doubt he has one) on the jury?
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
Were there any significant tax or other benefits of what she wrote on the form? If I, a bank, were comfortable with her financial position for the loan without rental income, the added rental income should improve her affordability?
As, if not, it very much seems to be a prosecution based on ticking the wrong box on a form once with no real world implications.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Comey is innocent of the specific charges leveled at him, and that is now clear as the indictments have been unsealed.
He appeared before the Senate twice. In his first appearance, he was asked if he authorised or encouraged his Deputy Andrew McCabe to leak information. He denied it.
In his second appearance, Ted Cruz asks if he authorized or encouraged anyone to release information.
Comey says he stands by his earlier testimony.
Cruz moves on.
It now appears that Comey at least knew that his friend Andrew Richmond leaked information.
The problem is that (a) Comey is being prosecuted for lying to Congress, and (b) that Ted Cruz is not a great interregator, and didn't realise that the question Comey answered is not the same one Cruz asked.
What Comey said was misleading, but literally true. He was never asked about Andrew Richmond. He only ever denied regarding Andrew McCabe.
US law is very clear; perjury is not just being misleading, it requires actual lying. We can now see why so many Prosecutors refused to bring the case against Comey.
They also altered a piece of evidence in the indictment, which suggests that either Halligan, or Cruz, or both lied in what they presented to the court. That would also be perjury. It's also possible to claim that they are both simply incompetent idiots, of course.
..The indictment misstates the exchange between Senator Cruz and Mr. Comey. Senator Cruz asked Mr. Comey to affirm or deny prior testimony that he authorized “someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about . . . the Clinton Administration.” But Hillary Clinton was not elected, and Senator Grassley’s original questioning in 2017 related to the “Clinton investigation.” See FBI Oversight Transcript at 5, Exhibit B. The indictment nonetheless mischaracterizes Mr. Comey as stating that he “had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1,” ECF No. 1 at 1 (emphasis added). Thus, the indictment replaces Senator Cruz’s reference to the “Clinton Administration” with a reference to “PERSON 1” (Hillary Clinton) and misleadingly attributes statements to Mr. Comey that he did not in fact make during his September 30, 2020, testimony. 8
Further, the indictment omits Senator Cruz’s words that explicitly narrow the focus of his questions to Mr. McCabe and misleadingly implies that the questioning related to Mr. Richman. In fact, Mr. Comey’s September 2020 exchange with Senator Cruz made no reference whatsoever to Mr. Richman, who ultimately appears in the indictment as PERSON 3. Instead, the context of the exchange confirms that Senator Cruz was asking about leaks by Mr. McCabe—indeed, Senator Cruz asked Mr. Comey whether he or Mr. McCabe was “telling the truth.” In other words, the indictment presents an inaccurate description of the testimony at the heart of this case.. https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/20/60-pages-of-animus-jim-comeys-motions-to-dismiss-his-prosecution/
Yes: the indictment at the Grand Jury* was only achieved by what can be described (at best) as selective editing.
* And which still only got 14 out of 24 members to agree to agree to the inditctment.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
No revisionism from me. I did and I would again on the knowledge available. I even credited Johnson with his early action ( albeit a few days later than was optimal) explained in his performance this morning. Shooting Johnson down in flames with the benefit of hindsight is disingenuous.
One of our recent lockdown naysayers did of course at the time hi-tail it to a safe house in Wales.
The mess of the first year lockdown in March to some extent was forgiveable. It was unusual and there was limited information to act on.
The disaster over exams was not, as Scotland had shown what was going to happen before England did exactly the same thing a week later with exactly the same result, because Nick Gibb, whom I have not heard from but who was actually responsible, is a fucking moron with the intellectual flexibility of a bridge girder and the imagination of a slug.
The second lockdown was an unforgivable shambles because it was ultimately caused by the refusal to do anything other than keep schools fully open even though it was impossible to do so.
In Johnson's defence the chaos of the first lockdown was down to the uniqueness of the situation and the fact that he had something more important (writing a book about Shakespeare at Chequers) to do, so he couldn't attend Cobra meetings.
In Johnson's defence, I can't imagine that he would have added anything useful to any COBRA meetings.
Rather less in his defence, he appointed that numpty Cummings to a position of power who thought he did have useful things to contribute.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
An interesting perspective, if it’s correct that she didn’t fill out the form herself but just signed it at the end of an ‘interview’ with the bank employee. Presumably the bank employee would have been expected to go through the whole form again, line by line, before it was actually signed? “Do you own another property?” should be more than a tick box, it should be accompanied by the details.
I really wouldn’t want to be the bank’s lawyers in subsequent Federal legal actions, that would allege that either their staff were at best routinely negligent, or at worst active accomplices in mortgage fraud. With a large dataset of actual mortgages to go on, and the history of these loans being repackaged and sold on as we saw in 2008.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
OT but there is some really interesting academic work on juries and whether having majority or unanimous decisions is more likely to result in a conviction. More complicated than you might think.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
An interesting perspective, if it’s correct that she didn’t fill out the form herself but just signed it at the end of an ‘interview’ with the bank employee. Presumably the bank employee would have been expected to go through the whole form again, line by line, before it was actually signed?
I really wouldn’t want to be the bank’s lawyers in subsequent Federal legal actions, that would allege that either their staff were at best routinely negligent, or at worst active accomplices in mortgage fraud. With a large dataset of actual mortgages to go on, and the history of these loans being repackaged and sold on as we saw in 2008.
I suspect that Ms James would have been handed a printout, and would be expected to look through it before signing.
The issue is that if she did not, then while there is certainly a civil case against her, then proving mens rea is going to be exceptionally hard.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
Were there any significant tax or other benefits of what she wrote on the form? If I, a bank, were comfortable with her financial position for the loan without rental income, the added rental income should improve her affordability?
As, if not, it very much seems to be a prosecution based on ticking the wrong box on a form once with no real world implications.
The bank will give you a very different interest rate and deposit requirement on your own house, compared to a rental.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
OT but there is some really interesting academic work on juries and whether having majority or unanimous decisions is more likely to result in a conviction. More complicated than you might think.
I can believe it: the social pressure to fit in is going to be extreme. You need to be exceptionally strong to be able to look 11 other people in the eye, and say "I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter what you say. I simply cannot vote for [x]."
See the exceptional Strong Poison, by Dorothy L Sayers.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
OT but there is some really interesting academic work on juries and whether having majority or unanimous decisions is more likely to result in a conviction. More complicated than you might think.
Psychologically I'd guess it's quite hard to be the single holdout on a jury, if you know it is consequential. Easier if only a majority is needed, but then it's easier for other people to break with the majority view once they know they're not alone.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
No revisionism from me. I did and I would again on the knowledge available. I even credited Johnson with his early action ( albeit a few days later than was optimal) explained in his performance this morning. Shooting Johnson down in flames with the benefit of hindsight is disingenuous.
One of our recent lockdown naysayers did of course at the time hi-tail it to a safe house in Wales.
The mess of the first year lockdown in March to some extent was forgiveable. It was unusual and there was limited information to act on.
The disaster over exams was not, as Scotland had shown what was going to happen before England did exactly the same thing a week later with exactly the same result, because Nick Gibb, whom I have not heard from but who was actually responsible, is a fucking moron with the intellectual flexibility of a bridge girder and the imagination of a slug.
The second lockdown was an unforgivable shambles because it was ultimately caused by the refusal to do anything other than keep schools fully open even though it was impossible to do so.
In Johnson's defence the chaos of the first lockdown was down to the uniqueness of the situation and the fact that he had something more important (writing a book about Shakespeare at Chequers) to do, so he couldn't attend Cobra meetings.
In Johnson's defence, I can't imagine that he would have added anything useful to any COBRA meetings.
Rather less in his defence, he appointed that numpty Cummings to a position of power who thought he did have useful things to contribute.
Yes, that is a very fair point.
While this is not an attempt to defend Cummings, he did at least - apparently almost uniquely among those in power in the early days of Covid - understand a) exponential growth and b) the need stats and the need to understand those stats.
My memory of him however is he remained one of the lockdown zealots: in which case, well, fuck him.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
They were imperative, you ignorant fool. In fact, to a great degree they had already happened because the rapid spread of the virus meant so many of pupils and staff were off ill it was impossible to function normally.
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
I am baffled by the revisionism on here and elsewhere. There was at least one PB equine who posted 'Lockdown now" every 5 minutes. And then later said that there should have been no lockdowns at all.
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
No revisionism from me. I did and I would again on the knowledge available. I even credited Johnson with his early action ( albeit a few days later than was optimal) explained in his performance this morning. Shooting Johnson down in flames with the benefit of hindsight is disingenuous.
One of our recent lockdown naysayers did of course at the time hi-tail it to a safe house in Wales.
The mess of the first year lockdown in March to some extent was forgiveable. It was unusual and there was limited information to act on.
The disaster over exams was not, as Scotland had shown what was going to happen before England did exactly the same thing a week later with exactly the same result, because Nick Gibb, whom I have not heard from but who was actually responsible, is a fucking moron with the intellectual flexibility of a bridge girder and the imagination of a slug.
The second lockdown was an unforgivable shambles because it was ultimately caused by the refusal to do anything other than keep schools fully open even though it was impossible to do so.
In Johnson's defence the chaos of the first lockdown was down to the uniqueness of the situation and the fact that he had something more important (writing a book about Shakespeare at Chequers) to do, so he couldn't attend Cobra meetings.
In Johnson's defence, I can't imagine that he would have added anything useful to any COBRA meetings.
Rather less in his defence, he appointed that numpty Cummings to a position of power who thought he did have useful things to contribute.
Yes, that is a very fair point.
While this is not an attempt to defend Cummings, he did at least - apparently almost uniquely among those in power in the early days of Covid - understand a) exponential growth and b) the need stats and the need to understand those stats.
My memory of him however is he remained one of the lockdown zealots: in which case, well, fuck him.
On the contrary, he was one of those stymiing any form of moderate lockdown to increase the likelihood of averting worse.
As for his claims about statistics, he says many things about himself and his actions. Most do not stand up to scrutiny.
The cynic in me wonders if the point of every war is simply to provide research for arms manufacturers. Even the recent Pakistan-India clash was no doubt informative as to how air power can be mitigated - indeed, one could argue Pakistan performed well in that conflict which might have emboldened them against Afghanistan more recently.
Putin won't concede Lukhansk and Donetsk to the Ukraine - if he does, he's lost because otherwise what was the point of it all? I think Xi missed a trick in the early days - he might have brokered a solution but his weapons manufacturers need battlefield intelligence as well. This conflict has provided that in unpleasantly copious quantities.
Is there going to be a Conservative/Reform policy to ban the burqa? I'd like to see them enforce that in East Ham High Street.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
An interesting perspective, if it’s correct that she didn’t fill out the form herself but just signed it at the end of an ‘interview’ with the bank employee. Presumably the bank employee would have been expected to go through the whole form again, line by line, before it was actually signed?
I really wouldn’t want to be the bank’s lawyers in subsequent Federal legal actions, that would allege that either their staff were at best routinely negligent, or at worst active accomplices in mortgage fraud. With a large dataset of actual mortgages to go on, and the history of these loans being repackaged and sold on as we saw in 2008.
I suspect that Ms James would have been handed a printout, and would be expected to look through it before signing.
The issue is that if she did not, then while there is certainly a civil case against her, then proving mens rea is going to be exceptionally hard.
So the case depends on whether she was expected to read the printout on her own, or whether the ‘advisor’ on commission walked her through it line by line.
If I were that ‘advisor’, I think I’d throw her under the bus to save my own ass and that of my employer, political considerations aside.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
Were there any significant tax or other benefits of what she wrote on the form? If I, a bank, were comfortable with her financial position for the loan without rental income, the added rental income should improve her affordability?
As, if not, it very much seems to be a prosecution based on ticking the wrong box on a form once with no real world implications.
The bank will give you a very different interest rate and deposit requirement on your own house, compared to a rental.
Well, there are a number of factors here:
Firstly, people will often buy a house for one reason, and then change it. I bought my house in Hampstead to live in, then rented it out when I moved to the US. So, there's a defence for Ms James (if the box was knowingly not ticked), that she had intended it to be a second home at the time that the mortgage was taken out, and changed it later.
Secondly, I don't know whether this is about interest rates, becaus interest rates can actually be lower on rental property mortgages so long as they get first lein on rental payments. On the other hand rental mortgages often contain a lot more stringent conditions: lower loan-to-value; requirements to inform the bank if a property is unrented for more than a certain number of months; a requirement for rental income to exceed mortgage payments by a certain amount. It's possible that Ms James achieved no interest rate benefit, but did have many fewer disclosure requirements to the bank.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
Were there any significant tax or other benefits of what she wrote on the form? If I, a bank, were comfortable with her financial position for the loan without rental income, the added rental income should improve her affordability?
As, if not, it very much seems to be a prosecution based on ticking the wrong box on a form once with no real world implications.
The bank will give you a very different interest rate and deposit requirement on your own house, compared to a rental.
Well, there are a number of factors here:
Firstly, people will often buy a house for one reason, and then change it. I bought my house in Hampstead to live in, then rented it out when I moved to the US. So, there's a defence for Ms James (if the box was knowingly not ticked), that she had intended it to be a second home at the time that the mortgage was taken out, and changed it later.
Secondly, I don't know whether this is about interest rates, becaus interest rates can actually be lower on rental property mortgages so long as they get first lein on rental payments. On the other hand rental mortgages often contain a lot more stringent conditions: lower loan-to-value; requirements to inform the bank if a property is unrented for more than a certain number of months; a requirement for rental income to exceed mortgage payments by a certain amount. It's possible that Ms James achieved no interest rate benefit, but did have many fewer disclosure requirements to the bank.
She said it was to be her primary home, but was clearly living elsewhere at the time.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Even the left-wing US media? John Bolton is a right wing Neocon. His main policy difference with Trump (under whom he served in his first term) is that he is anti-Russia and wants to bomb everyone.
Even the Trump sceptical media, then.
There's certainly a case that can be made against Bolton - though it's massively weaker than the one against Trump for his reckless and lawless handling of far more classified material. But that the case was brought at all was very clearly as a result of presidential animus,
The cases against Comey and James would, in any other circumstances, be laughable, and laughed out of court.
My guess is that Halligan is more likely to lose her job than she is to have any success in prosecuting James.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna--lindsey-halligan-here ...Lindsey Halligan—the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia—was texting me. As it turned out, she was texting me about a criminal case she is pursuing against one of the president’s perceived political enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James.
So began my two-day text correspondence with the woman President Donald Trump had installed, in no small part, to bring the very prosecution she was now discussing with me by text message.
Over the next 33 hours, Halligan texted me again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Through the whole of our correspondence, however, there is something Halligan never said: She never said a word suggesting that she was not “on the record.”
It is not uncommon for federal prosecutors to communicate with the press, both through formal channels and sometimes informally. My exchange with Halligan, however, was highly unusual in a number of respects. She initiated a conversation with me, a reporter she barely knew, to discuss an ongoing prosecution that she is personally handling. She mostly criticized my reporting—or, more precisely, my summary of someone else’s reporting. But several of her messages contained language that touch on grand jury matters, even as she insisted that she could not reveal such information, which is protected from disclosure by prosecutors under federal law...
Halligan's failure to record those Signal messages - which touched on grand jury evidence - is in itself a Brady violation, for example. The entire exchange is wildly unprofessional on her part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_disclosure
I'd say she's toast in the same way that Alina Habba is toast. She could be:
1 - Dismissed for not being up to the job. 2 - Dismissed for reasons because she has not nailed Trump's enemies. 3 - Sanctioned by a Judge - I'm not sure how that works with Federal Prosecutors. 4 - Delisted by the relevant Bar, as has happened to some others on Trump's team. 5 - There is also the matter of the Public Records Act 1958 and the vanishing messages on Signal. 6 - And her discussing live cases with a reporter.
That's leaving aside the likely self-collapsing case. But it's possibly Trump's old "I will make you pay the costs of you defending yourself against a vapourware case" that has been his tactic for not paying suppliers for 4 or 5 decades by bullying them into submission.
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
Were there any significant tax or other benefits of what she wrote on the form? If I, a bank, were comfortable with her financial position for the loan without rental income, the added rental income should improve her affordability?
As, if not, it very much seems to be a prosecution based on ticking the wrong box on a form once with no real world implications.
The bank will give you a very different interest rate and deposit requirement on your own house, compared to a rental.
Well, there are a number of factors here:
Firstly, people will often buy a house for one reason, and then change it. I bought my house in Hampstead to live in, then rented it out when I moved to the US. So, there's a defence for Ms James (if the box was knowingly not ticked), that she had intended it to be a second home at the time that the mortgage was taken out, and changed it later.
Secondly, I don't know whether this is about interest rates, becaus interest rates can actually be lower on rental property mortgages so long as they get first lein on rental payments. On the other hand rental mortgages often contain a lot more stringent conditions: lower loan-to-value; requirements to inform the bank if a property is unrented for more than a certain number of months; a requirement for rental income to exceed mortgage payments by a certain amount. It's possible that Ms James achieved no interest rate benefit, but did have many fewer disclosure requirements to the bank.
She said it was to be her primary home, but was clearly living elsewhere at the time.
No she didn't. She listed it as her secondary residence.
This is inevitable. Brown increased car taxes, both direct and indirect, a lot during his time as Chancellor. But environmental incentives steadily increased, too. That has continued.
With EV incentives, and the big rise in EV registrations ,the tax gulf has become insurmountable without major modification.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
I totally and utterly disagree. One of the reasons we were able to invade in 1944 was due to the efforts of bomber command. Yes they were shit to start with. But they got better with experience and innovation. Harris was resistant to switching to the transportation plan but when directly ordered he complied. As a result, with the 8th Air Force bombing by day and bomber command by night the Germans were massively impeded in what they could do. Look at how long it took Das Reich to reach the battle.
Now you can argue about priorities, but actually to learn to bomb meant you had to bomb. And yes the casualties were horrific, but arguably those lost in the air were compensated by those saved on the ground.
I think you will struggle to show how you shave a year off the war. When was your D-Day?
Das Reich was slowed by the French Resistance, and was in the wrong place to start with thanks to Allied disinformation.
D-day could probably have been a year earlier but that had more to do with Churchill's inability to read a map.
You say bombing improved with innovation. That is my point too. Specifically onboard radar. Until then, Coastal Command could have made better use of the planes.
But the innovation came from experience in the bombing raids. D-Day a year earlier was not really possible - the Americans hadn't built up enough, there weren't enough landing craft etc. Yes Das Reich was impeded by the resistance, but also anything moving in France was hit by the RAF/US 8th Air Force. And the ability to do that came with experience.
Heavy bombers weren't so great at tactical stuff, though. Just ask General Lesley J. McNair.
That's true. I am not a fan of revisionism in how we should have fought the war. Harris had a vision of defeating Germany without the need to land a single soldier on German soil. Arguably against a 'normal' opponent that would have worked. The destruction of Germanies cities by late '44 was incredible.
What would have been achieved by not bombing Germany? Less pressure on the Reich so freeing up weapons for elsewhere? Less effort on the Luftwaffe combating bombing raids? More production of war material in Germany? I don't really understand why people think Harris and Spaatz were so wrong in what they did.
Hm, arguably not so much revisionism as considering the alternatives: by implication, any thesis that, for instance, Harris - or his superiors - did a good job has to consider whether there were obvious alternatives to the particular expenditure of productive capacity, materials, and - just as important - trained crews.
For instance, despite the much improved support of the Army in the Desert and in NWE, the treatment of tac air leaves a question whether the RAF and USAAF were more interested in fighting their private wars. it's curious and interesting that (whatever might have been designed by anyone*) neither the RAF nor the USAF deployed a purpose-built ground attack machine to compare with the Il-2 Sturmovik and Hs129 in between the RFC/RAF Salamander of 1918 and the A-10 of more recent years (which was basically a modernised Sturmovik). Typhoons and P-47s were primarily fighter (anti-air) machines, adopted expediently and more or less adapted for ground attack. I'm not entirely convinced myself that it is an issue, partly because the fighters were safer in mixed combat if jumped by enemy fighters, like it was safer to do artillery spotting from either an Auster or a Spit than a Lysander.
And similarly, the F16 probably makes more sense for ground attack these days, and the A10 is obsolete (arguably always was).
The A-10
The awesome gun that required you to fly through the killing zone of a ZSU-23 to actually use it.
Ed Rasimus (who experienced all the fun of close support in Vietnam) told how, when fly the first F16, they used the bombing computer to loft bombs so acurateky that they could hit individual tank targets in exercises. While not coming within miles of the target. This is before PGMs.
The umpires in such exercises ruled that actual hits with the bombs on the tank targets were “invalid” since they didn’t fly over the target.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, such fun on my first ever PC.
The US electorate should really have told Trump to foxtrot oscar this time last year.
The politicians should have spent 2021-3 making sure Trump couldn’t be a candidate in 2024.
Once they failed to do that result was inevitable
On the contrary, they should have all ignored him completely.
Trying to smother him with lawfare was never going to succeed and made him into a martyr.
What you're saying is that everyone except those responsible for putting Trump in office, are responsible for putting Trump in office.
No, I’m saying that trying to put him in prison for the most spurious of reasons made him more popular.
How do you feel about Comey, James and Bolton spuriously prosecuted on the instruction of Al Capone?
James was elected in a platform of getting Trump, she’s at the FO stage of FAFO
Boulton clearly has questions to answer, even the left w8ng US media says that.
Comey, probably innocent.
Comey is innocent of the specific charges leveled at him, and that is now clear as the indictments have been unsealed.
He appeared before the Senate twice. In his first appearance, he was asked if he authorised or encouraged his Deputy Andrew McCabe to leak information. He denied it.
In his second appearance, Ted Cruz asks if he authorized or encouraged anyone to release information.
Comey says he stands by his earlier testimony.
Cruz moves on.
It now appears that Comey at least knew that his friend Andrew Richmond leaked information.
The problem is that (a) Comey is being prosecuted for lying to Congress, and (b) that Ted Cruz is not a great interregator, and didn't realise that the question Comey answered is not the same one Cruz asked.
What Comey said was misleading, but literally true. He was never asked about Andrew Richmond. He only ever denied regarding Andrew McCabe.
US law is very clear; perjury is not just being misleading, it requires actual lying. We can now see why so many Prosecutors refused to bring the case against Comey.
So, presumably, this will wither on the vine.
Were the US a democracy following the rule of law, yes. The Trump administration no longer care about the rule of law, and Congress and SCOTUS are reluctant to rein them in. The federal government is prosecuting people on the basis that Trump doesn't like them. Will they stop just because they don't have an actual case? Who knows?
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
Were there any significant tax or other benefits of what she wrote on the form? If I, a bank, were comfortable with her financial position for the loan without rental income, the added rental income should improve her affordability?
As, if not, it very much seems to be a prosecution based on ticking the wrong box on a form once with no real world implications.
That's not the only problem with the supposed case against James. The case claims she rented the house out. However, there is evidence that she didn't rent it out. Y'know, that seems an important point. See the Lawfare article that's been linked to.
Comments
There's certainly a case that can be made against Bolton - though it's massively weaker than the one against Trump for his reckless and lawless handling of far more classified material. But that the case was brought at all was very clearly as a result of presidential animus,
The cases against Comey and James would, in any other circumstances, be laughable, and laughed out of court.
When this was turned on rail yards and fuel production, the German economy rapidly stopped.
Further, with Oboe, precision *blind* bomb in came into existence - guaranteed destruction of point targets.
Harris’s big mistake was not realising that the improvements he had masterminded and orchestrated had changed the strategic mission back to the “panacea” targets.
I think Islam is tremendously regressive socially - the idea of women as second class citizens as per Afghanistan is totally against western values. And things like the burqa act as a devisive symbol of this. But I wouldn't ban it.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna--lindsey-halligan-here
...Lindsey Halligan—the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia—was texting me. As it turned out, she was texting me about a criminal case she is pursuing against one of the president’s perceived political enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James.
So began my two-day text correspondence with the woman President Donald Trump had installed, in no small part, to bring the very prosecution she was now discussing with me by text message.
Over the next 33 hours, Halligan texted me again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Through the whole of our correspondence, however, there is something Halligan never said: She never said a word suggesting that she was not “on the record.”
It is not uncommon for federal prosecutors to communicate with the press, both through formal channels and sometimes informally. My exchange with Halligan, however, was highly unusual in a number of respects. She initiated a conversation with me, a reporter she barely knew, to discuss an ongoing prosecution that she is personally handling. She mostly criticized my reporting—or, more precisely, my summary of someone else’s reporting. But several of her messages contained language that touch on grand jury matters, even as she insisted that she could not reveal such information, which is protected from disclosure by prosecutors under federal law...
Halligan's failure to record those Signal messages - which touched on grand jury evidence - is in itself a Brady violation, for example. The entire exchange is wildly unprofessional on her part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_disclosure
The big mistake was not locking down, it was refusing to put in place sensible measures to minimise it. We might have dodged the January full closure if we had had blended learning from October - two weeks on, one off. The government refused to allow it. We could have minimised missed learning by issuing data enabled tablets to every child. The government refused to pay for them. We could have dodged the issue with exams by running coursework units from September. The government refused to allow it because we were not going to lock down, or cancel exams, so it wasn't needed. They didn't even prepare or release extra sample papers for the innumerable additional exams we had to set (the class of 2021 had *more* exams than a normal year group, bizarrely, but we had to write the papers ourselves) as they were not going to be needed.
The fact is that anybody who worked in education knew as far back as October that there was going to be a train crash due to lack of planning and perverse and wilful denial of the seriousness of the situation by a government that was as clueless and dishonest as it was drunken and inept. I was yelling that from the rooftops on here. The unions were hammering it morning noon and night. Even local authorities were sounding the alarm. And not one person in Whitehall listened.
And I have no sympathy for Johnson or Williamson's persistent, self-serving and whiny refusal to note just how badly they messed up. That was not about hindsight, that was about having the courage and humility to admit they were not going to be able to carry out Plan A at a time an acceptable Plan B might have worked. Which because they are cowards as well as liars and scum they still refuse to do.
And there are still people out there pushing false narratives on the back of that. Frankly, I find that pretty disgusting and I suggest you look hard at a photo of RFK Jr before remembering every single thing you have said on the subject of Covid is wrong and not worth listening to.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/bomber-command/max-hastings/9781529047790
The Tories need to focus on economics.
For instance, despite the much improved support of the Army in the Desert and in NWE, the treatment of tac air leaves a question whether the RAF and USAAF were more interested in fighting their private wars. it's curious and interesting that (whatever might have been designed by anyone*) neither the RAF nor the USAF deployed a purpose-built ground attack machine to compare with the Il-2 Sturmovik and Hs129 in between the RFC/RAF Salamander of 1918 and the A-10 of more recent years (which was basically a modernised Sturmovik). Typhoons and P-47s were primarily fighter (anti-air) machines, adopted expediently and more or less adapted for ground attack. I'm not entirely convinced myself that it is an issue, partly because the fighters were safer in mixed combat if jumped by enemy fighters, like it was safer to do artillery spotting from either an Auster or a Spit than a Lysander.
*Such as the variant of the Lysander with two wings and a huge rear turret for strafing the invasion beaches in 1940.
Most of your students aren’t there to learn how to think, they’re there to get a degree, a piece of paper that they’ve paid tens of thousands for, and expect their educators to facilitate the issuance of that piece of paper.
It shouldn't be that way, but it is. As @Dura_Ace once noted, it has a tendency to kill any affection a child had for the subject stone dead, but it gets them good grades.
Can we now throw him under an advancing Russian tank division please?
People seem to think schools only had children in them. What of the teachers and other staff? And on the radio this morning the Childrens commisioner suggested that children were less likely to catch and spread covid. Surely this is false - the point was that their symptoms would generally be mild, although even they tens of thousands of U18's did end up in hospital.
We are supposed to be learning lessons with the enquiries but I think too many are interested in point scoring/refighting old battles. There is enough knowledge out there to write a short manual for how to handle a pandemic (hint - copy the Japanese).
The notion, certainly back in the day, that lecturers taught was laughable. Lecturing and tutoring simply punctuated their research.
Much commoner now, I believe, and a good thing too.
There might also be questions about the inconsistency in online learning and how that can be addressed. Or access to technology and how we should be looking to bridge that gap.
There should be serious questions asked about the performance of the assessment system (which is highly relevant, because one reason it collapsed in ruin was due to Gove's botched curriculum review, which Labour are set to repeat).
There should also be questions about why the Permanent Secretary was sacked for the mistakes of ministers, especially as he had done a decent job on the whole* and his successor is a total cretin who has failed spectacularly in every job she has had, this one being no exception even when she wasn't drunk at work (which she was on at least one occasion during lockdown).
I haven't seen a single question on any of these, which suggests they don't know what the real issues were.
*That's me, saying something positive about a former civil servant at the DfE. He must be practically the reincarnation of John Anderson.
Slightly edited because the advice was bizarre but not that bizarre.
Personally I don’t like the US system of electing prosecutors and judges being appointed politically, the UK system works much better most of the time.
One of our recent lockdown naysayers did of course at the time hi-tail it to a safe house in Wales.
The disaster over exams was not, as Scotland had shown what was going to happen before England did exactly the same thing a week later with exactly the same result, because Nick Gibb, whom I have not heard from but who was actually responsible, is a fucking moron with the intellectual flexibility of a bridge girder and the imagination of a slug.
The second lockdown was an unforgivable shambles because it was ultimately caused by the refusal to do anything other than keep schools fully open even though it was impossible to do so.
It's also possible to claim that they are both simply incompetent idiots, of course.
..The indictment misstates the exchange between Senator Cruz and Mr. Comey. Senator Cruz asked Mr. Comey to affirm or deny prior testimony that he authorized “someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about . . . the Clinton Administration.” But Hillary Clinton was not elected, and Senator Grassley’s original questioning in 2017 related to the “Clinton investigation.” See FBI Oversight Transcript at 5, Exhibit B. The indictment nonetheless mischaracterizes Mr. Comey as stating that he “had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1,” ECF No. 1 at 1 (emphasis added). Thus, the indictment replaces Senator Cruz’s reference to the “Clinton Administration” with a reference to “PERSON 1” (Hillary Clinton) and misleadingly attributes statements to Mr. Comey that he did not in fact make during his September 30, 2020, testimony. 8
Further, the indictment omits Senator Cruz’s words that explicitly narrow the focus of his questions to Mr. McCabe and misleadingly implies that the questioning related to Mr. Richman. In fact, Mr. Comey’s September 2020 exchange with Senator Cruz made no reference whatsoever to Mr. Richman, who ultimately appears in the indictment as PERSON 3. Instead, the context of the exchange confirms that Senator Cruz was asking about leaks by Mr. McCabe—indeed, Senator Cruz asked Mr. Comey whether he or Mr. McCabe was “telling the truth.” In other words, the indictment presents an inaccurate description of the testimony at the heart of this case..
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/20/60-pages-of-animus-jim-comeys-motions-to-dismiss-his-prosecution/
The issue was not going after Trump for the crimes he and his associates have committed. The issue is they are now in power and determined to get back at those who have gone after them. It's the behaviour of a playground bully furious that somebody got them put in detention.
Instead it’s being led by politics and law, which is almost guaranteed not to learn the right lessons.
Next time around, the politicians will think no further than trying to cover their own arses at the enquiry.
You can't count January 6th rioters as innocents slung I'm jail by political opponents. Trying to "hang Mike Pence" is not legal I don't believe. Manafort and others admitted their Russian adjacency.
The gravest error was not fully pursuing a man with a bathroom full of stolen state secrets.
Russia rejects Trump’s “peace plan”. Wouldn’t now be a good time for Trump to shout at Putin the way he just did with Zelensky?
https://x.com/Billbrowder/status/1980628593274228977
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
Or stealing classified documents?
The awesome gun that required you to fly through the killing zone of a ZSU-23 to actually use it.
Ed Rasimus (who experienced all the fun of close support in Vietnam) told how, when fly the first F16, they used the bombing computer to loft bombs so acurateky that they could hit individual tank targets in exercises. While not coming within miles of the target. This is before PGMs.
The umpires in such exercises ruled that actual hits with the bombs on the tank targets were “invalid” since they didn’t fly over the target.
Rather less in his defence, he appointed that numpty Cummings to a position of power who thought he did have useful things to contribute.
As, if not, it very much seems to be a prosecution based on ticking the wrong box on a form once with no real world implications.
* And which still only got 14 out of 24 members to agree to agree to the inditctment.
“Do you own another property?” should be more than a tick box, it should be accompanied by the details.
I really wouldn’t want to be the bank’s lawyers in subsequent Federal legal actions, that would allege that either their staff were at best routinely negligent, or at worst active accomplices in mortgage fraud. With a large dataset of actual mortgages to go on, and the history of these loans being repackaged and sold on as we saw in 2008.
The issue is that if she did not, then while there is certainly a civil case against her, then proving mens rea is going to be exceptionally hard.
See the exceptional Strong Poison, by Dorothy L Sayers.
NEW THREAD
My memory of him however is he remained one of the lockdown zealots: in which case, well, fuck him.
As for his claims about statistics, he says many things about himself and his actions. Most do not stand up to scrutiny.
The cynic in me wonders if the point of every war is simply to provide research for arms manufacturers. Even the recent Pakistan-India clash was no doubt informative as to how air power can be mitigated - indeed, one could argue Pakistan performed well in that conflict which might have emboldened them against Afghanistan more recently.
Putin won't concede Lukhansk and Donetsk to the Ukraine - if he does, he's lost because otherwise what was the point of it all? I think Xi missed a trick in the early days - he might have brokered a solution but his weapons manufacturers need battlefield intelligence as well. This conflict has provided that in unpleasantly copious quantities.
Is there going to be a Conservative/Reform policy to ban the burqa? I'd like to see them enforce that in East Ham High Street.
If I were that ‘advisor’, I think I’d throw her under the bus to save my own ass and that of my employer, political considerations aside.
Firstly, people will often buy a house for one reason, and then change it. I bought my house in Hampstead to live in, then rented it out when I moved to the US. So, there's a defence for Ms James (if the box was knowingly not ticked), that she had intended it to be a second home at the time that the mortgage was taken out, and changed it later.
Secondly, I don't know whether this is about interest rates, becaus interest rates can actually be lower on rental property mortgages so long as they get first lein on rental payments. On the other hand rental mortgages often contain a lot more stringent conditions: lower loan-to-value; requirements to inform the bank if a property is unrented for more than a certain number of months; a requirement for rental income to exceed mortgage payments by a certain amount. It's possible that Ms James achieved no interest rate benefit, but did have many fewer disclosure requirements to the bank.
1 - Dismissed for not being up to the job.
2 - Dismissed for reasons because she has not nailed Trump's enemies.
3 - Sanctioned by a Judge - I'm not sure how that works with Federal Prosecutors.
4 - Delisted by the relevant Bar, as has happened to some others on Trump's team.
5 - There is also the matter of the Public Records Act 1958 and the vanishing messages on Signal.
6 - And her discussing live cases with a reporter.
That's leaving aside the likely self-collapsing case. But it's possibly Trump's old "I will make you pay the costs of you defending yourself against a vapourware case" that has been his tactic for not paying suppliers for 4 or 5 decades by bullying them into submission.
She listed it as her secondary residence.
"What are you doing? You just killed a friendly!"