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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If this trend goes on Johnson’s CON government will soon have

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    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291
    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests
  • Options
    BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    But first he has to stop us from falling asleep... :wink:
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,781

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
  • Options
    another_richardanother_richard Posts: 25,076

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    I would hope that people have realised by now that there's almost always nice countryside within 10 miles of where you live.

    But this is a country where people will queue for an hour to go to a KFC drive through.
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,081
    Had the tv news on in the background and thought I heard Tony Blair's unctuous yet alluring tones, turned to check and it was...

    Rishi!
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,781
    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,995

    Boris Johnson's ratings are also tumbling.

    https://twitter.com/chriscurtis94/status/1260225676558372866

    IIRC Both Blair & Cameron got a baby boost in the polls, although those happy occasions weren't during a pandemic.

    Boris on 85% doing well rating with Leavers, 56% doing badly rating with Remainers.

    So divide almost entirely on Brexit lines
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,586

    Had the tv news on in the background and thought I heard Tony Blair's unctuous yet alluring tones, turned to check and it was...

    Rishi!

    Several of us have noted that.
    Is is... uncanny.
  • Options
    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,377

    Endillion said:

    This is the story I expect to gain a lot of traction in the next few days.

    The UK Is Taking Longer Than Other Countries To Process Coronavirus Tests — And That's A Big Problem For Contact Tracing

    The government refused to reveal the average turnaround time for tests, but one Tory MP says they're taking five days or longer. Other countries can do it in hours.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/uk-coronavirus-test-trace-trace-results

    Had a friend self quarantined because of medical vulnerability sent a test. Followed the instructions. 1) Book a carrier pick up. 2) Enter the barcode on her test kit on the website. No bar code. Phoned appropriate number - told to bin test & we'll send you another one - meanwhile too late to cancel the carrier pick up.....

    Given the rapid expansion in testing its not surprising there are SNAFUs.....they'll need to get ironed out pronto if we're going to track & trace....
    Based on my experiences of both the NHS and in other countries, this is not a new problem, and is not confined to one form of test - I was often astounded by how long it takes them to process a simple blood test that other countries turn around while you wait. I therefore have doubts that it can be fixed in a meaningful timeframe for this epidemic.
    I think I related a while back the story of a friend who suggested how to streamline MRI services in an NHS trust as part of his Operations Research degree.

    The short version: he studied the issue, studied how other medical organisations worldwide used the same machines. He wrote up his thesis. The response - an attempt to have him thrown out of his university...
    The NHS (as a bureaucratic entity - not the staff) has evolved to be primarily orientated to protect the interests, not of the patient, but the staff. I have worked with most of the healthcare providers across Europe at some stage in my career, and the NHS is one of the last systems I would choose if one was starting a healthcare system from scratch. It is definitely not the "envy of the world" as some think.
    The issue is really that the organisation is very much like a 1950s organisation - top down, total control, savage punishment for breaking "political" rules etc

    The problem is, that to reform it meaningfully means removing the pyramid of management. Since that directly connects to Whitehall/Edinburgh/Cardiff, this is "breaking up the NHS".

    If you point out that many large organisations, around the world, manage to be controllable by their boards/CEOs/etc without such a high and steep pyramid.....
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    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,586
    I'd not heard this one before...

    Trump Has Lost the Plot
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trump-has-lost-plot/611548/
    A couple of years ago, BuzzFeed asked a former White House official to explain the logic behind some bizarre Trump action. The official responded with one of the master quotes of the Trump era.

    President Trump, the official said, is not playing “the sort of three-dimensional chess people ascribe to decisions like this. More often than not he’s just eating the pieces.”...
  • Options
    AndrewAndrew Posts: 2,900
    Nigelb said:

    Had the tv news on in the background and thought I heard Tony Blair's unctuous yet alluring tones, turned to check and it was...

    Rishi!

    Several of us have noted that.
    Is is... uncanny.
    Oh god, can't un-hear that now.

  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,926

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    I would hope that people have realised by now that there's almost always nice countryside within 10 miles of where you live.

    But this is a country where people will queue for an hour to go to a KFC drive through.
    Lots of peeing in the sea... All the public loos in these places will be shut.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,377
    Nigelb said:

    I'd not heard this one before...

    Trump Has Lost the Plot
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trump-has-lost-plot/611548/
    A couple of years ago, BuzzFeed asked a former White House official to explain the logic behind some bizarre Trump action. The official responded with one of the master quotes of the Trump era.

    President Trump, the official said, is not playing “the sort of three-dimensional chess people ascribe to decisions like this. More often than not he’s just eating the pieces.”...

    The contrast with Trump in videos from years ago is particularly striking.
  • Options
    another_richardanother_richard Posts: 25,076

    I realise this is probably tantamount to clubbing seals or dissing the Queen, but personally i don't have that high an opinion of the NHS. The depressing testing anecdotes mentioned here ring very true with my experience of a typical large organisation bureaucracy in the country, i.e. slow and often downright incompetent.

    A relative received a large 6 figure sum in compensation when her husband died unnecessarily and the NHS admitted liability. My mother went through years of at times unbelievable bungles and incompetence including 2 years of misdiagnosis followed by 3 cancelled operations once they had eventually decided what was wrong, and and then to top it all off a district nurse accidentally removing an implant without her knowledge when she finally had it implanted at the 4th attempt. This resulted in her in the end having to have her leg amputated below the knee.

    And my daughter has regular physio and associated appointments for a minorish ailment but i have lost count of the number of missed, cancelled and incorrectly booked (yet yawningly widely spaced) appointments over the last 3-4 years. Left hand and right hand are unacquainted, even my teenage daughter asks "why do i have to repeat myself and seemingly start from scratch every time i see a new doctor"

    I could go on. Suffice to say, mainly lovely people (clearly with some excellent ones) but a frankly crap system. indeed a system which literally no other country on earth has chosen. I know it is now our national religion, but religions are based on faith and not facts it seems to me.

    To what extent is our high death rate down to the NHS being a bit rubbish? I genuinely don't know the answer .

    I'd say 'protect the NHS' was certainly responsible for many care home deaths.

    And that a statist bureaucratic system was also at fault over testing and PPE failings. Though whether that is the specific fault of the NHS, DoH or PHE I don't know.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,781

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
  • Options
    another_richardanother_richard Posts: 25,076
    Pulpstar said:

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    I would hope that people have realised by now that there's almost always nice countryside within 10 miles of where you live.

    But this is a country where people will queue for an hour to go to a KFC drive through.
    Lots of peeing in the sea... All the public loos in these places will be shut.
    Imagine going for a paddle at Blackpool or Cleethorpes in this weather.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,781
    HYUFD said:

    Boris Johnson's ratings are also tumbling.

    https://twitter.com/chriscurtis94/status/1260225676558372866

    IIRC Both Blair & Cameron got a baby boost in the polls, although those happy occasions weren't during a pandemic.

    Boris on 85% doing well rating with Leavers, 56% doing badly rating with Remainers.

    So divide almost entirely on Brexit lines
    The gullible continue to gulled.
  • Options
    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,653
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Unusually for a twitter post, the comments under this seem fairly sensible and quite well informed.

    https://twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1260104489824124928

    The author evidently hasn't read this:

    https://www.iiss.org/blogs/survival-blog/2020/05/the-uk-and-covid-19?fbclid=IwAR0g9Dj2X6k-doHiCTQdGnjSaVotWL4b81ert60layFPMEXMiaHZ98Vq5ac
    What has that got to do with the central point of the linked article ?

    Now, the key challenge facing the government is to replace this lockdown with a package of public health interventions involving mass testing, surveillance and real-time data to identify clusters of the virus and quarantine those who are infected. This will mean providing adequate PPE to those who need it, enforcing border controls and instigating a phased relaxation of social-distancing measures. Rather than putting everyone under lockdown, these measures would give health authorities information about the spread of the virus, allowing them to identify hotspots and target interventions where they’re needed.

    Without these measures in place, the past seven weeks of lockdown will have been completely pointless....
    The author claims the government has been pursuing multiple different policies driven by factional infighting - not by the evolving advice they were being given. Her conclusion is fine, her analysis suspect.
  • Options
    another_richardanother_richard Posts: 25,076
    Nigelb said:

    I'd not heard this one before...

    Trump Has Lost the Plot
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trump-has-lost-plot/611548/
    A couple of years ago, BuzzFeed asked a former White House official to explain the logic behind some bizarre Trump action. The official responded with one of the master quotes of the Trump era.

    President Trump, the official said, is not playing “the sort of three-dimensional chess people ascribe to decisions like this. More often than not he’s just eating the pieces.”...

    The defining theme of the Trump administration is chaos.
  • Options
    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    I am not without criticism but the key to this will be the public enquiry and forensic examination of the advice including minutes and how much Boris and others interpreted it properly

    I fear the scientist and sage may be in for a difficult time

  • Options
    EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976
    edited May 2020

    Had the tv news on in the background and thought I heard Tony Blair's unctuous yet alluring tones, turned to check and it was...

    Rishi!

    I wrongly identified a picture of a young Prince Andrew (this one: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/507077239286896708/) as Rishi during a quiz last week. The lighting was a bit odd, but even so I'm not quite sure how it happened.
  • Options
    rural_voterrural_voter Posts: 2,038

    I realise this is probably tantamount to clubbing seals or dissing the Queen, but personally i don't have that high an opinion of the NHS. The depressing testing anecdotes mentioned here ring very true with my experience of a typical large organisation bureaucracy in the country, i.e. slow and often downright incompetent.

    A relative received a large 6 figure sum in compensation when her husband died unnecessarily and the NHS admitted liability. My mother went through years of at times unbelievable bungles and incompetence including 2 years of misdiagnosis followed by 3 cancelled operations once they had eventually decided what was wrong, and and then to top it all off a district nurse accidentally removing an implant without her knowledge when she finally had it implanted at the 4th attempt. This resulted in her in the end having to have her leg amputated below the knee.

    And my daughter has regular physio and associated appointments for a minorish ailment but i have lost count of the number of missed, cancelled and incorrectly booked (yet yawningly widely spaced) appointments over the last 3-4 years. Left hand and right hand are unacquainted, even my teenage daughter asks "why do i have to repeat myself and seemingly start from scratch every time i see a new doctor"

    I could go on. Suffice to say, mainly lovely people (clearly with some excellent ones) but a frankly crap system. indeed a system which literally no other country on earth has chosen. I know it is now our national religion, but religions are based on faith and not facts it seems to me.

    To what extent is our high death rate down to the NHS being a bit rubbish? I genuinely don't know the answer .

    I'd say 'protect the NHS' was certainly responsible for many care home deaths.

    And that a statist bureaucratic system was also at fault over testing and PPE failings. Though whether that is the specific fault of the NHS, DoH or PHE I don't know.
    I believe S. Korea has a centralised system. It seems to cost only ~8% of GDP. They have an excellent lifespan, far better than the UK or Germany ... let alone the USA.

    Yes, as far as I know the other state-run systems - there are a lot of them - are delivered regionally or locally, e.g. Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Italy, etc.

    Part of the reason why some middle-income countries live so much longer than the UK must be better diet. Attend to that if one wants to deliver better healthcare without spending 30-50% more on the NHS.
  • Options
    TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,388

    This is what the peasant wagons are looking like in Manchester this week.


    The only busses I see in London are almost empty.
  • Options
    Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 13,314

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Thatcher and Blair owed much of their electoral success to feeble Opposition Parties.

    Boris's main successes have been against Livingstone and Corbyn.
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,081
    Endillion said:

    Had the tv news on in the background and thought I heard Tony Blair's unctuous yet alluring tones, turned to check and it was...

    Rishi!

    I wrongly identified a picture of a young Prince Andrew (this one: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/507077239286896708/) as Rishi last week. The lighting was a bit odd, but even so I'm not quite sure how it happened.
    I can see it, 1970's tie and shirtage apart.

    'Postcard H.R.H. Prince Andrew, Duke of York as a Teenager buy now for only €1.00 - postally unused, excellent condition' raises a couple of questions..
  • Options
    another_richardanother_richard Posts: 25,076

    I realise this is probably tantamount to clubbing seals or dissing the Queen, but personally i don't have that high an opinion of the NHS. The depressing testing anecdotes mentioned here ring very true with my experience of a typical large organisation bureaucracy in the country, i.e. slow and often downright incompetent.

    A relative received a large 6 figure sum in compensation when her husband died unnecessarily and the NHS admitted liability. My mother went through years of at times unbelievable bungles and incompetence including 2 years of misdiagnosis followed by 3 cancelled operations once they had eventually decided what was wrong, and and then to top it all off a district nurse accidentally removing an implant without her knowledge when she finally had it implanted at the 4th attempt. This resulted in her in the end having to have her leg amputated below the knee.

    And my daughter has regular physio and associated appointments for a minorish ailment but i have lost count of the number of missed, cancelled and incorrectly booked (yet yawningly widely spaced) appointments over the last 3-4 years. Left hand and right hand are unacquainted, even my teenage daughter asks "why do i have to repeat myself and seemingly start from scratch every time i see a new doctor"

    I could go on. Suffice to say, mainly lovely people (clearly with some excellent ones) but a frankly crap system. indeed a system which literally no other country on earth has chosen. I know it is now our national religion, but religions are based on faith and not facts it seems to me.

    To what extent is our high death rate down to the NHS being a bit rubbish? I genuinely don't know the answer .

    I'd say 'protect the NHS' was certainly responsible for many care home deaths.

    And that a statist bureaucratic system was also at fault over testing and PPE failings. Though whether that is the specific fault of the NHS, DoH or PHE I don't know.
    I believe S. Korea has a centralised system. It seems to cost only ~8% of GDP. They have an excellent lifespan, far better than the UK or Germany ... let alone the USA.

    Yes, as far as I know the other state-run systems - there are a lot of them - are delivered regionally or locally, e.g. Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Italy, etc.

    Part of the reason why some middle-income countries live so much longer than the UK must be better diet. Attend to that if one wants to deliver better healthcare without spending 30-50% more on the NHS.
    I doubt many other countries live much longer than the UK.

    But I suspect many of them have much longer years of good health.

    And quality of diet being a major factor in that.
  • Options
    Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,816
    Stocky said:

    kinabalu said:

    PT -

    Just to reply but not kick it off again. I know the virus trumps Mrs T. Of course it does. It's alive for one thing. Very much so.

    1. That was ALREADY happening before Thatcher (well not the boom bit, to be fair). Surely this incontrovertible fact shouldn't be too hard to understand?

    2. Where did I say that the mining communities weren't badly hit? Of course they were, as they were all over Europe.

    3. None of that makes Margaret Thatcher a 'witch' does it? It wasn't her fault that economic reality meant that the mines could not be saved, as they could not be under Wilson or in the Pas de Calais. Still less was it her fault that the antics of Scargill and the brutish unions made it far, far worse.

    Scargill was a menace. Mining was not a long term proposition at anything like the scale of the 'good old days'. Which they weren't anyway, since toiling half your life underground and getting your lungs full of crap is no way to live. Maggie was not to blame for any of that.

    However she was the PM - a powerful one - who presided over these communities being trashed. It was an abdication of responsibility. Maybe it kept her up at night, but I suspect not.

    Witch? I take that back because it's sexist. But IMO she was not a good egg.
    You might not have liked her but she was a colossus, and compared to the pigmy we currently have as PM, a mega-colossus. She was divisive and often ruthless, but fundamentally she was a leader of consequence. Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is even more hopeless than even I feared he might be. He is whatever the antithesis of a colossus might be. His classically trained vocabulary might be able to articulate what many are being able to understand.
    The problem with populism is that it is a fickle bitch.

    In my post earlier I cited three villagers who were today railing against Boris. I know that they were in favour of going into lockdown when we did - no earlier, no later - which was in accord will the polls (populism). Now that they have belatedly twigged the economic consequences - highlighted today by Sunak`s extension announcement - they have turned 180 degrees against lockdown and now say that it was a bad idea all along!

    As I say, a fickle bitch that populism.

    Follow the majority view of sheep who don`t know a scooby and you get what you deserve I suppose.

    I could say "Brexit anyone"? but I won`t cus that will light the blue touch paper. So I won`t mention that.
    The danger is, of course, people with “laymans” understanding of economics misapplying basic lessons from normal times into pandemic times.

    If they get their way, they will guarantee an L-shaped depression. We may end up there, anyway, but Sunak is giving us the best possible chance of the most V-shaped recession possible.

    Actual economists know (and are saying to anyone who will listen - who are few and far between because most people have already decided that they “know” the answer) that pausing/suspending the economy as much as possible even at considerable cost is the best way possible to avoid the economic scarring (or as much of it as feasible) that the Hitchens or Hames or Youngs of the world would end up unwittingly inflicting on us.

    I mean, for heaven’s sake, Sweden has incurred almost as much temporary slowdown as their neighbours even without a full lockdown, and they’re likely to have less bouncebackability, because they’ve seen a higher proportion of their population end.

    But the combined opinion of the economic experts around the world, the lessons from the economic effects of previous pandemics, and the sight of economies that haven’t locked down recoiling almost as much as those that have is irrelevant - these people have made their minds up, and are determined to push a truly foolish and counterproductive course of economic action. And nothing anyone says will shake their certainty that they must be right.

    It remains to be seen if the Government will be shaken by this and decide that getting it wrong with popularity will trump getting it right with unpopularity.
  • Options
    another_richardanother_richard Posts: 25,076
    HYUFD said:
    In reality it will be even less.

    And it explains much about general poor health and excess covid deaths.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,285

    This is what the peasant wagons are looking like in Manchester this week.


    No masks?
  • Options
    SockySocky Posts: 404

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I doubt we could trust the rozzers with that power, and anyway how risky really is a car trip?
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 25,174

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    I am not without criticism but the key to this will be the public enquiry and forensic examination of the advice including minutes and how much Boris and others interpreted it properly

    I fear the scientist and sage may be in for a difficult time

    Certainly, because Boris will have no intention of taking any of his share of any blame.

    In his defence he wasn't there, firstly because he was on holiday with his pregnant girlfriend and secondly, admittedly through no fault of his own, he was incapacitated. However, he was back in the saddle for this weekend's debacle, and from what I have read Whitty and Vallance knew as much about the lockdown release as I did.
  • Options
    EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976
    edited May 2020

    Endillion said:

    Had the tv news on in the background and thought I heard Tony Blair's unctuous yet alluring tones, turned to check and it was...

    Rishi!

    I wrongly identified a picture of a young Prince Andrew (this one: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/507077239286896708/) as Rishi last week. The lighting was a bit odd, but even so I'm not quite sure how it happened.
    I can see it, 1970's tie and shirtage apart.

    'Postcard H.R.H. Prince Andrew, Duke of York as a Teenager buy now for only €1.00 - postally unused, excellent condition' raises a couple of questions..
    His name is Sunak,
    Oh, Rishi Sunak,
    You look like Andrew,
    And sound like Blair.
    Your furlough spending,
    Seems never-ending,
    Of recession,
    We all must,
    Beware.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,187
    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Number one singles -

    Shakin Stevens 3
    Dylan 0

    And as for LPs ...
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,285

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    I believe in France it is still no travel more than 100km. Its a bonkers call by the government, places like the South West have very few cases, now every twat within 1/2 a days driving distance will go for a jolly there.
  • Options
    PeterCPeterC Posts: 1,274
    edited May 2020

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    I am concerned that the suggestion to return to work is anything but a minor adjustment to the lockdown. Depending on how those affected respond, it could amount to a major behavioural change, which could open many possibilities for transmission.
  • Options
    another_richardanother_richard Posts: 25,076

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Thatcher and Blair owed much of their electoral success to feeble Opposition Parties.

    Boris's main successes have been against Livingstone and Corbyn.
    Nothing is more important in life than luck.
  • Options
    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291
    Socky said:

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I doubt we could trust the rozzers with that power, and anyway how risky really is a car trip?
    It is strictly enforced by the police here in Wales and is less than 10 miles

    The danger is mass exodus from the cities to the Lake district, the Peak district, the West country, etc and of course beaches across England
  • Options
    rural_voterrural_voter Posts: 2,038

    I realise this is probably tantamount to clubbing seals or dissing the Queen, but personally i don't have that high an opinion of the NHS. The depressing testing anecdotes mentioned here ring very true with my experience of a typical large organisation bureaucracy in the country, i.e. slow and often downright incompetent.

    A relative received a large 6 figure sum in compensation when her husband died unnecessarily and the NHS admitted liability. My mother went through years of at times unbelievable bungles and incompetence including 2 years of misdiagnosis followed by 3 cancelled operations once they had eventually decided what was wrong, and and then to top it all off a district nurse accidentally removing an implant without her knowledge when she finally had it implanted at the 4th attempt. This resulted in her in the end having to have her leg amputated below the knee.

    And my daughter has regular physio and associated appointments for a minorish ailment but i have lost count of the number of missed, cancelled and incorrectly booked (yet yawningly widely spaced) appointments over the last 3-4 years. Left hand and right hand are unacquainted, even my teenage daughter asks "why do i have to repeat myself and seemingly start from scratch every time i see a new doctor"

    I could go on. Suffice to say, mainly lovely people (clearly with some excellent ones) but a frankly crap system. indeed a system which literally no other country on earth has chosen. I know it is now our national religion, but religions are based on faith and not facts it seems to me.

    To what extent is our high death rate down to the NHS being a bit rubbish? I genuinely don't know the answer .

    I'd say 'protect the NHS' was certainly responsible for many care home deaths.

    And that a statist bureaucratic system was also at fault over testing and PPE failings. Though whether that is the specific fault of the NHS, DoH or PHE I don't know.
    I believe S. Korea has a centralised system. It seems to cost only ~8% of GDP. They have an excellent lifespan, far better than the UK or Germany ... let alone the USA.

    Yes, as far as I know the other state-run systems - there are a lot of them - are delivered regionally or locally, e.g. Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Italy, etc.

    Part of the reason why some middle-income countries live so much longer than the UK must be better diet. Attend to that if one wants to deliver better healthcare without spending 30-50% more on the NHS.
    I doubt many other countries live much longer than the UK.

    But I suspect many of them have much longer years of good health.

    And quality of diet being a major factor in that.
    Have a look at

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

    Japan and Hong Kong top.
    UK and Germany at ~25-30.

    Not always exactly what you'd guess - Israel is at no. 9/10 - but generally rich, well-organised countries with pretty healthy diets.
  • Options
    StockyStocky Posts: 9,718

    Stocky said:

    kinabalu said:

    PT -

    Just to reply but not kick it off again. I know the virus trumps Mrs T. Of course it does. It's alive for one thing. Very much so.

    1. That was ALREADY happening before Thatcher (well not the boom bit, to be fair). Surely this incontrovertible fact shouldn't be too hard to understand?

    2. Where did I say that the mining communities weren't badly hit? Of course they were, as they were all over Europe.

    3. None of that makes Margaret Thatcher a 'witch' does it? It wasn't her fault that economic reality meant that the mines could not be saved, as they could not be under Wilson or in the Pas de Calais. Still less was it her fault that the antics of Scargill and the brutish unions made it far, far worse.

    Scargill was a menace. Mining was not a long term proposition at anything like the scale of the 'good old days'. Which they weren't anyway, since toiling half your life underground and getting your lungs full of crap is no way to live. Maggie was not to blame for any of that.

    However she was the PM - a powerful one - who presided over these communities being trashed. It was an abdication of responsibility. Maybe it kept her up at night, but I suspect not.

    Witch? I take that back because it's sexist. But IMO she was not a good egg.
    You might not have liked her but she was a colossus, and compared to the pigmy we currently have as PM, a mega-colossus. She was divisive and often ruthless, but fundamentally she was a leader of consequence. Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is even more hopeless than even I feared he might be. He is whatever the antithesis of a colossus might be. His classically trained vocabulary might be able to articulate what many are being able to understand.
    The problem with populism is that it is a fickle bitch.

    In my post earlier I cited three villagers who were today railing against Boris. I know that they were in favour of going into lockdown when we did - no earlier, no later - which was in accord will the polls (populism). Now that they have belatedly twigged the economic consequences - highlighted today by Sunak`s extension announcement - they have turned 180 degrees against lockdown and now say that it was a bad idea all along!

    As I say, a fickle bitch that populism.

    Follow the majority view of sheep who don`t know a scooby and you get what you deserve I suppose.

    I could say "Brexit anyone"? but I won`t cus that will light the blue touch paper. So I won`t mention that.
    The danger is, of course, people with “laymans” understanding of economics misapplying basic lessons from normal times into pandemic times.

    If they get their way, they will guarantee an L-shaped depression. We may end up there, anyway, but Sunak is giving us the best possible chance of the most V-shaped recession possible.

    Actual economists know (and are saying to anyone who will listen - who are few and far between because most people have already decided that they “know” the answer) that pausing/suspending the economy as much as possible even at considerable cost is the best way possible to avoid the economic scarring (or as much of it as feasible) that the Hitchens or Hames or Youngs of the world would end up unwittingly inflicting on us.

    I mean, for heaven’s sake, Sweden has incurred almost as much temporary slowdown as their neighbours even without a full lockdown, and they’re likely to have less bouncebackability, because they’ve seen a higher proportion of their population end.

    But the combined opinion of the economic experts around the world, the lessons from the economic effects of previous pandemics, and the sight of economies that haven’t locked down recoiling almost as much as those that have is irrelevant - these people have made their minds up, and are determined to push a truly foolish and counterproductive course of economic action. And nothing anyone says will shake their certainty that they must be right.

    It remains to be seen if the Government will be shaken by this and decide that getting it wrong with popularity will trump getting it right with unpopularity.
    Excellent post. At some point the government will have to go against public opinion to end the financial bailouts. Will it have the balls? It`s hoping, of course, that opinion will have turned at that point. I have my doubts. As HYUFD has just posted below, 72% favour extending lockdown with furlough.
  • Options
    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,932
    FPT @RobD
    RobD said:

    We’ve all moved on Malc, no need to rebut every single anti-SNP post. ;)

    Rob, we know you still dress up as Maggie, Tories on here never move on.
    Having had to work I need to catch up and correct the really stupid posts, would need to be retired or working for CCHQ like Carlotta to be able to reply to them all and would have no fingertips left.
    Back to roasting orphans you go.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,285
    Apparently you will have to ask to go for a pee-wee when you fly Ryanair. Like being back at school.
  • Options
    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,932
    FPT:@Carnyx
    Carnyx said:

    » show previous quotes
    Hello, Malky. On a related topic, have you noticed that the use of tartan as a cheap way of indicating anything Scots, such as "tartan tax", seems to have declined? A poster on PB - can't recall who - did use it the othert day, but as "tartan and tweed" - so full marks for a proper appreciation fo cultural diversity there.

    Carnyx , for the majority on here the most they do know about Scotland is there is a drink called Scotch and you can get Scotch tape at the post office. Unfortunately it does not preclude them giving their expert knowledge of how stupid we are and how we sponge off England and are the only country in the world unable to be independent.
    PS: you will note it is the ones that go to live in England, desperate to prove how English they have become that are the worst culprits as well, nothing worse than a Scottish emigrant with an inferiority complex.
  • Options
    EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Thatcher and Blair owed much of their electoral success to feeble Opposition Parties.

    Boris's main successes have been against Livingstone and Corbyn.
    Nothing is more important in life than luck.
    Quite right.

    That's why I spend so much time doing nothing.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,280
    malcolmg said:

    FPT @RobD
    RobD said:

    We’ve all moved on Malc, no need to rebut every single anti-SNP post. ;)

    Rob, we know you still dress up as Maggie, Tories on here never move on.
    Having had to work I need to catch up and correct the really stupid posts, would need to be retired or working for CCHQ like Carlotta to be able to reply to them all and would have no fingertips left.
    Back to roasting orphans you go.

    The babies have to be orphans? Since when?
  • Options
    another_richardanother_richard Posts: 25,076

    I realise this is probably tantamount to clubbing seals or dissing the Queen, but personally i don't have that high an opinion of the NHS. The depressing testing anecdotes mentioned here ring very true with my experience of a typical large organisation bureaucracy in the country, i.e. slow and often downright incompetent.

    A relative received a large 6 figure sum in compensation when her husband died unnecessarily and the NHS admitted liability. My mother went through years of at times unbelievable bungles and incompetence including 2 years of misdiagnosis followed by 3 cancelled operations once they had eventually decided what was wrong, and and then to top it all off a district nurse accidentally removing an implant without her knowledge when she finally had it implanted at the 4th attempt. This resulted in her in the end having to have her leg amputated below the knee.

    And my daughter has regular physio and associated appointments for a minorish ailment but i have lost count of the number of missed, cancelled and incorrectly booked (yet yawningly widely spaced) appointments over the last 3-4 years. Left hand and right hand are unacquainted, even my teenage daughter asks "why do i have to repeat myself and seemingly start from scratch every time i see a new doctor"

    I could go on. Suffice to say, mainly lovely people (clearly with some excellent ones) but a frankly crap system. indeed a system which literally no other country on earth has chosen. I know it is now our national religion, but religions are based on faith and not facts it seems to me.

    To what extent is our high death rate down to the NHS being a bit rubbish? I genuinely don't know the answer .

    I'd say 'protect the NHS' was certainly responsible for many care home deaths.

    And that a statist bureaucratic system was also at fault over testing and PPE failings. Though whether that is the specific fault of the NHS, DoH or PHE I don't know.
    I believe S. Korea has a centralised system. It seems to cost only ~8% of GDP. They have an excellent lifespan, far better than the UK or Germany ... let alone the USA.

    Yes, as far as I know the other state-run systems - there are a lot of them - are delivered regionally or locally, e.g. Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Italy, etc.

    Part of the reason why some middle-income countries live so much longer than the UK must be better diet. Attend to that if one wants to deliver better healthcare without spending 30-50% more on the NHS.
    I doubt many other countries live much longer than the UK.

    But I suspect many of them have much longer years of good health.

    And quality of diet being a major factor in that.
    Have a look at

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

    Japan and Hong Kong top.
    UK and Germany at ~25-30.

    Not always exactly what you'd guess - Israel is at no. 9/10 - but generally rich, well-organised countries with pretty healthy diets.
    But life expectancy in Japan is only three years more than in the UK so not what I would call 'much longer'.

    Its how healthy you are in those years which matters to me and I suspect that that is where the UK underachieves.
  • Options
    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291
    malcolmg said:

    FPT:@Carnyx
    Carnyx said:

    » show previous quotes
    Hello, Malky. On a related topic, have you noticed that the use of tartan as a cheap way of indicating anything Scots, such as "tartan tax", seems to have declined? A poster on PB - can't recall who - did use it the othert day, but as "tartan and tweed" - so full marks for a proper appreciation fo cultural diversity there.

    Carnyx , for the majority on here the most they do know about Scotland is there is a drink called Scotch and you can get Scotch tape at the post office. Unfortunately it does not preclude them giving their expert knowledge of how stupid we are and how we sponge off England and are the only country in the world unable to be independent.
    PS: you will note it is the ones that go to live in England, desperate to prove how English they have become that are the worst culprits as well, nothing worse than a Scottish emigrant with an inferiority complex.

    I have never wanted to prove I am English Malc, indeed I am only half English, and of course my wife is as Scots as yourself

    The only difference is you want independence, we value the union
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,187

    Had the tv news on in the background and thought I heard Tony Blair's unctuous yet alluring tones, turned to check and it was...

    Rishi!

    The bollock crushing jeans and bombing of distant lands surely coming soon.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,280

    This is what the peasant wagons are looking like in Manchester this week.


    No masks?
    Seem to be wearing boxes over their faces instead.

  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,059

    Apparently you will have to ask to go for a pee-wee when you fly Ryanair. Like being back at school.

    Social distancing on planes seems somewhat futile to me.
  • Options
    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,932
    Stocky said:

    Stocky said:

    kinabalu said:

    PT -

    Just to reply but not kick it off again. I know the virus trumps Mrs T. Of course it does. It's alive for one thing. Very much so.

    1. That was ALREADY happening before Thatcher (well not the boom bit, to be fair). Surely this incontrovertible fact shouldn't be too hard to understand?

    2. Where did I say that the mining communities weren't badly hit? Of course they were, as they were all over Europe.

    3. None of that makes Margaret Thatcher a 'witch' does it? It wasn't her fault that economic reality meant that the mines could not be saved, as they could not be under Wilson or in the Pas de Calais. Still less was it her fault that the antics of Scargill and the brutish unions made it far, far worse.

    Scargill was a menace. Mining was not a long term proposition at anything like the scale of the 'good old days'. Which they weren't anyway, since toiling half your life underground and getting your lungs full of crap is no way to live. Maggie was not to blame for any of that.

    However she was the PM - a powerful one - who presided over these communities being trashed. It was an abdication of responsibility. Maybe it kept her up at night, but I suspect not.

    Witch? I take that back because it's sexist. But IMO she was not a good egg.
    You might not have liked her but she was a colossus, and compared to the pigmy we currently have as PM, a mega-colossus. She was divisive and often ruthless, but fundamentally she was a leader of consequence. Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is even more hopeless than even I feared he might be. He is whatever the antithesis of a colossus might be. His classically trained vocabulary might be able to articulate what many are being able to understand.
    The problem with populism is that it is a fickle bitch.

    In my post earlier I cited three villagers who were today railing against Boris. I know that they were in favour of going into lockdown when we did - no earlier, no later - which was in accord will the polls (populism). Now that they have belatedly twigged the economic consequences - highlighted today by Sunak`s extension announcement - they have turned 180 degrees against lockdown and now say that it was a bad idea all along!

    As I say, a fickle bitch that populism.

    Follow the majority view of sheep who don`t know a scooby and you get what you deserve I suppose.

    I could say "Brexit anyone"? but I won`t cus that will light the blue touch paper. So I won`t mention that.
    The danger is, of course, people with “laymans” understanding of economics misapplying basic lessons from normal times into pandemic times.

    If they get their way, they will guarantee an L-shaped depression. We may end up there, anyway, but Sunak is giving us the best possible chance of the most V-shaped recession possible.

    Actual economists know (and are saying to anyone who will listen - who are few and far between because most people have already decided that they “know” the answer) that pausing/suspending the economy as much as possible even at considerable cost is the best way possible to avoid the economic scarring (or as much of it as feasible) that the Hitchens or Hames or Youngs of the world would end up unwittingly inflicting on us.

    I mean, for heaven’s sake, Sweden has incurred almost as much temporary slowdown as their neighbours even without a full lockdown, and they’re likely to have less bouncebackability, because they’ve seen a higher proportion of their population end.

    But the combined opinion of the economic experts around the world, the lessons from the economic effects of previous pandemics, and the sight of economies that haven’t locked down recoiling almost as much as those that have is irrelevant - these people have made their minds up, and are determined to push a truly foolish and counterproductive course of economic action. And nothing anyone says will shake their certainty that they must be right.

    It remains to be seen if the Government will be shaken by this and decide that getting it wrong with popularity will trump getting it right with unpopularity.
    Excellent post. At some point the government will have to go against public opinion to end the financial bailouts. Will it have the balls? It`s hoping, of course, that opinion will have turned at that point. I have my doubts. As HYUFD has just posted below, 72% favour extending lockdown with furlough.
    surprise surprise, who are the stupid 28% that prefer to work than be paid to do nothing. Ask if they want to stay at home with 0% and it would be 100% the other way
  • Options
    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291

    Apparently you will have to ask to go for a pee-wee when you fly Ryanair. Like being back at school.

    Social distancing on planes seems somewhat futile to me.
    Irony is I have just received my boarding notice for our flight to Vancouver today which BA cancelled and have refunded in full
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,187

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Go, Nigel!

    When it comes to BJ assessment on here you are the Carly Simon.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,285

    Apparently you will have to ask to go for a pee-wee when you fly Ryanair. Like being back at school.

    Social distancing on planes seems somewhat futile to me.
    Right. Really we need a system of screening before you get on one.
  • Options
    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291

    Apparently you will have to ask to go for a pee-wee when you fly Ryanair. Like being back at school.

    Social distancing on planes seems somewhat futile to me.
    Right. Really we need a system of screening before you get on one.
    Better still, forget flying for now
  • Options
    state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,417

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    Oh dont be so miserable- Driving anywhere is not a cause of transmission . In fact the more you drive the less likely you are to see anyone you know at the end of it so less likely to mix. Lots of misery and judging of others on here tonight.


  • Options
    NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    Nobody is in a position to state with confidence that the UK has one of the worst death rates (from the virus) in the world. There is not enough (reliable) data.
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,534
    kinabalu said:

    Had the tv news on in the background and thought I heard Tony Blair's unctuous yet alluring tones, turned to check and it was...

    Rishi!

    The bollock crushing jeans and bombing of distant lands surely coming soon.
    He's developed the Blair/Osborne false glottal stop which he would be greatly enhanced without.

  • Options
    AndrewAndrew Posts: 2,900
    Brazil estimated 64000 deaths by Jun 9th:

    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.28.20083675v1
  • Options
    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    Oh dont be so miserable- Driving anywhere is not a cause of transmission . In fact the more you drive the less likely you are to see anyone you know at the end of it so less likely to mix. Lots of misery and judging of others on here tonight.


    With respect that is so naive

    Why do you think North Wales police stop people at the English border

    Given a chance Snowdonia and our beaches will be overwhelmed with day trippers and social distancing goes out of the window.

    The same may well happen across England if we have good weather this weekend
  • Options
    kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,945

    Apparently you will have to ask to go for a pee-wee when you fly Ryanair. Like being back at school.

    Social distancing on planes seems somewhat futile to me.
    Probably a good idea in the toilets, though.
  • Options
    TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 114,426
    kyf_100 said:

    Apparently you will have to ask to go for a pee-wee when you fly Ryanair. Like being back at school.

    Social distancing on planes seems somewhat futile to me.
    Probably a good idea in the toilets, though.
    I don't know, obtaining membership of the mile high club is fun.
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    OllyTOllyT Posts: 4,913

    This is the story I expect to gain a lot of traction in the next few days.

    The UK Is Taking Longer Than Other Countries To Process Coronavirus Tests — And That's A Big Problem For Contact Tracing

    The government refused to reveal the average turnaround time for tests, but one Tory MP says they're taking five days or longer. Other countries can do it in hours.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/uk-coronavirus-test-trace-trace-results

    Didn't I read somewhere that we had had to send 50,000 to America for processing?
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,274
    Not a surprise. Having a government all over the place during such a crisis is not good.
  • Options
    RobDRobD Posts: 58,967
    OllyT said:

    This is the story I expect to gain a lot of traction in the next few days.

    The UK Is Taking Longer Than Other Countries To Process Coronavirus Tests — And That's A Big Problem For Contact Tracing

    The government refused to reveal the average turnaround time for tests, but one Tory MP says they're taking five days or longer. Other countries can do it in hours.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/uk-coronavirus-test-trace-trace-results

    Didn't I read somewhere that we had had to send 50,000 to America for processing?
    It sounded like that was a problem in one of the laboratories. A real story would be if that was happening all the time. Much like the single plane of gowns from Turkey that proved to be not critical at all, the media fixate on the small problems and blow them all out of proportion.
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    BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    kinabalu said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Go, Nigel!

    When it comes to BJ assessment on here you are the Carly Simon.
    That 'Eventually' is doing a lot of work. Is it going to kick in before or after Boris' second landslide?
  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,779

    kyf_100 said:

    Apparently you will have to ask to go for a pee-wee when you fly Ryanair. Like being back at school.

    Social distancing on planes seems somewhat futile to me.
    Probably a good idea in the toilets, though.
    I don't know, obtaining membership of the mile high club is fun.
    Fun in principle perhaps. Did you enjoy it?
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    BantermanBanterman Posts: 287
    Considering the daily media assults on the government, its hardly surprising their ratings are falling.

    Nobody can publically express the reality of this. Regardless of what the government did, the UK will get c100,000 deaths in this wave, a lot more if wave 2 is like the Spanish flu. For reference this is pro rata for population the same as Hong Kong Flu.

    However, nobody can actually say this in public as the media would destroy them.
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    SunnyJimSunnyJim Posts: 1,106
    The press have had a shocking 'war'.
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    Wulfrun_PhilWulfrun_Phil Posts: 4,600

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    Oh dont be so miserable- Driving anywhere is not a cause of transmission . In fact the more you drive the less likely you are to see anyone you know at the end of it so less likely to mix. Lots of misery and judging of others on here tonight.


    With respect that is so naive

    Why do you think North Wales police stop people at the English border

    Given a chance Snowdonia and our beaches will be overwhelmed with day trippers and social distancing goes out of the window.

    The same may well happen across England if we have good weather this weekend
    It is not naive at all. By requiring people living in densely populated English cities to remain there, the Welsh Government is effectively telling people to instead mix far more closely in the very limited recreational space available to them in English public parks than would ever happen in Wales.

    The incidence of CV in Gwynedd is amongst the lowest in the UK. One of the reasons is because there is so much public open space to go around in an area which has a low density of population even in the summer let alone now. At the moment I imagine that I could comply with social distancing on the 4km long stretch of sand between Tywyn and Aberdyfi (by my vacant holiday home) if I was required not to get within 200m of anyone else, never mind 2m. Sharing some of that excess space would reduce the risks to English people forced to remain at home in crowded cities, with no appreciable increase in risk to Welsh residents.

    People should be required to social distance by 2m, and the role of government should be limited to ensuring that they do and requiring facilities to close only where they obviously can't. It's far easier to social distance on a Welsh beach than it is in a Welsh garden centre, but they're content to open the latter and put the former off limits. I detect a streak of nationalist populism in all this, Drakeford having decided that there are votes to be gained by having a go at people living in Birmingham.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,720

    Endillion said:

    kinabalu said:

    PT -

    Just to reply but not kick it off again. I know the virus trumps Mrs T. Of course it does. It's alive for one thing. Very much so.

    1. That was ALREADY happening before Thatcher (well not the boom bit, to be fair). Surely this incontrovertible fact shouldn't be too hard to understand?

    2. Where did I say that the mining communities weren't badly hit? Of course they were, as they were all over Europe.

    3. None of that makes Margaret Thatcher a 'witch' does it? It wasn't her fault that economic reality meant that the mines could not be saved, as they could not be under Wilson or in the Pas de Calais. Still less was it her fault that the antics of Scargill and the brutish unions made it far, far worse.

    Scargill was a menace. Mining was not a long term proposition at anything like the scale of the 'good old days'. Which they weren't anyway, since toiling half your life underground and getting your lungs full of crap is no way to live. Maggie was not to blame for any of that.

    However she was the PM - a powerful one - who presided over these communities being trashed. It was an abdication of responsibility. Maybe it kept her up at night, but I suspect not.

    Witch? I take that back because it's sexist. But IMO she was not a good egg.
    You might not have liked her but she was a colossus, and compared to the pigmy we currently have as PM, a mega-colossus. She was divisive and often ruthless, but fundamentally she was a leader of consequence. Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is even more hopeless than even I feared he might be. He is whatever the antithesis of a colossus might be. His classically trained vocabulary might be able to articulate what many are being able to understand.
    A Hanging Garden?
    I guess if a colossus is a statue of enormous size we would need to know what the Latin or Greek might be for garden gnome. My google translate says it is "Hortus Gnome"
    Pygmaeus is the word you want, I think.
  • Options
    MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,942

    This is what the peasant wagons are looking like in Manchester this week.


    No masks?
    I'm in no way convinced that masks will catch on.
  • Options
    NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758
    DavidL said:

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    Nobody is in a position to state with confidence that the UK has one of the worst death rates (from the virus) in the world. There is not enough (reliable) data.
    You're obviously still relatively new so we will make allowances but putting facts in the road of peoples' confirmed prejudices is poor form.
    I feel that I should apologise.
  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,779
    Mortimer said:

    This is what the peasant wagons are looking like in Manchester this week.


    No masks?
    I'm in no way convinced that masks will catch on.
    You'd see I'm laughing but the mask hides it.

    Masks are just the new normal now - irrationally. Mask-billionaires will no doubt be on tv soon displaying their wisdom.
  • Options
    bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,860
    SunnyJim said:

    The press have had a shocking 'war'.

    Nowhere near as bad as the UK Government though.
  • Options
    OllyTOllyT Posts: 4,913

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    Nobody is in a position to state with confidence that the UK has one of the worst death rates (from the virus) in the world. There is not enough (reliable) data.
    Interesting how Boris fans have moved from "we're doing so much better than Italy and Spain" to to "the data can't be trusted" in a few short weeks!
  • Options
    MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,942
    Omnium said:

    Mortimer said:

    This is what the peasant wagons are looking like in Manchester this week.


    No masks?
    I'm in no way convinced that masks will catch on.
    You'd see I'm laughing but the mask hides it.

    Masks are just the new normal now - irrationally. Mask-billionaires will no doubt be on tv soon displaying their wisdom.
    Went for a walk today through a relatively busy high st. Saw 5 people wearing one correctly, and 4 people wearing them incorrectly. Out of about 60.
  • Options
    OllyTOllyT Posts: 4,913
    RobD said:

    OllyT said:

    This is the story I expect to gain a lot of traction in the next few days.

    The UK Is Taking Longer Than Other Countries To Process Coronavirus Tests — And That's A Big Problem For Contact Tracing

    The government refused to reveal the average turnaround time for tests, but one Tory MP says they're taking five days or longer. Other countries can do it in hours.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/uk-coronavirus-test-trace-trace-results

    Didn't I read somewhere that we had had to send 50,000 to America for processing?
    It sounded like that was a problem in one of the laboratories. A real story would be if that was happening all the time. Much like the single plane of gowns from Turkey that proved to be not critical at all, the media fixate on the small problems and blow them all out of proportion.

    Fair enough, I only saw the headline. However if, 3 months in, we can't turn tests around in under 5 days isn't that going to make track-and-trace a bit pointless, even if the app ever gets up and running properly?
  • Options
    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 24,374
    RobD said:

    OllyT said:

    This is the story I expect to gain a lot of traction in the next few days.

    The UK Is Taking Longer Than Other Countries To Process Coronavirus Tests — And That's A Big Problem For Contact Tracing

    The government refused to reveal the average turnaround time for tests, but one Tory MP says they're taking five days or longer. Other countries can do it in hours.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/uk-coronavirus-test-trace-trace-results

    Didn't I read somewhere that we had had to send 50,000 to America for processing?
    It sounded like that was a problem in one of the laboratories. A real story would be if that was happening all the time. Much like the single plane of gowns from Turkey that proved to be not critical at all, the media fixate on the small problems and blow them all out of proportion.
    The gowns from Turkey were only a story because HMG bombarded us with news and pictures of the RAF plane that would save us all (unlike the DelBoys on Labour's list).
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,610
    Last year's cricket world cup had a lucky escape.
  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,779

    SunnyJim said:

    The press have had a shocking 'war'.

    Nowhere near as bad as the UK Government though.
    No BJO - the press have been awful, awful, awful.

  • Options
    EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976

    DavidL said:

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    Nobody is in a position to state with confidence that the UK has one of the worst death rates (from the virus) in the world. There is not enough (reliable) data.
    You're obviously still relatively new so we will make allowances but putting facts in the road of peoples' confirmed prejudices is poor form.
    I feel that I should apologise.
    Also poor form, I think?
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,995
    OllyT said:

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    Nobody is in a position to state with confidence that the UK has one of the worst death rates (from the virus) in the world. There is not enough (reliable) data.
    Interesting how Boris fans have moved from "we're doing so much better than Italy and Spain" to to "the data can't be trusted" in a few short weeks!
    The UK is still doing better than Italy and Spain on deaths per million
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,187

    kinabalu said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Go, Nigel!

    When it comes to BJ assessment on here you are the Carly Simon.
    That 'Eventually' is doing a lot of work. Is it going to kick in before or after Boris' second landslide?
    I would love to rule that out but I can't. He does appeal to many. He's the Mantovani of modern British politics.
  • Options
    contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    edited May 2020
    HYUFD said:

    OllyT said:

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    Nobody is in a position to state with confidence that the UK has one of the worst death rates (from the virus) in the world. There is not enough (reliable) data.
    Interesting how Boris fans have moved from "we're doing so much better than Italy and Spain" to to "the data can't be trusted" in a few short weeks!
    The UK is still doing better than Italy and Spain on deaths per million
    I wonder how other countries doing on deaths of healthy people under 40.

    Ours are 31 out of more than 22,000

    Which strikes me as pretty good going
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,995
    edited May 2020
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Go, Nigel!

    When it comes to BJ assessment on here you are the Carly Simon.
    That 'Eventually' is doing a lot of work. Is it going to kick in before or after Boris' second landslide?
    I would love to rule that out but I can't. He does appeal to many. He's the Mantovani of modern British politics.
    Boris will always appeal to the hard Brexit, Leave voting pro WTO terms crowd, for them he can do no wrong.

    Starmer has zero chance of winning them over, he needs to focus instead on uniting Remainers behind him and soft Leavers who would accept staying in the single market and are concerned about the government's Covid response
  • Options
    Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 13,314
    Mortimer said:

    Omnium said:

    Mortimer said:

    This is what the peasant wagons are looking like in Manchester this week.


    No masks?
    I'm in no way convinced that masks will catch on.
    You'd see I'm laughing but the mask hides it.

    Masks are just the new normal now - irrationally. Mask-billionaires will no doubt be on tv soon displaying their wisdom.
    Went for a walk today through a relatively busy high st. Saw 5 people wearing one correctly, and 4 people wearing them incorrectly. Out of about 60.
    Including Niqaabs?
  • Options
    NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758
    Endillion said:

    DavidL said:

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    Nobody is in a position to state with confidence that the UK has one of the worst death rates (from the virus) in the world. There is not enough (reliable) data.
    You're obviously still relatively new so we will make allowances but putting facts in the road of peoples' confirmed prejudices is poor form.
    I feel that I should apologise.
    Also poor form, I think?
    I think I should apologise.
  • Options
    StockyStocky Posts: 9,718
    A human rights challenge against lockdown:

    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/lockdownlegalchallenge/
  • Options
    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291
    edited May 2020

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    Oh dont be so miserable- Driving anywhere is not a cause of transmission . In fact the more you drive the less likely you are to see anyone you know at the end of it so less likely to mix. Lots of misery and judging of others on here tonight.


    With respect that is so naive

    Why do you think North Wales police stop people at the English border

    Given a chance Snowdonia and our beaches will be overwhelmed with day trippers and social distancing goes out of the window.

    The same may well happen across England if we have good weather this weekend
    It is not naive at all. By requiring people living in densely populated English cities to remain there, the Welsh Government is effectively telling people to instead mix far more closely in the very limited recreational space available to them in English public parks than would ever happen in Wales.

    The incidence of CV in Gwynedd is amongst the lowest in the UK. One of the reasons is because there is so much public open space to go around in an area which has a low density of population even in the summer let alone now. At the moment I imagine that I could comply with social distancing on the 4km long stretch of sand between Tywyn and Aberdyfi (by my vacant holiday home) if I was required not to get within 200m of anyone else, never mind 2m. Sharing some of that excess space would reduce the risks to English people forced to remain at home in crowded cities, with no appreciable increase in risk to Welsh residents.

    People should be required to social distance by 2m, and the role of government should be limited to ensuring that they do and requiring facilities to close only where they obviously can't. It's far easier to social distance on a Welsh beach than it is in a Welsh garden centre, but they're content to open the latter and put the former off limits. I detect a streak of nationalist populism in all this, Drakeford having decided that there are votes to be gained by having a go at people living in Birmingham.
    You reference Gwynedd but the problem is far more acute in our part of North Wales and including Snowdonia, which are within less than one hour or two hours from Liverpool and Manchester. Before the police controlled our border we were overwhelmed with visitors both on our beaches and in Snowdonia making social distancing impossible

    The fear for unrestricted driving in England must be for the Lake District, especially as Cumbria is struggling with covid, but also the Peak district, the West Country and myriads of English beaches.

    Drakeford has been and is a disaster for Wales and the sooner he is gone, hopefully in Spring 2021, the better Wales will be
  • Options
    justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Go, Nigel!

    When it comes to BJ assessment on here you are the Carly Simon.
    That 'Eventually' is doing a lot of work. Is it going to kick in before or after Boris' second landslide?
    I would love to rule that out but I can't. He does appeal to many. He's the Mantovani of modern British politics.
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Go, Nigel!

    When it comes to BJ assessment on here you are the Carly Simon.
    That 'Eventually' is doing a lot of work. Is it going to kick in before or after Boris' second landslide?
    I would love to rule that out but I can't. He does appeal to many. He's the Mantovani of modern British politics.
    He performed significantly less well in his second London Mayoral Election in 2012 than he had done in 2008. Had Labour selected an alternative to Ken Livingstone, he would likely have lost.
  • Options
    Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 13,314
    edited May 2020

    Endillion said:

    DavidL said:

    Stocky said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Not keen then.
    Anything to do with Brexit maybe
    Well, I could write an essay on that, but no, not entirely. His dishonest position on that subject is one factor, but the main reasons are substance and competence. This crisis has proved most Johnson-sceptic's worst fears were underestimates. I don't like Gove's views on Brexit, but at least the man has shown some competence in the departments he has run. Johnson is a car crash.
    You have your view on Boris and it is shared by many

    However, on covid I will give him the benefit of doubt and had no problem with his speech

    The government are making mistakes and as I have said I reject the freedom of the road granted to the English, it is wrong

    Time will tell and Boris will either win through or not, but he has an 80 seat majority so he has four years if he wants them, and his health holds up which I am not sure is a given, to succeed in taking the country through this crisis

    The tragedy is that we now have one of the worst death rates in the world. It smacks of incompetence from a leadership that is not up to the job. The fact that you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt is probably virtuous, but how bad does it have to be before you might start to think it might happen to have something to do with his poor grasp of detail and general bad leadership?
    Nobody is in a position to state with confidence that the UK has one of the worst death rates (from the virus) in the world. There is not enough (reliable) data.
    You're obviously still relatively new so we will make allowances but putting facts in the road of peoples' confirmed prejudices is poor form.
    I feel that I should apologise.
    Also poor form, I think?
    I think I should apologise.
    The site has a wide range of sanctions it can impose on persistent offenders, starting with fines of not less than £100 for minor offences. The most serious cases can however result in banishment to ConHome.
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,610
    edited May 2020

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    Maybe we should trust the people to do the right thing.
  • Options
    EPGEPG Posts: 6,006
    Free money into 2021 (they won't cut it before Christmas) means the day of reckoning is delayed at the cost of a billion pounds for every two days of non-reckoning.
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    justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    edited May 2020
    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Starmer is more popular than Johnson at this moment, can he convert it into a election lead

    Lol - can't wait for a "forensic" chat down the pub. Said nobody ever.

    You might choose to chat with a stereotypical Etonian twat at the pub, and maybe find his inability to communicate quirky and amusing, but that doesn't mean that he should be PM. Give me a slightly less amusing professional anytime than a rank amateur who is nothing more than an international laughing stock.
    Name the last "forensic" PM that won an election.

    Gordon Brown was "forensic" off the end of the spectrum - got pumped at the polls.

    Gordon Brown would make The Clown look competent. I always thought we would never see a worse PM than Brown in my lifetime. I was wrong, but this time, this completely unsuitable egocentric entitled twat is wearing a blue rosette. Public opinion will quickly catch up. Even your blinkers might start to fall off after another year of bluster, buffoonery and back-of-a-fag-packet incompetence from no.10. Any Tories with any analytical skill are shit scared of Starmer. He will slowly and surely make the public realise the obvious - Johnson is a charlatan and an incompetent, and a disgrace to the Conservative Party and the office he currently holds.
    Elections won

    Boris 3
    Brown 0

    As for referendums...

    Winning a few beauty contests against very ugly competition doesn't make you competent to run a country. It is one of the weaknesses of our system. Bozo's competition so far has been two washed up has-been lefties. He is no Churchill, no Thatcher. He is an empty chasm of a man that would say anything, do anything so that he can put the PM badge on his boy scout uniform. Eventually the country, with the exception of a few blinkered fanbois will have nothing but contempt for him, and rightly so.
    Go, Nigel!

    When it comes to BJ assessment on here you are the Carly Simon.
    That 'Eventually' is doing a lot of work. Is it going to kick in before or after Boris' second landslide?
    I would love to rule that out but I can't. He does appeal to many. He's the Mantovani of modern British politics.
    Boris will always appeal to the hard Brexit, Leave voting pro WTO terms crowd, for them he can do no wrong.

    Starmer has zero chance of winning them over, he needs to focus instead on uniting Remainers behind him and soft Leavers who would accept staying in the single market and are concerned about the government's Covid response
    But that will be pretty irrelevant if Brexit has faded to be just a background issue of little interest beyond to a few stalwarts. I suspect it will be no more central to a 2024 election campaign than the Iraq War proved to be in 2010.
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    rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    edited May 2020
    OllyT said:

    This is the story I expect to gain a lot of traction in the next few days.

    The UK Is Taking Longer Than Other Countries To Process Coronavirus Tests — And That's A Big Problem For Contact Tracing

    The government refused to reveal the average turnaround time for tests, but one Tory MP says they're taking five days or longer. Other countries can do it in hours.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/uk-coronavirus-test-trace-trace-results

    Didn't I read somewhere that we had had to send 50,000 to America for processing?
    What we're being told here is that there are different sorts of tests, with different levels of accuracy and different turnaround times. New York State now has a strategy of offering antigen tests which are very cheap and can be processed immediately at a doctor's surgery in about fifteen minutes. They very rarely test false positive so if they come up positive, the patient is advised to quarantine or if need be is hospitalized etc. About 20-25% of the time they return a false negative though, so if the patient tests negative then if there are any symptoms on contact history they are given a PCR test which is more expensive and takes a few days to return results, but is very accurate.
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    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,291
    edited May 2020
    Andy_JS said:

    My concern as of today is this coming weekend.

    Whoever in government thinks it is a good idea to open up driving in England to anywhere else in England and in particular the beaches and parks including the Lake district is making a huge error

    Travel should have been within a set limit, maybe 10 miles, and this policy is just wrong

    I expect their ratings to sink futher if I am right and this is another self inflicted own goal like Hancock's 100, 000 tests

    Maybe we should trust the people to do the right thing.
    We did and they ignored it comprehensively

    The result was that the car parking along the long stretches of Rhos to Old Colwyn were lost to all parking, including residents with tow truck signs. Nobody now parks near our beaches but the local residents just walk to them
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