Had a zoom social catch up today. Apart from me and the missus, all the others are naturally pro-Labour. Surprised in their reactions to Starmer - said he was dull. The women on the call noticed he had had put on weight.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
The problem is that the over 65 obese are mostly Tory voters, and the younger workers much less likely to be supporters.
To end the lockdown is to piss off his own voters.
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
Enjoying what? It's like a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977 on endless repeat, except with Netflix. And you can only watch so much fucking telly.
Well now you can go out and explore the world (in England at least).
Yeah. And there's nothing to do when you go exploring except go for a "nice walk." There are only so many "nice walks" (in a loop from your car or the train station to some place or another and then back again) that you can do before you get fucked off with going for "nice walks" as well.
Like I said, a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977.
Judging from Instagram most of my friends have spent today meeting up with their mates for beer and barbecue. Lockdown is over for people, but not for businesses. As I said, it's the worst of all possible worlds.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
I think you are letting your hopes cloud your judgement.
For a large chunk of the population, the Conservatives represent their values - pro-Brexit, pro-individual, anti-PC. We can argue whether that is true or not in reality but that is the perception.
If you are in that camp, your alternatives to the Conservatives are non-existent as they are in the US. You vote Conservative because that is the way you ensure your nightmare doesn't come to pass.
Whether they handed the CV crisis well or not matters not. You can blame scientific advisors who gave the wrong advice (and there is ambiguity there). You can persuade yourself to vote for Boris.
Can someone explain why the Tories didn't contest Bolton West and Huddersfield West between 1951 and 1959?
National Liberals?
No, Donald Wade and Arthur Holt were both "proper" Liberals at a time the party was at its all-time lowest ebb. Wade and then later Holt both served as Liberal chief whip.
They were sustained in parliament by local pacts with the Tories: In both cases, once the pact broke down, the presence of a Tory on the ballot allowed Labour to win the seat. The "Wests" in those constituency names are significant:
When boundary changes proposed in 1948 produced two constituencies based on the town of Huddersfield, where the local Liberal Association was strong, Wade proposed to the local Conservative Association that their respective parties would benefit from a pact whereby each agreed to fight only one of the constituencies and to support the other's candidate. The Conservatives wanted a pledge that any Liberal MP elected would not support a Labour government in a vote of no confidence; Wade slightly softened the wording and pledged that he "would not vote in such a way as to give a vote of confidence to an administration committed to further Socialist measures", which was accepted.
Also interesting that in 1958, a movement promoted by Edward Martell grew for a formal alliance of Conservatives and Liberals in an "Anti-Socialist Front". The Liberal Party Executive rejected the idea, whereupon Martell demanded a statement from Wade and from Arthur Holt, MP for Bolton West, who had been elected as a result of a similar pact.
For the flip side of the bargain, in Huddersfield East the Tories had stayed competitive with Labour throughout the 1950s without quite carrying it (7% behind in 1959 was their best) but when the Liberals stood in 1964 they nabbed just under half the Tory vote and from then it became a Labour fortress. Bolton East had flipped from Labour to Tory when the Liberals stood down in 1951 and they managed to keep it that way while the pact held; at the 1960 Bolton East by-election the Liberals decided to stand and in a tight three-way race the Tories just clung on. In 1964 though, when the Liberals stood again, it returned to Labour. Interestingly there were no Liberal candidates in 1966 or 1970 either, and the Tories won the latter; after that the Liberals stood again and Labour won the seat in the 1974 elections and 1979, in each case by a narrow margin over the Tories.
Callaghan led as preferred PB just before GE1979 which he lost to Maggie. The BEST guide are leadership approval ratings.
Corbyn led on approval ratings in 2017, May on preferred PM, May won.
The preferred PM has won every general election since at least 1979
The simple fact is that the appalling way the Tories have handled Covid....they deserve to be decimated at the polls. It just takes time to feed through. But after next years Brexit debacle....it will be a double whammy of misery for the blues....
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
Not really - much of this is simply some reversal of the boost they received in March and early April. That was always likely to be short term and to lack depth.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
The Tories still have a huge 15% lead this weekend despite Covid, Labour was in the lead in August 1992 even before the ERM crash
The government has shat the bed on the Rona. This is the first hint of the laundry bill.
We have the worst death toll in Europe and a populace completely mystified as to what to do. Go in, go out, masks on, masks off, schools in, schools out.
The only thing the Tories have going for them now is the relative likeability of Boris but that is a dwindling benefit, as he seems impaired.
If we’re going to be a socialist state we might as well have halfway competent socialists running it.
But we don't have any of them.
More to the point with all the borrowing which will be done over then next few years we can't afford a socialist state.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
HYUFD always posts with such certainty usually on repeat
The next GE will not before brexit is history and the battle will be on economics
I have no idea how this pans out but I do expect Boris to be a one nation conservative, and left leaning, making it a difficult space for Starmer and labour to stand in
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
Enjoying what? It's like a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977 on endless repeat, except with Netflix. And you can only watch so much fucking telly.
Well now you can go out and explore the world (in England at least).
Yeah. And there's nothing to do when you go exploring except go for a "nice walk." There are only so many "nice walks" (in a loop from your car or the train station to some place or another and then back again) that you can do before you get fucked off with going for "nice walks" as well.
Like I said, a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977.
Judging from Instagram most of my friends have spent today meeting up with their mates for beer and barbecue. Lockdown is over for people, but not for businesses. As I said, it's the worst of all possible worlds.
Well, looking on the bright side, if people see a few mates and then don't get anything next week, they might start to be less fearful about going back to work.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
The Tories still have a huge 15% lead this weekend despite Covid, Labour was in the lead in August 1992 even before the ERM crash
Covid is still likely to be boosting the Tories overall - though less so than a few weeks ago.
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
Enjoying what? It's like a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977 on endless repeat, except with Netflix. And you can only watch so much fucking telly.
Well now you can go out and explore the world (in England at least).
Yeah. And there's nothing to do when you go exploring except go for a "nice walk." There are only so many "nice walks" (in a loop from your car or the train station to some place or another and then back again) that you can do before you get fucked off with going for "nice walks" as well.
Like I said, a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977.
1976 is said to be the year of peak happiness in the UK.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
Not really - much of this is simply some reversal of the boost they received in March and early April. That was always likely to be short term and to lack depth.
I think if you notice from the press....the pendulum has already fallen into Keir's direction.....it is just a matter of time before decay and death sets into this rotten Tory administration, and they start gnawing at each other like rats in a sack of fermenting shit.....
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
Enjoying what? It's like a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977 on endless repeat, except with Netflix. And you can only watch so much fucking telly.
Well now you can go out and explore the world (in England at least).
Yeah. And there's nothing to do when you go exploring except go for a "nice walk." There are only so many "nice walks" (in a loop from your car or the train station to some place or another and then back again) that you can do before you get fucked off with going for "nice walks" as well.
Like I said, a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977.
Judging from Instagram most of my friends have spent today meeting up with their mates for beer and barbecue. Lockdown is over for people, but not for businesses. As I said, it's the worst of all possible worlds.
If it's happening on a large scale then it could end up assuming the character of a huge epidemiological experiment. If working age people mixing more freely leads to rapid transmission of the illness but without a massive spike in hospital admissions, then the case for lockdown for the old and sick and substantially more freedom for everyone else will quickly become unanswerable.
I fear that this is another scenario to be filed under "too good to be true," sadly.
I forgot to tell you! One of the objections being submitted to my rejoining the Labour Party is that "I have come back to wipe out any sign of socialism".
Callaghan led as preferred PB just before GE1979 which he lost to Maggie. The BEST guide are leadership approval ratings.
Corbyn led on approval ratings in 2017, May on preferred PM, May won.
The preferred PM has won every general election since at least 1979
The simple fact is that the appalling way the Tories have handled Covid....they deserve to be decimated at the polls. It just takes time to feed through. But after next years Brexit debacle....it will be a double whammy of misery for the blues....
They've made multiple mistakes.
But the Scottish and Welsh governments seem to have been even less impressive.
And can anyone say which other politicians would have done a better job ?
I think we have to accept that we have a deeply mediocre political establishment.
Now is that the political establishment this country deserves ?
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
Not really - much of this is simply some reversal of the boost they received in March and early April. That was always likely to be short term and to lack depth.
I think if you notice from the press....the pendulum has already fallen into Keir's direction.....it is just a matter of time before decay and death sets into this rotten Tory administration, and they start gnawing at each other like rats in a sack of fermenting shit.....
Another one praying for pestilence to win a culture war.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
HYUFD always posts with such certainty usually on repeat
The next GE will not before brexit is history and the battle will be on economics
I have no idea how this pans out but I do expect Boris to be a one nation conservative, and left leaning, making it a difficult space for Starmer and labour to stand in
Possibly true.....Boris's ability to move leftwards (and rightwards) is a dynamic that defies the laws of political gravity.....
Had a zoom social catch up today. Apart from me and the missus, all the others are naturally pro-Labour. Surprised in their reactions to Starmer - said he was dull. The women on the call noticed he had had put on weight.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
HYUFD always posts with such certainty usually on repeat
The next GE will not before brexit is history and the battle will be on economics
I have no idea how this pans out but I do expect Boris to be a one nation conservative, and left leaning, making it a difficult space for Starmer and labour to stand in
One nation Conservative? Boris is a one man Conservative.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
Not really - much of this is simply some reversal of the boost they received in March and early April. That was always likely to be short term and to lack depth.
I think if you notice from the press....the pendulum has already fallen into Keir's direction.....it is just a matter of time before decay and death sets into this rotten Tory administration, and they start gnawing at each other like rats in a sack of fermenting shit.....
I don't really disagree with that. However, had we not been faced with this Covid crisis I suspect the Tory lead would be quite a bit smaller than it still is. Starmer as new Leader would also have enjoyed a bigger boost . The latter might well have simply been delayed.
Had a zoom social catch up today. Apart from me and the missus, all the others are naturally pro-Labour. Surprised in their reactions to Starmer - said he was dull. The women on the call noticed he had had put on weight.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
HYUFD always posts with such certainty usually on repeat
The next GE will not before brexit is history and the battle will be on economics
I have no idea how this pans out but I do expect Boris to be a one nation conservative, and left leaning, making it a difficult space for Starmer and labour to stand in
Possibly true.....Boris's ability to move leftwards (and rightwards) is a dynamic that defies the laws of political gravity.....
Yet on Brexit he remains committed to hard Brexit and WTO terms if the EU do not agree a Canada style FTA, that is where the biggest risk for him lies
And a rather obscure guy called Nigel Lawson. Wonder if anything came of him?
Went a bit nutty and turned into an old lady I heard.
Lives in rural France, shouts at trees that there is no such thing as climate change is the last I heard.
That’s not his view.
He believes that mitigation spending (vs carbon zero) is a better strategy for dealing with climate change
Somebody needs to correct his Wikipedia entry then:
In a BBC radio interview in August 2017, Lawson falsely claimed that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade, and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events. In a follow-up programme on the BBC's presentation of these claims, Peter A. Stott of the UK Met Office said Lawson was wrong on both points.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
HYUFD always posts with such certainty usually on repeat
The next GE will not before brexit is history and the battle will be on economics
I have no idea how this pans out but I do expect Boris to be a one nation conservative, and left leaning, making it a difficult space for Starmer and labour to stand in
On the other hand, Callaghan and Healey were pursuing neo-monetarist policies in the late 1970s - yet that did not prevent people turning to Thatcher and Howe in 1979.
I think you'll find the Tories are going through their ERM moment again.....
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
Not really - much of this is simply some reversal of the boost they received in March and early April. That was always likely to be short term and to lack depth.
I think if you notice from the press....the pendulum has already fallen into Keir's direction.....it is just a matter of time before decay and death sets into this rotten Tory administration, and they start gnawing at each other like rats in a sack of fermenting shit.....
Another one praying for pestilence to win a culture war.
Chilling.
I don't want pestilence...I am merely commenting on what happens to political parties that remain in power too long.....they decay, and start fighting with each other.....
I would rather do without Covid thank you very much....I know people who have died, I'm much poorer, and miss the pub.....
Had a zoom social catch up today. Apart from me and the missus, all the others are naturally pro-Labour. Surprised in their reactions to Starmer - said he was dull. The women on the call noticed he had had put on weight.
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
Enjoying what? It's like a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977 on endless repeat, except with Netflix. And you can only watch so much fucking telly.
Well now you can go out and explore the world (in England at least).
Yeah. And there's nothing to do when you go exploring except go for a "nice walk." There are only so many "nice walks" (in a loop from your car or the train station to some place or another and then back again) that you can do before you get fucked off with going for "nice walks" as well.
Like I said, a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977.
Judging from Instagram most of my friends have spent today meeting up with their mates for beer and barbecue. Lockdown is over for people, but not for businesses. As I said, it's the worst of all possible worlds.
Well, looking on the bright side, if people see a few mates and then don't get anything next week, they might start to be less fearful about going back to work.
Can I just observe that people who stayed at home today won't be well-represented on anyone's instagram!!
Callaghan led as preferred PB just before GE1979 which he lost to Maggie. The BEST guide are leadership approval ratings.
Corbyn led on approval ratings in 2017, May on preferred PM, May won.
The preferred PM has won every general election since at least 1979
The simple fact is that the appalling way the Tories have handled Covid....they deserve to be decimated at the polls. It just takes time to feed through. But after next years Brexit debacle....it will be a double whammy of misery for the blues....
They've made multiple mistakes.
But the Scottish and Welsh governments seem to have been even less impressive.
And can anyone say which other politicians would have done a better job ?
I think we have to accept that we have a deeply mediocre political establishment.
Now is that the political establishment this country deserves ?
The reason for the care home crisis across England and the three devolved administrations seems to be the advice given by Sage and acted on collectively by Boris, Nicola, Drakeford and Foster
The fact they are all struggling today with it indicates the Public Health authorities failed to update the information to Cobra and through their organisations
I fully expect a public enquiry to be critical of these bodies
TBF given how shit Windows has been for the last 25 years you can see why people are worried about a vaccine created by Bill Gates.
Hopefully Tim Cook can sort out a vaccine and the plebs will be fine.
Windows 3.1 was the last best Windows Operating System wasn't it?
Depending on my mood I might say Vista.
XP was the last leap forward for best Windows Operating System. First one since 95 that didn't regularly crash and now aside from hardware failures the previously ubiquitous blue screen of death is rarely seen.
Windows 10 is fine, it works and it reversed the awful Windows 8 monstrosity but realistically its also just an evolved version of XP. There's a reason many businesses continued to use XP long, long after it should have been discontinued. Indeed some still do.
Doesn't he get that it is not the risk to children themselves but their ability to spread the disease to others who are at higher risk which is the consideration?
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
Enjoying what? It's like a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977 on endless repeat, except with Netflix. And you can only watch so much fucking telly.
Well now you can go out and explore the world (in England at least).
Yeah. And there's nothing to do when you go exploring except go for a "nice walk." There are only so many "nice walks" (in a loop from your car or the train station to some place or another and then back again) that you can do before you get fucked off with going for "nice walks" as well.
Like I said, a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977.
Judging from Instagram most of my friends have spent today meeting up with their mates for beer and barbecue. Lockdown is over for people, but not for businesses. As I said, it's the worst of all possible worlds.
True for the instagram generation, less so for the rest of us I suspect. Young people don't feel they are at much risk themselves and many will therefore see no problem in going out more now that it is permitted. That's fine if distancing etc is observed. If it isn't we'll be back in lockdown in a few weeks.
Doesn't he get that it is not the risk to children themselves but their ability to spread the disease to others who are at higher risk which is the consideration?
It's the same bollox that the right (cough AndyS) spout on about Sweden....even Simon Jenkins in the Guardian....
Doesn't he get that it is not the risk to children themselves but their ability to spread the disease to others who are at higher risk which is the consideration?
People with serious health conditions are, or should be, self-isolating.
Had a zoom social catch up today. Apart from me and the missus, all the others are naturally pro-Labour. Surprised in their reactions to Starmer - said he was dull. The women on the call noticed he had had put on weight.
Let me think for a moment which might be more reliable...
Fascinating how peoples' anecdotes always seem to support their own agenda!
I know. Never on the left though - they are the epitome of rationality and impartiality!
I was generalising - it goes right across the political spectrum. I've never known anyone post an anecdote that contradicted their own political agenda so be honest I view all anecdotes as pretty pointless.
XP was the last leap forward for best Windows Operating System. First one since 95 that didn't regularly crash and now aside from hardware failures the previously ubiquitous blue screen of death is rarely seen.
Windows 10 is fine, it works and it reversed the awful Windows 8 monstrosity but realistically its also just an evolved version of XP. There's a reason many businesses continued to use XP long, long after it should have been discontinued. Indeed some still do.
I stopped using Windows about 2005 and moved onto desktop Linux around then. I used to use SuSE but moved to Ubuntu when KDE4 came out. Now that it runs Plasma I am a very happy bunny.
And a rather obscure guy called Nigel Lawson. Wonder if anything came of him?
Went a bit nutty and turned into an old lady I heard.
Lives in rural France, shouts at trees that there is no such thing as climate change is the last I heard.
That’s not his view.
He believes that mitigation spending (vs carbon zero) is a better strategy for dealing with climate change
Somebody needs to correct his Wikipedia entry then:
In a BBC radio interview in August 2017, Lawson falsely claimed that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade, and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events. In a follow-up programme on the BBC's presentation of these claims, Peter A. Stott of the UK Met Office said Lawson was wrong on both points.
I read his book on the subject rather than relying on Wikipedia
Doesn't he get that it is not the risk to children themselves but their ability to spread the disease to others who are at higher risk which is the consideration?
Rationally yes. This is what I was trying to point out on the other thread, but received a lot of opposition from a "But what about the children?!" perspective.
I genuinely believe that much, maybe even the majority, of fear about restarting school is for people who are afraid of their children getting this mysterious evil killer disease and something horrifying happening to them. Rather than the more logical possibility of the kids bringing something back from school that affects the rest of the household or other people you have contact with. The risk to kids is quite possibly lower than it is from them picking up various other lurgies or dying in a school accident (surprisingly common) or having a traffic or cycling accident on the way there or back. But people don't react very well to the unknown. When faced with unknown risks, people tend to go into risk-minimisation mode even when the the risk involved is not known precisely but is known to be small.*
* (There are some extraordinary examples of this distaste for uncertainty in behavioural economics; one is a study in which people are willing to pay an average of $26 for a $50 gift certificate, but only $16 for a lottery that pays either a $50 or $100 gift certificate, with equal probability. and for the issue of unknown risk, the fascinating Ellsberg paradox and more generally ambiguity aversion. Exposing someone to COVID-related risk is inherently scarier because it involves unknowns. I think that may be particularly true when it concerns children, where you know you would feel extremely guilty about it if you exposed them to something which led to harm, even if you might have been prepared to take a similar risk yourself. Also relevant to the school closure issue is zero-risk bias, whereby people prefer to reduce a small risk to zero rather than achieve a greater reduction of a larger risk.)
Goodness only knows what that's delivering/collecting!
Missed that one. There's a Magma 747 flying in to Doncaster quite frequently - it is just about the only thing still flying. I wondered if it was PPE, given there is an NHS logistics warehouse near Normanton.
VI is buried within the Opinium tables. Con 49 Lab 34 LD 6 SNP 5
So even though the margin is narrowing, Lab is -15 behind the Tories when approval of the Lab leader is at +24 and that of the Tory leader at only +10.
In order to make real inroads into the VI gap, Starmer will need to convince the public that Labour as a party has really changed in his image.
In those days, because of Bretton Woods, we were effectively on the Gold Standard. If you ran a trade deficit, your stock of reserves a the Federal Bank of New York would diminish. You couldn't just print money to get yourself out of trouble because you were obliged to maintain a fixed exchange rate to the dollar, which was in turn fixed to gold.
This created big difficulties for governments.
But it also stopped governments from running unsustainable policies. If domestic demand ran ahead of domestic production, you needed to stamp down on domestic demand. It was brutal. But it also meant that you couldn't have a situation where you ran a massive deficit for a decade.
There were few, if any, systematic crises in the Bretton Woods era. Countries, broadly, lived inside their means.
And Bretton Woods, of course, was a response to the hyper-inflation and competitive devaluations from the pre-war era.
I wonder, or rather perhaps I should say I suspect, that we have forgotten those lessons. We now think we can print without consequence.
Edit to add: there's a great chapter in John Brooks' Business Adventures on a Bretton Woods era sterling crisis that's well worth a read.
I think that's rather rose-tinted analysis of Bretton Woods. The gold standard, even in its modified form as the gold exchange standard, means your monetary policy is basically hostage to changes in dentistry and fashion in the Middle East.
But even if it's right, it's irrelevant today. It was a very different world. The system relied on a non-inflationary and hegemonic United States, which is no longer on offer. Also, exchange controls, which simply aren't thinkable today.
And it was heavily biased in favour of surplus countries, like the euro today. Keynes realised that, and tried to include measures to force creditor adjustment, but the Americans wouldn't listen.
Ummm...
There were no (large) consistent surplus and deficit countries in the Bretton Woods period. Because countries that ran deficits needed to change their behaviour or they'd run out of reserves.
If you look at the cumulative current account deficits/surpluses between 1950 and 1970 for the world's biggest economies you see they basically all were... errr... about flat. You simply couldn't run a sustained deficit. And if no-one was running sustained deficits you couldn't have a sustained surplus. (There are exceptions - like Switzerland - but they were tiny countries that could accumulate reserves without it having any meaningful effects on the total.)
Bretton Woods, and before it the Gold Standard, tied the hands of politicians. And they tied the hands of politicians because when politicians have the power to print money, it always ends up going to shit.
The current era of Modern Monetary Theory has allowed insane inbalances. It has allowed countries to spend beyond their means for decades. It has allowed the UK (for example) to go from massive net creditor status, to serious net debtor.
Now, I don't think that Bretton Woods will be repeated. But I do think that politicians will debase the currency. Because that will be the path of least resistance, especially when so much is owed to people (errr) outside the country. Owe pounds to the Chinese? Make pounds worth less!
Something will replace MMT, and it will be based around taking the power of money printing away from politicians. It might be crypto. It might be something else. But the current era of the printing press will end as all such eras have ended in the past.
Doesn't he get that it is not the risk to children themselves but their ability to spread the disease to others who are at higher risk which is the consideration?
I tend to think that anyone who doesn't realise that their views (however interesting) are damaged by association with Tobes is possibly too naive to be worth paying attention to. Kind of self fulfilling..
And a rather obscure guy called Nigel Lawson. Wonder if anything came of him?
Went a bit nutty and turned into an old lady I heard.
Lives in rural France, shouts at trees that there is no such thing as climate change is the last I heard.
That’s not his view.
He believes that mitigation spending (vs carbon zero) is a better strategy for dealing with climate change
Somebody needs to correct his Wikipedia entry then:
In a BBC radio interview in August 2017, Lawson falsely claimed that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade, and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events. In a follow-up programme on the BBC's presentation of these claims, Peter A. Stott of the UK Met Office said Lawson was wrong on both points.
I read his book on the subject rather than relying on Wikipedia
Well then, there's your error. If you're going to start relying on what people actually say, rather than reading Wikipedia, then where does it end?
In those days, because of Bretton Woods, we were effectively on the Gold Standard. If you ran a trade deficit, your stock of reserves a the Federal Bank of New York would diminish. You couldn't just print money to get yourself out of trouble because you were obliged to maintain a fixed exchange rate to the dollar, which was in turn fixed to gold.
This created big difficulties for governments.
But it also stopped governments from running unsustainable policies. If domestic demand ran ahead of domestic production, you needed to stamp down on domestic demand. It was brutal. But it also meant that you couldn't have a situation where you ran a massive deficit for a decade.
There were few, if any, systematic crises in the Bretton Woods era. Countries, broadly, lived inside their means.
And Bretton Woods, of course, was a response to the hyper-inflation and competitive devaluations from the pre-war era.
I wonder, or rather perhaps I should say I suspect, that we have forgotten those lessons. We now think we can print without consequence.
Edit to add: there's a great chapter in John Brooks' Business Adventures on a Bretton Woods era sterling crisis that's well worth a read.
I think that's rather rose-tinted analysis of Bretton Woods. The gold standard, even in its modified form as the gold exchange standard, means your monetary policy is basically hostage to changes in dentistry and fashion in the Middle East.
But even if it's right, it's irrelevant today. It was a very different world. The system relied on a non-inflationary and hegemonic United States, which is no longer on offer. Also, exchange controls, which simply aren't thinkable today.
And it was heavily biased in favour of surplus countries, like the euro today. Keynes realised that, and tried to include measures to force creditor adjustment, but the Americans wouldn't listen.
Ummm...
There were no (large) consistent surplus and deficit countries in the Bretton Woods period. Because countries that ran deficits needed to change their behaviour or they'd run out of reserves.
If you look at the cumulative current account deficits/surpluses between 1950 and 1970 for the world's biggest economies you see they basically all were... errr... about flat. You simply couldn't run a sustained deficit. And if no-one was running sustained deficits you couldn't have a sustained surplus. (There are exceptions - like Switzerland - but they were tiny countries that could accumulate reserves without it having any meaningful effects on the total.)
Bretton Woods, and before it the Gold Standard, tied the hands of politicians. And they tied the hands of politicians because when politicians have the power to print money, it always ends up going to shit.
The current era of Modern Monetary Theory has allowed insane inbalances. It has allowed countries to spend beyond their means for decades. It has allowed the UK (for example) to go from massive net creditor status, to serious net debtor.
Now, I don't think that Bretton Woods will be repeated. But I do think that politicians will debase the currency. Because that will be the path of least resistance, especially when so much is owed to people (errr) outside the country. Owe pounds to the Chinese? Make pounds worth less!
Something will replace MMT, and it will be based around taking the power of money printing away from politicians. It might be crypto. It might be something else. But the current era of the printing press will end as all such eras have ended in the past.
One thing I'm curious about is when the BBC stopped reporting the trade balance each month.
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
Enjoying what? It's like a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977 on endless repeat, except with Netflix. And you can only watch so much fucking telly.
Well now you can go out and explore the world (in England at least).
Yeah. And there's nothing to do when you go exploring except go for a "nice walk." There are only so many "nice walks" (in a loop from your car or the train station to some place or another and then back again) that you can do before you get fucked off with going for "nice walks" as well.
Like I said, a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977.
Judging from Instagram most of my friends have spent today meeting up with their mates for beer and barbecue. Lockdown is over for people, but not for businesses. As I said, it's the worst of all possible worlds.
True for the instagram generation, less so for the rest of us I suspect. Young people don't feel they are at much risk themselves and many will therefore see no problem in going out more now that it is permitted. That's fine if distancing etc is observed. If it isn't we'll be back in lockdown in a few weeks.
The trouble with that is that most people have realised it's not fatal if you catch it (300ish deaths aged 45 or under) so unless you're willing to enforce strict lockdown with severe penalties for anyone who breaks the rules, going back into strict lockdown isn't going to happen.
Those who are afraid of the virus are still self isolating - for everyone else, this thing is over, the genie isn't going back into the bottle.
The government needs a plan to restart the economy and get people back to work while shielding the elderly and vulnerable. Where is it?
Doesn't he get that it is not the risk to children themselves but their ability to spread the disease to others who are at higher risk which is the consideration?
Hasn't it been shown that in addition to not being effected by it, they also do not spread it? Transmission in schools is between teachers.
This header was maybe written before tonight's Opinium VI but although early days it does look a bit like Labour have picked another dud. They seem to be looking no better than Corbyn did and that's after 6 weeks with Starmer as leader who hasn't given the party a boost since the dire election result. I always thought Nandy looked the better option to win red wall votes back, she just seems less stuffy and more in touch. Obviously he needs longer to make his mark but it looks like Tory voters have so far made the judgement that they prefer him to Corbyn but will stick with Boris. Perhaps picking someone with such Brexit baggage as Stamer would always alienate them when it came to winning back the working class voters they lost over the past 2 decades.
And a rather obscure guy called Nigel Lawson. Wonder if anything came of him?
Went a bit nutty and turned into an old lady I heard.
Lives in rural France, shouts at trees that there is no such thing as climate change is the last I heard.
That’s not his view.
He believes that mitigation spending (vs carbon zero) is a better strategy for dealing with climate change
Somebody needs to correct his Wikipedia entry then:
In a BBC radio interview in August 2017, Lawson falsely claimed that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade, and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events. In a follow-up programme on the BBC's presentation of these claims, Peter A. Stott of the UK Met Office said Lawson was wrong on both points.
I read his book on the subject rather than relying on Wikipedia
Well then, there's your error. If you're going to start relying on what people actually say, rather than reading Wikipedia, then where does it end?
Did Lawson, or did he not, falsely claim in August 2017 that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade, and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events.?
VI is buried within the Opinium tables. Con 49 Lab 34 LD 6 SNP 5
So even though the margin is narrowing, Lab is -15 behind the Tories when approval of the Lab leader is at +24 and that of the Tory leader at only +10.
In order to make real inroads into the VI gap, Starmer will need to convince the public that Labour as a party has really changed in his image.
That is too pessimistic - much of the Tory lead is still likely to be base on the Covid 'rally round' effect even though now diminishing.
Doesn't he get that it is not the risk to children themselves but their ability to spread the disease to others who are at higher risk which is the consideration?
Hasn't it been shown that in addition to not being effected by it, they also do not spread it? Transmission in schools is between teachers.
This header was maybe written before tonight's Opinium VI but although early days it does look a bit like Labour have picked another dud. They seem to be looking no better than Corbyn did and that's after 6 weeks with Starmer as leader who hasn't given the party a boost since the dire election result. I always thought Nandy looked the better option to win red wall votes back, she just seems less stuffy and more in touch. Obviously he needs longer to make his mark but it looks like Tory voters have so far made the judgement that they prefer him to Corbyn but will stick with Boris. Perhaps picking someone with such Brexit baggage as Stamer would always alienate them when it came to winning back the working class voters they lost over the past 2 decades.
A lot of wishful thinking there with the Tory lead already having dropped from 26% to 15% - a swing of 5.5%. Not at all unlikely that Labour will be ahead before the end of the year.
"To what extent do you approve, or disapprove, of the UK Government’s handling of the Coronavirus situation so far?" Approve 39, Disapprove 42
"And to what extent do you approve or disapprove of Keir Starmer and the Labour Party's response to the government's handling of the Coronavirus pandemic?" Approve 35, Disapprove 20
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
Enjoying what? It's like a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977 on endless repeat, except with Netflix. And you can only watch so much fucking telly.
Well now you can go out and explore the world (in England at least).
Yeah. And there's nothing to do when you go exploring except go for a "nice walk." There are only so many "nice walks" (in a loop from your car or the train station to some place or another and then back again) that you can do before you get fucked off with going for "nice walks" as well.
Like I said, a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977.
Judging from Instagram most of my friends have spent today meeting up with their mates for beer and barbecue. Lockdown is over for people, but not for businesses. As I said, it's the worst of all possible worlds.
True for the instagram generation, less so for the rest of us I suspect. Young people don't feel they are at much risk themselves and many will therefore see no problem in going out more now that it is permitted. That's fine if distancing etc is observed. If it isn't we'll be back in lockdown in a few weeks.
The trouble with that is that most people have realised it's not fatal if you catch it (300ish deaths aged 45 or under) so unless you're willing to enforce strict lockdown with severe penalties for anyone who breaks the rules, going back into strict lockdown isn't going to happen.
Those who are afraid of the virus are still self isolating - for everyone else, this thing is over, the genie isn't going back into the bottle.
The government needs a plan to restart the economy and get people back to work while shielding the elderly and vulnerable. Where is it?
Parts of the economy are steadily restarting - see the queues at drive-through restaurants for example.
Others parts aren't going to restart until progress against covid is made or because they've been discovered to be obsolete.
Wasn't this all announced weeks ago? With the idiot Sky journalist going but why it is still going to take another year?
Boris Johnson today announces the Government is investing £93 million to bring forward the opening of a pioneering new vaccine centre by a year. The lab should now be open by summer 2021 with the hope it will be able to produce enough vaccines to serve the entire population by the end of next year.
In those days, because of Bretton Woods, we were effectively on the Gold Standard. If you ran a trade deficit, your stock of reserves a the Federal Bank of New York would diminish. You couldn't just print money to get yourself out of trouble because you were obliged to maintain a fixed exchange rate to the dollar, which was in turn fixed to gold.
This created big difficulties for governments.
But it also stopped governments from running unsustainable policies. If domestic demand ran ahead of domestic production, you needed to stamp down on domestic demand. It was brutal. But it also meant that you couldn't have a situation where you ran a massive deficit for a decade.
There were few, if any, systematic crises in the Bretton Woods era. Countries, broadly, lived inside their means.
And Bretton Woods, of course, was a response to the hyper-inflation and competitive devaluations from the pre-war era.
I wonder, or rather perhaps I should say I suspect, that we have forgotten those lessons. We now think we can print without consequence.
Edit to add: there's a great chapter in John Brooks' Business Adventures on a Bretton Woods era sterling crisis that's well worth a read.
I think that's rather rose-tinted analysis of Bretton Woods. The gold standard, even in its modified form as the gold exchange standard, means your monetary policy is basically hostage to changes in dentistry and fashion in the Middle East.
But even if it's right, it's irrelevant today. It was a very different world. The system relied on a non-inflationary and hegemonic United States, which is no longer on offer. Also, exchange controls, which simply aren't thinkable today.
And it was heavily biased in favour of surplus countries, like the euro today. Keynes realised that, and tried to include measures to force creditor adjustment, but the Americans wouldn't listen.
Ummm...
There were no (large) consistent surplus and deficit countries in the Bretton Woods period. Because countries that ran deficits needed to change their behaviour or they'd run out of reserves.
If you look at the cumulative current account deficits/surpluses between 1950 and 1970 for the world's biggest economies you see they basically all were... errr... about flat. You simply couldn't run a sustained deficit. And if no-one was running sustained deficits you couldn't have a sustained surplus. (There are exceptions - like Switzerland - but they were tiny countries that could accumulate reserves without it having any meaningful effects on the total.)
Bretton Woods, and before it the Gold Standard, tied the hands of politicians. And they tied the hands of politicians because when politicians have the power to print money, it always ends up going to shit.
The current era of Modern Monetary Theory has allowed insane inbalances. It has allowed countries to spend beyond their means for decades. It has allowed the UK (for example) to go from massive net creditor status, to serious net debtor.
Now, I don't think that Bretton Woods will be repeated. But I do think that politicians will debase the currency. Because that will be the path of least resistance, especially when so much is owed to people (errr) outside the country. Owe pounds to the Chinese? Make pounds worth less!
Something will replace MMT, and it will be based around taking the power of money printing away from politicians. It might be crypto. It might be something else. But the current era of the printing press will end as all such eras have ended in the past.
Ummm....
Internal balance matters much more than external balance. Bretton Woods, like all fixed currency regimes, focused on the latter. Since 1973, the industrialised world has, quite rightly, focused on the former.
There are some pressures on politicians to debauch their currencies. But there are also pressures pointing to price stability, which is why we have the monetary regime we do. Which will prevail will be different in different countries (e.g. Switzerland or Germany vs Argentina or Zimbabwe for extreme cases) at different times. I'm fairly happy with where we are on the spectrum, and it's much better than any form of fixed exchange rates or gold standard, which is why very few serious economists are calling for the latter (except people, like Blair, who want us to be in the euro for political reasons).
We have plenty of economic problems, but they're almost entirely on the supply side, not the demand side.
I think anyone who has been to Oxted knows that the land is incredibly expensive. The only folk I know who live there are multi multi millionaires. I think Starmer needs to drop the working class act, Sunak was more privileged than starmer but doesn't try and hide it and I think people like him more for it
Wasn't this all announced weeks ago? With the idiot Sky journalist going but why it is still going to take another year?
Boris Johnson today announces the Government is investing £93 million to bring forward the opening of a pioneering new vaccine centre by a year. The lab should now be open by summer 2021 with the hope it will be able to produce enough vaccines to serve the entire population by the end of next year.
I think anyone who has been to Oxted knows that the land is incredibly expensive. The only folk I know who live there are multi multi millionaires. I think Starmer needs to drop the working class act, Sunak was more privileged than starmer but doesn't try and hide it and I think people like him more for it
Its a stupid story, but I do think there is something in the just being honest. Cameron tried every so hard to appear not as posh as he was, and it makes people instantly suspicious. Same with Ed Miliband man of the people attempts, down the Greggs.
Boris never plays down being a posho, and that has never seen to do him any harm (it is the lazy / lying / incompetent issues that do).
This header was maybe written before tonight's Opinium VI but although early days it does look a bit like Labour have picked another dud. They seem to be looking no better than Corbyn did and that's after 6 weeks with Starmer as leader who hasn't given the party a boost since the dire election result. I always thought Nandy looked the better option to win red wall votes back, she just seems less stuffy and more in touch. Obviously he needs longer to make his mark but it looks like Tory voters have so far made the judgement that they prefer him to Corbyn but will stick with Boris. Perhaps picking someone with such Brexit baggage as Stamer would always alienate them when it came to winning back the working class voters they lost over the past 2 decades.
A lot of wishful thinking there with the Tory lead already having dropped from 26% to 15% - a swing of 5.5%. Not at all unlikely that Labour will be ahead before the end of the year.
This is a lot of backtracking from `when Labour get a proper leader they will be streets ahead as Boris is awful` Let's face it the lead is even bigger than the election and Starmer is making little to no headway beyond his personal ratings. I suppose what you might be staying is Labour is too toxic for most and the party is holding back Starmer more than the other way round.
Either way even they most optimistic Labour supporter will admit this isn't exactly the bounce they would have expected after ditching Corbyn.
In those days, because of Bretton Woods, we were effectively on the Gold Standard. If you ran a trade deficit, your stock of reserves a the Federal Bank of New York would diminish. You couldn't just print money to get yourself out of trouble because you were obliged to maintain a fixed exchange rate to the dollar, which was in turn fixed to gold.
This created big difficulties for governments.
But it also stopped governments from running unsustainable policies. If domestic demand ran ahead of domestic production, you needed to stamp down on domestic demand. It was brutal. But it also meant that you couldn't have a situation where you ran a massive deficit for a decade.
There were few, if any, systematic crises in the Bretton Woods era. Countries, broadly, lived inside their means.
And Bretton Woods, of course, was a response to the hyper-inflation and competitive devaluations from the pre-war era.
I wonder, or rather perhaps I should say I suspect, that we have forgotten those lessons. We now think we can print without consequence.
Edit to add: there's a great chapter in John Brooks' Business Adventures on a Bretton Woods era sterling crisis that's well worth a read.
I think that's rather rose-tinted analysis of Bretton Woods. The gold standard, even in its modified form as the gold exchange standard, means your monetary policy is basically hostage to changes in dentistry and fashion in the Middle East.
But even if it's right, it's irrelevant today. It was a very different world. The system relied on a non-inflationary and hegemonic United States, which is no longer on offer. Also, exchange controls, which simply aren't thinkable today.
And it was heavily biased in favour of surplus countries, like the euro today. Keynes realised that, and tried to include measures to force creditor adjustment, but the Americans wouldn't listen.
Ummm...
There were no (large) consistent surplus and deficit countries in the Bretton Woods period. Because countries that ran deficits needed to change their behaviour or they'd run out of reserves.
If you look at the cumulative current account deficits/surpluses between 1950 and 1970 for the world's biggest economies you see they basically all were... errr... about flat. You simply couldn't run a sustained deficit. And if no-one was running sustained deficits you couldn't have a sustained surplus. (There are exceptions - like Switzerland - but they were tiny countries that could accumulate reserves without it having any meaningful effects on the total.)
Bretton Woods, and before it the Gold Standard, tied the hands of politicians. And they tied the hands of politicians because when politicians have the power to print money, it always ends up going to shit.
The current era of Modern Monetary Theory has allowed insane inbalances. It has allowed countries to spend beyond their means for decades. It has allowed the UK (for example) to go from massive net creditor status, to serious net debtor.
Now, I don't think that Bretton Woods will be repeated. But I do think that politicians will debase the currency. Because that will be the path of least resistance, especially when so much is owed to people (errr) outside the country. Owe pounds to the Chinese? Make pounds worth less!
Something will replace MMT, and it will be based around taking the power of money printing away from politicians. It might be crypto. It might be something else. But the current era of the printing press will end as all such eras have ended in the past.
Ummm....
Internal balance matters much more than external balance. Bretton Woods, like all fixed currency regimes, focused on the latter. Since 1973, the industrialised world has, quite rightly, focused on the former.
There are some pressures on politicians to debauch their currencies. But there are also pressures pointing to price stability, which is why we have the monetary regime we do. Which will prevail will be different in different countries (e.g. Switzerland or Germany vs Argentina or Zimbabwe for extreme cases) at different times. I'm fairly happy with where we are on the spectrum, and it's much better than any form of fixed exchange rates or gold standard, which is why very few serious economists are calling for the latter (except people, like Blair, who want us to be in the euro for political reasons).
We have plenty of economic problems, but they're almost entirely on the supply side, not the demand side.
Internal balance? Maybe I'm being dim, but what is the internal balance?
This header was maybe written before tonight's Opinium VI but although early days it does look a bit like Labour have picked another dud. They seem to be looking no better than Corbyn did and that's after 6 weeks with Starmer as leader who hasn't given the party a boost since the dire election result. I always thought Nandy looked the better option to win red wall votes back, she just seems less stuffy and more in touch. Obviously he needs longer to make his mark but it looks like Tory voters have so far made the judgement that they prefer him to Corbyn but will stick with Boris. Perhaps picking someone with such Brexit baggage as Stamer would always alienate them when it came to winning back the working class voters they lost over the past 2 decades.
A lot of wishful thinking there with the Tory lead already having dropped from 26% to 15% - a swing of 5.5%. Not at all unlikely that Labour will be ahead before the end of the year.
This is a lot of backtracking from `when Labour get a proper leader they will be streets ahead as Boris is awful` Let's face it the lead is even bigger than the election and Starmer is making little to no headway beyond his personal ratings. I suppose what you might be staying is Labour is too toxic for most and the party is holding back Starmer more than the other way round.
Either way even they most optimistic Labour supporter will admit this isn't exactly the bounce they would have expected after ditching Corbyn.
In terms of leadership ratings there appears to have been a big boost, but party poll shares are still distorted - to Tory advantage - by the Covid crisis. Were an election to be held, the Tories would be likely to lose over half this poll lead . Once the economic tsunami takes hold , a further big switch is likely.
Where will the poor donkeys go? Surrey is so nice.
£10 million sounds a lot for a field, even one containing pedigree donkeys. Does the Mail's valuation depend on its being granted planning permission for housing?
When I'm an MP my story's going to go like this. My disabled NHS-worker granddaughter always wanted to live in a castle, so when she finished her nursing exams I gladly donated to the Build A Massive Moat Around The Family Pile Fund. Now every time she finishes a shift, she can relax in our garden by watching our endangered-breed Duck Island where we specialise in ducks that sound like donkeys. It's the perfect vantage point to sit and knit mittens for singed and orphaned koalas.
And a rather obscure guy called Nigel Lawson. Wonder if anything came of him?
Went a bit nutty and turned into an old lady I heard.
Lives in rural France, shouts at trees that there is no such thing as climate change is the last I heard.
That’s not his view.
He believes that mitigation spending (vs carbon zero) is a better strategy for dealing with climate change
Somebody needs to correct his Wikipedia entry then:
In a BBC radio interview in August 2017, Lawson falsely claimed that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade, and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events. In a follow-up programme on the BBC's presentation of these claims, Peter A. Stott of the UK Met Office said Lawson was wrong on both points.
I read his book on the subject rather than relying on Wikipedia
Well then, there's your error. If you're going to start relying on what people actually say, rather than reading Wikipedia, then where does it end?
Did Lawson, or did he not, falsely claim in August 2017 that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade, and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events.?
He did exactly that, and you will find it confirmed online by e.g. the bbc, guardian and new scientist. His book dates from 2008 and therefore represents an earlier flavour of blithering dementia.
Where will the poor donkeys go? Surrey is so nice.
£10 million sounds a lot for a field, even one containing pedigree donkeys. Does the Mail's valuation depend on its being granted planning permission for housing?
No, the Mail's valuation depends on it being owned by the Labour Leader.
Where will the poor donkeys go? Surrey is so nice.
£10 million sounds a lot for a field, even one containing pedigree donkeys. Does the Mail's valuation depend on its being granted planning permission for housing?
Yep.I thought that too. The "up to" being a clue. My house is also worth up to £10m As are my socks
In those days, because of Bretton Woods, we were effectively on the Gold Standard. If you ran a trade deficit, your stock of reserves a the Federal Bank of New York would diminish. You couldn't just print money to get yourself out of trouble because you were obliged to maintain a fixed exchange rate to the dollar, which was in turn fixed to gold.
This created big difficulties for governments.
But it also stopped governments from running unsustainable policies. If domestic demand ran ahead of domestic production, you needed to stamp down on domestic demand. It was brutal. But it also meant that you couldn't have a situation where you ran a massive deficit for a decade.
There were few, if any, systematic crises in the Bretton Woods era. Countries, broadly, lived inside their means.
And Bretton Woods, of course, was a response to the hyper-inflation and competitive devaluations from the pre-war era.
I wonder, or rather perhaps I should say I suspect, that we have forgotten those lessons. We now think we can print without consequence.
Edit to add: there's a great chapter in John Brooks' Business Adventures on a Bretton Woods era sterling crisis that's well worth a read.
I think that's rather rose-tinted analysis of Bretton Woods. The gold standard, even in its modified form as the gold exchange standard, means your monetary policy is basically hostage to changes in dentistry and fashion in the Middle East.
But even if it's right, it's irrelevant today. It was a very different world. The system relied on a non-inflationary and hegemonic United States, which is no longer on offer. Also, exchange controls, which simply aren't thinkable today.
And it was heavily biased in favour of surplus countries, like the euro today. Keynes realised that, and tried to include measures to force creditor adjustment, but the Americans wouldn't listen.
Ummm...
There were no (large) consistent surplus and deficit countries in the Bretton Woods period. Because countries that ran deficits needed to change their behaviour or they'd run out of reserves.
If you look at the cumulative current account deficits/surpluses between 1950 and 1970 for the world's biggest economies you see they basically all were... errr... about flat. You simply couldn't run a sustained deficit. And if no-one was running sustained deficits you couldn't have a sustained surplus. (There are exceptions - like Switzerland - but they were tiny countries that could accumulate reserves without it having any meaningful effects on the total.)
Bretton Woods, and before it the Gold Standard, tied the hands of politicians. And they tied the hands of politicians because when politicians have the power to print money, it always ends up going to shit.
The current era of Modern Monetary Theory has allowed insane inbalances. It has allowed countries to spend beyond their means for decades. It has allowed the UK (for example) to go from massive net creditor status, to serious net debtor.
Now, I don't think that Bretton Woods will be repeated. But I do think that politicians will debase the currency. Because that will be the path of least resistance, especially when so much is owed to people (errr) outside the country. Owe pounds to the Chinese? Make pounds worth less!
Something will replace MMT, and it will be based around taking the power of money printing away from politicians. It might be crypto. It might be something else. But the current era of the printing press will end as all such eras have ended in the past.
Ummm....
Internal balance matters much more than external balance. Bretton Woods, like all fixed currency regimes, focused on the latter. Since 1973, the industrialised world has, quite rightly, focused on the former.
There are some pressures on politicians to debauch their currencies. But there are also pressures pointing to price stability, which is why we have the monetary regime we do. Which will prevail will be different in different countries (e.g. Switzerland or Germany vs Argentina or Zimbabwe for extreme cases) at different times. I'm fairly happy with where we are on the spectrum, and it's much better than any form of fixed exchange rates or gold standard, which is why very few serious economists are calling for the latter (except people, like Blair, who want us to be in the euro for political reasons).
We have plenty of economic problems, but they're almost entirely on the supply side, not the demand side.
Internal balance? Maybe I'm being dim, but what is the internal balance?
I've not heard it phrased that way before but I imagine he means eg stability in prices (low inflation) over stability in exchange rates which is an argument I've often made here.
One being off can lead to the other one being off too, but not always and sometimes only one of the two can be balanced.
This header was maybe written before tonight's Opinium VI but although early days it does look a bit like Labour have picked another dud. They seem to be looking no better than Corbyn did and that's after 6 weeks with Starmer as leader who hasn't given the party a boost since the dire election result. I always thought Nandy looked the better option to win red wall votes back, she just seems less stuffy and more in touch. Obviously he needs longer to make his mark but it looks like Tory voters have so far made the judgement that they prefer him to Corbyn but will stick with Boris. Perhaps picking someone with such Brexit baggage as Stamer would always alienate them when it came to winning back the working class voters they lost over the past 2 decades.
A lot of wishful thinking there with the Tory lead already having dropped from 26% to 15% - a swing of 5.5%. Not at all unlikely that Labour will be ahead before the end of the year.
This is a lot of backtracking from `when Labour get a proper leader they will be streets ahead as Boris is awful` Let's face it the lead is even bigger than the election and Starmer is making little to no headway beyond his personal ratings. I suppose what you might be staying is Labour is too toxic for most and the party is holding back Starmer more than the other way round.
Either way even they most optimistic Labour supporter will admit this isn't exactly the bounce they would have expected after ditching Corbyn.
In terms of leadership ratings there appears to have been a big boost, but party poll shares are still distorted - to Tory advantage - by the Covid crisis. Were an election to be held, the Tories would be likely to lose over half this poll lead . Once the economic tsunami takes hold , a further big switch is likely.
That's just guess work in fairness. If you want another guess then if the Tories are at risk of not winning in 2024 under Boris they have a ready made election winner in Sunak. Are the swing voters really going to pick the stale lawyer in his 60s over the young, fresher guy who saved millions of jobs with compassionate economics when the virus hit? The Tories not only have a current winner they have a future winner and that must scare the life out of the most ardent Labour supporters.
This header was maybe written before tonight's Opinium VI but although early days it does look a bit like Labour have picked another dud. They seem to be looking no better than Corbyn did and that's after 6 weeks with Starmer as leader who hasn't given the party a boost since the dire election result. I always thought Nandy looked the better option to win red wall votes back, she just seems less stuffy and more in touch. Obviously he needs longer to make his mark but it looks like Tory voters have so far made the judgement that they prefer him to Corbyn but will stick with Boris. Perhaps picking someone with such Brexit baggage as Stamer would always alienate them when it came to winning back the working class voters they lost over the past 2 decades.
A lot of wishful thinking there with the Tory lead already having dropped from 26% to 15% - a swing of 5.5%. Not at all unlikely that Labour will be ahead before the end of the year.
This is a lot of backtracking from `when Labour get a proper leader they will be streets ahead as Boris is awful` Let's face it the lead is even bigger than the election and Starmer is making little to no headway beyond his personal ratings. I suppose what you might be staying is Labour is too toxic for most and the party is holding back Starmer more than the other way round.
Either way even they most optimistic Labour supporter will admit this isn't exactly the bounce they would have expected after ditching Corbyn.
In terms of leadership ratings there appears to have been a big boost, but party poll shares are still distorted - to Tory advantage - by the Covid crisis. Were an election to be held, the Tories would be likely to lose over half this poll lead . Once the economic tsunami takes hold , a further big switch is likely.
That's just guess work in fairness. If you want another guess then if the Tories are at risk of not winning in 2024 under Boris they have a ready made election winner in Sunak. Are the swing voters really going to pick the stale lawyer in his 60s over the young, fresher guy who saved millions of jobs with compassionate economics when the virus hit? The Tories not only have a current winner they have a future winner and that must scare the life out of the most ardent Labour supporters.
Hold on there, bud. He hasn't saved millions of jobs yet. Furlough can't go on indefinitely and there will be many redundancies as the scheme winds down. Many more businesses will go to the wall, leaving more out of work. Meanwhile, taxes will eventually have to rise on those still in work to pay for it all.
I wouldn't be putting all my eggs in the Sunak basket just yet.
As well as the body count, the general relaxing of the lockdown is unpopular, even if individual measures aren't. A lot of people are still very scared and as humans we are shit at assessing risk, so i bet lots of parents are very unhappy that government want schools to start opening up even if risk to little johnny is absolutely minute.
I think a lot of people think if we just sit out for another month or two this will have gone away, so it seems reckless for the government to be nudging us to get out again.
Of course that's not true. If enough individuals are desperate enough to get out in the fresh air, meet their friends and visit their relatives then the police can't do much about that, but businesses are much easier to control and the Government can easily keep the hospitality and leisure sector firmly closed until almost all of it has expired through strangulation.
Mass unemployment, endless social distancing, don't visit Mum for Christmas unless you want her to die and never get within two metres of someone you don't live with ever, ever again is all we've got to look forward to from this point on. There'll be a politely spaced queue for people to throw themselves off Beachy Head this Winter.
Quite.
I see a worst of all possible worlds scenario developing, where most people realise the disease isn't fatal unless you're over 65 or fat, and mingle more or less freely, enjoying a paid holiday through furlough while crying "butcher!" if Boris dares to tell people to go back to work.
Enjoying what? It's like a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977 on endless repeat, except with Netflix. And you can only watch so much fucking telly.
Well now you can go out and explore the world (in England at least).
Yeah. And there's nothing to do when you go exploring except go for a "nice walk." There are only so many "nice walks" (in a loop from your car or the train station to some place or another and then back again) that you can do before you get fucked off with going for "nice walks" as well.
Like I said, a deadly dull Sunday afternoon in 1977.
Judging from Instagram most of my friends have spent today meeting up with their mates for beer and barbecue. Lockdown is over for people, but not for businesses. As I said, it's the worst of all possible worlds.
True for the instagram generation, less so for the rest of us I suspect. Young people don't feel they are at much risk themselves and many will therefore see no problem in going out more now that it is permitted. That's fine if distancing etc is observed. If it isn't we'll be back in lockdown in a few weeks.
The trouble with that is that most people have realised it's not fatal if you catch it (300ish deaths aged 45 or under) so unless you're willing to enforce strict lockdown with severe penalties for anyone who breaks the rules, going back into strict lockdown isn't going to happen.
Those who are afraid of the virus are still self isolating - for everyone else, this thing is over, the genie isn't going back into the bottle.
The government needs a plan to restart the economy and get people back to work while shielding the elderly and vulnerable. Where is it?
Parts of the economy are steadily restarting - see the queues at drive-through restaurants for example.
Others parts aren't going to restart until progress against covid is made or because they've been discovered to be obsolete.
The government never asked drive-through restaurants to close. Most did, perhaps because without the eat-in part, operation was uneconomic. McDonalds and KFC round here are still closed, even if they have reopened in other parts of the country.
Doesn't he get that it is not the risk to children themselves but their ability to spread the disease to others who are at higher risk which is the consideration?
Rationally yes. This is what I was trying to point out on the other thread, but received a lot of opposition from a "But what about the children?!" perspective.
I genuinely believe that much, maybe even the majority, of fear about restarting school is for people who are afraid of their children getting this mysterious evil killer disease and something horrifying happening to them. Rather than the more logical possibility of the kids bringing something back from school that affects the rest of the household or other people you have contact with. The risk to kids is quite possibly lower than it is from them picking up various other lurgies or dying in a school accident (surprisingly common) or having a traffic or cycling accident on the way there or back. But people don't react very well to the unknown. When faced with unknown risks, people tend to go into risk-minimisation mode even when the the risk involved is not known precisely but is known to be small.*
* (There are some extraordinary examples of this distaste for uncertainty in behavioural economics; one is a study in which people are willing to pay an average of $26 for a $50 gift certificate, but only $16 for a lottery that pays either a $50 or $100 gift certificate, with equal probability. and for the issue of unknown risk, the fascinating Ellsberg paradox and more generally ambiguity aversion. Exposing someone to COVID-related risk is inherently scarier because it involves unknowns. I think that may be particularly true when it concerns children, where you know you would feel extremely guilty about it if you exposed them to something which led to harm, even if you might have been prepared to take a similar risk yourself. Also relevant to the school closure issue is zero-risk bias, whereby people prefer to reduce a small risk to zero rather than achieve a greater reduction of a larger risk.)
My references to harm on the other thread may have led you to think that this refers to direct physical harm, the term when referring to duty of care is used more widely so widening proximity, meaning that not only the child but others close to them are affected. If we believe that children can plausibly spread infection like this, we are negligent if that spread takes place. I was confused why you were arguing about illness when my posts had been about children’s role in spreading the virus. This has legal implications that will be giving a fair number of schools or authorities a lot of concern.
This header was maybe written before tonight's Opinium VI but although early days it does look a bit like Labour have picked another dud. They seem to be looking no better than Corbyn did and that's after 6 weeks with Starmer as leader who hasn't given the party a boost since the dire election result. I always thought Nandy looked the better option to win red wall votes back, she just seems less stuffy and more in touch. Obviously he needs longer to make his mark but it looks like Tory voters have so far made the judgement that they prefer him to Corbyn but will stick with Boris. Perhaps picking someone with such Brexit baggage as Stamer would always alienate them when it came to winning back the working class voters they lost over the past 2 decades.
A lot of wishful thinking there with the Tory lead already having dropped from 26% to 15% - a swing of 5.5%. Not at all unlikely that Labour will be ahead before the end of the year.
This is a lot of backtracking from `when Labour get a proper leader they will be streets ahead as Boris is awful` Let's face it the lead is even bigger than the election and Starmer is making little to no headway beyond his personal ratings. I suppose what you might be staying is Labour is too toxic for most and the party is holding back Starmer more than the other way round.
Either way even they most optimistic Labour supporter will admit this isn't exactly the bounce they would have expected after ditching Corbyn.
In terms of leadership ratings there appears to have been a big boost, but party poll shares are still distorted - to Tory advantage - by the Covid crisis. Were an election to be held, the Tories would be likely to lose over half this poll lead . Once the economic tsunami takes hold , a further big switch is likely.
That's just guess work in fairness. If you want another guess then if the Tories are at risk of not winning in 2024 under Boris they have a ready made election winner in Sunak. Are the swing voters really going to pick the stale lawyer in his 60s over the young, fresher guy who saved millions of jobs with compassionate economics when the virus hit? The Tories not only have a current winner they have a future winner and that must scare the life out of the most ardent Labour supporters.
Hold on there, bud. He hasn't saved millions of jobs yet. Furlough can't go on indefinitely and there will be many redundancies as the scheme winds down. Many more businesses will go to the wall, leaving more out of work. Meanwhile, taxes will eventually have to rise on those still in work to pay for it all.
I wouldn't be putting all my eggs in the Sunak basket just yet.
It's a fair prediction though. He certainly looks like a future PM more than anyone out there. Of course there will be redundancies but his actions will save a lot more jobs than if there hadn't been such a large scale government intervention. For those that wish to talk personal approval ratings then Sunak is currently streets ahead of Boris or Starmer.
When I'm an MP my story's going to go like this. My disabled NHS-worker granddaughter always wanted to live in a castle, so when she finished her nursing exams I gladly donated to the Build A Massive Moat Around The Family Pile Fund. Now every time she finishes a shift, she can relax in our garden by watching our endangered-breed Duck Island where we specialise in ducks that sound like donkeys. It's the perfect vantage point to sit and knit mittens for singed and orphaned koalas.
Yup, I'm not really convinced by Starmer as a candidate but there's no denying Labour's game has got sharp.
Where will the poor donkeys go? Surrey is so nice.
£10 million sounds a lot for a field, even one containing pedigree donkeys. Does the Mail's valuation depend on its being granted planning permission for housing?
Yep.I thought that too. The "up to" being a clue. My house is also worth up to £10m As are my socks
I know British homes are getting smaller and it's really great and chic and all that (unless you're weird enough to care about your health or happiness), and I'm squinting at the red caption here so forgive the numerical accuracy, but could you really fit 70 new homes inside your socks? And even if they did fit, Borrower-style, wouldn't it smell a bit? (NB resewing your socks into Klein bottles, hence being able to fit several billion homes "inside" - and simultaneously "outside" - each, does not count.)
Comments
I thought the Tory decline was inevitable with the Brexit shambles coming next year...but the Tories horrific governance of Covid is fast forwarding their downfall.....
To end the lockdown is to piss off his own voters.
Now they want the bodies to pile up so their leaders can gain popularity.
For a large chunk of the population, the Conservatives represent their values - pro-Brexit, pro-individual, anti-PC. We can argue whether that is true or not in reality but that is the perception.
If you are in that camp, your alternatives to the Conservatives are non-existent as they are in the US. You vote Conservative because that is the way you ensure your nightmare doesn't come to pass.
Whether they handed the CV crisis well or not matters not. You can blame scientific advisors who gave the wrong advice (and there is ambiguity there). You can persuade yourself to vote for Boris.
They were sustained in parliament by local pacts with the Tories: In both cases, once the pact broke down, the presence of a Tory on the ballot allowed Labour to win the seat. The "Wests" in those constituency names are significant:
When boundary changes proposed in 1948 produced two constituencies based on the town of Huddersfield, where the local Liberal Association was strong, Wade proposed to the local Conservative Association that their respective parties would benefit from a pact whereby each agreed to fight only one of the constituencies and to support the other's candidate. The Conservatives wanted a pledge that any Liberal MP elected would not support a Labour government in a vote of no confidence; Wade slightly softened the wording and pledged that he "would not vote in such a way as to give a vote of confidence to an administration committed to further Socialist measures", which was accepted.
Also interesting that in 1958, a movement promoted by Edward Martell grew for a formal alliance of Conservatives and Liberals in an "Anti-Socialist Front". The Liberal Party Executive rejected the idea, whereupon Martell demanded a statement from Wade and from Arthur Holt, MP for Bolton West, who had been elected as a result of a similar pact.
For the flip side of the bargain, in Huddersfield East the Tories had stayed competitive with Labour throughout the 1950s without quite carrying it (7% behind in 1959 was their best) but when the Liberals stood in 1964 they nabbed just under half the Tory vote and from then it became a Labour fortress. Bolton East had flipped from Labour to Tory when the Liberals stood down in 1951 and they managed to keep it that way while the pact held; at the 1960 Bolton East by-election the Liberals decided to stand and in a tight three-way race the Tories just clung on. In 1964 though, when the Liberals stood again, it returned to Labour. Interestingly there were no Liberal candidates in 1966 or 1970 either, and the Tories won the latter; after that the Liberals stood again and Labour won the seat in the 1974 elections and 1979, in each case by a narrow margin over the Tories.
But after next years Brexit debacle....it will be a double whammy of misery for the blues....
More to the point with all the borrowing which will be done over then next few years we can't afford a socialist state.
He believes that mitigation spending (vs carbon zero) is a better strategy for dealing with climate change
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1261747580666552320?s=21
https://www.flightradar24.com/MSI6549/24833368
Doncaster to Hassi Messaoud
Goodness only knows what that's delivering/collecting!
The next GE will not before brexit is history and the battle will be on economics
I have no idea how this pans out but I do expect Boris to be a one nation conservative, and left leaning, making it a difficult space for Starmer and labour to stand in
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/1976-britians-best-ever-year-2070469
Despite the economic shocks, the 1970s were great times.
I fear that this is another scenario to be filed under "too good to be true," sadly.
But the Scottish and Welsh governments seem to have been even less impressive.
And can anyone say which other politicians would have done a better job ?
I think we have to accept that we have a deeply mediocre political establishment.
Now is that the political establishment this country deserves ?
Chilling.
Possibly true.....Boris's ability to move leftwards (and rightwards) is a dynamic that defies the laws of political gravity.....
https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1261605494726295552?s=21
"the black pudding pickers are now on strike."
In a BBC radio interview in August 2017, Lawson falsely claimed that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade, and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events. In a follow-up programme on the BBC's presentation of these claims, Peter A. Stott of the UK Met Office said Lawson was wrong on both points.
I would rather do without Covid thank you very much....I know people who have died, I'm much poorer, and miss the pub.....
Which irrefutably proves that I have been chatting to like-minded people, nothing more.
The fact they are all struggling today with it indicates the Public Health authorities failed to update the information to Cobra and through their organisations
I fully expect a public enquiry to be critical of these bodies
Windows 10 is fine, it works and it reversed the awful Windows 8 monstrosity but realistically its also just an evolved version of XP. There's a reason many businesses continued to use XP long, long after it should have been discontinued. Indeed some still do.
Doesn't he get that it is not the risk to children themselves but their ability to spread the disease to others who are at higher risk which is the consideration?
Who is Tim Cook?
Have a pleasant nights rest
I genuinely believe that much, maybe even the majority, of fear about restarting school is for people who are afraid of their children getting this mysterious evil killer disease and something horrifying happening to them. Rather than the more logical possibility of the kids bringing something back from school that affects the rest of the household or other people you have contact with. The risk to kids is quite possibly lower than it is from them picking up various other lurgies or dying in a school accident (surprisingly common) or having a traffic or cycling accident on the way there or back. But people don't react very well to the unknown. When faced with unknown risks, people tend to go into risk-minimisation mode even when the the risk involved is not known precisely but is known to be small.*
* (There are some extraordinary examples of this distaste for uncertainty in behavioural economics; one is a study in which people are willing to pay an average of $26 for a $50 gift certificate, but only $16 for a lottery that pays either a $50 or $100 gift certificate, with equal probability. and for the issue of unknown risk, the fascinating Ellsberg paradox and more generally ambiguity aversion. Exposing someone to COVID-related risk is inherently scarier because it involves unknowns. I think that may be particularly true when it concerns children, where you know you would feel extremely guilty about it if you exposed them to something which led to harm, even if you might have been prepared to take a similar risk yourself. Also relevant to the school closure issue is zero-risk bias, whereby people prefer to reduce a small risk to zero rather than achieve a greater reduction of a larger risk.)
Edit:
Seems that it _is_ PPE:
https://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/news/aircraft-fans-ignore-lockdown-watch-ppe-flights-and-stranded-virgin-jets-doncaster-sheffield-airport-2848204
Con 49
Lab 34
LD 6
SNP 5
So even though the margin is narrowing, Lab is -15 behind the Tories when approval of the Lab leader is at +24 and that of the Tory leader at only +10.
In order to make real inroads into the VI gap, Starmer will need to convince the public that Labour as a party has really changed in his image.
There were no (large) consistent surplus and deficit countries in the Bretton Woods period. Because countries that ran deficits needed to change their behaviour or they'd run out of reserves.
If you look at the cumulative current account deficits/surpluses between 1950 and 1970 for the world's biggest economies you see they basically all were... errr... about flat. You simply couldn't run a sustained deficit. And if no-one was running sustained deficits you couldn't have a sustained surplus. (There are exceptions - like Switzerland - but they were tiny countries that could accumulate reserves without it having any meaningful effects on the total.)
Bretton Woods, and before it the Gold Standard, tied the hands of politicians. And they tied the hands of politicians because when politicians have the power to print money, it always ends up going to shit.
The current era of Modern Monetary Theory has allowed insane inbalances. It has allowed countries to spend beyond their means for decades. It has allowed the UK (for example) to go from massive net creditor status, to serious net debtor.
Now, I don't think that Bretton Woods will be repeated. But I do think that politicians will debase the currency. Because that will be the path of least resistance, especially when so much is owed to people (errr) outside the country. Owe pounds to the Chinese? Make pounds worth less!
Something will replace MMT, and it will be based around taking the power of money printing away from politicians. It might be crypto. It might be something else. But the current era of the printing press will end as all such eras have ended in the past.
Those who are afraid of the virus are still self isolating - for everyone else, this thing is over, the genie isn't going back into the bottle.
The government needs a plan to restart the economy and get people back to work while shielding the elderly and vulnerable. Where is it?
Tories are rattled by last week's PMQs I reckon.
https://twitter.com/tpgcolson/status/1261773021964046341?s=20
"To what extent do you approve, or disapprove, of the UK Government’s handling of the Coronavirus situation so far?"
Approve 39, Disapprove 42
"And to what extent do you approve or disapprove of Keir Starmer and the Labour Party's response to the government's handling of the Coronavirus pandemic?"
Approve 35, Disapprove 20
Others parts aren't going to restart until progress against covid is made or because they've been discovered to be obsolete.
Boris Johnson today announces the Government is investing £93 million to bring forward the opening of a pioneering new vaccine centre by a year. The lab should now be open by summer 2021 with the hope it will be able to produce enough vaccines to serve the entire population by the end of next year.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8326535/Boris-Johnson-hails-British-fortitude-aims-draw-line-confusion-new-rules.html
Yes, I am not going mental,
Acceleration of the building project was announced by business secretary Alok Sharma during Friday’s Downing Street press conference - 21 APR 2020
https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/health-and-safety/vaccine-production-facility-build-fast-tracked-21-04-2020/
Internal balance matters much more than external balance. Bretton Woods, like all fixed currency regimes, focused on the latter. Since 1973, the industrialised world has, quite rightly, focused on the former.
There are some pressures on politicians to debauch their currencies. But there are also pressures pointing to price stability, which is why we have the monetary regime we do. Which will prevail will be different in different countries (e.g. Switzerland or Germany vs Argentina or Zimbabwe for extreme cases) at different times. I'm fairly happy with where we are on the spectrum, and it's much better than any form of fixed exchange rates or gold standard, which is why very few serious economists are calling for the latter (except people, like Blair, who want us to be in the euro for political reasons).
We have plenty of economic problems, but they're almost entirely on the supply side, not the demand side.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1261741004677435393?s=20
Boris never plays down being a posho, and that has never seen to do him any harm (it is the lazy / lying / incompetent issues that do).
Let's face it the lead is even bigger than the election and Starmer is making little to no headway beyond his personal ratings. I suppose what you might be staying is Labour is too toxic for most and the party is holding back Starmer more than the other way round.
Either way even they most optimistic Labour supporter will admit this isn't exactly the bounce they would have expected after ditching Corbyn.
https://twitter.com/exame/status/1261784572871802880
Grasping bureaucracies are using lockdown as an excuse to choke the human spirit
Matthew Crawford"
https://unherd.com/2020/05/the-hypocrisy-of-safetyism/
When I'm an MP my story's going to go like this. My disabled NHS-worker granddaughter always wanted to live in a castle, so when she finished her nursing exams I gladly donated to the Build A Massive Moat Around The Family Pile Fund. Now every time she finishes a shift, she can relax in our garden by watching our endangered-breed Duck Island where we specialise in ducks that sound like donkeys. It's the perfect vantage point to sit and knit mittens for singed and orphaned koalas.
Who reads this kind of tosh, for heaven's sake?
My house is also worth up to £10m
As are my socks
One being off can lead to the other one being off too, but not always and sometimes only one of the two can be balanced.
I wouldn't be putting all my eggs in the Sunak basket just yet.