Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
Well the son of a Polish-Belgian communist was seeking to become PM in 2015, and no-one cared about that, despite the Daily Mail's best efforts.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
House of Lords = House of UNELECTED HAS-BEENS! (or NEVER-BEENS, in many cases!)
If you want the House of Lords to have a democratic mandate, then introduce direct elections to it. Or some sort of indirect elections, but where those nominated can clearly link their status/position to the election that nominates them, and poor performance is likely to result in their replacement.
Not some dogs breakfast that gives people a false claim to a democratic mandate and a clear incentive to use it.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
Go back to the name it had in the Middle Ages, when sitting without the Commons:
Re: vaccine testing. Surely it would be far more sensible to target vaccination at the young and economically active, seeing as apparently it is they who are the biggest reason for the virus spreading?
Why reward them for their recklessness?
People aren't just spreading it through 'recklessness'. They are spreading it through going to work and supporting businesses. The point is that there is huge damage caused to the economy by measures put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19. These measures are almost entirely focussed on preventing the spread of the disease - ie. at those who are economically active and generate the wealth of the country by being so.
Given that at the moment we seem to be declaring hundreds of deaths a day "from COVID", despite a large proportion of the people apparently not going anywhere near a hospital, one wonders what the purpose of what is going on at the moment actually is.
Fundamentally the point of a vaccine is to accelerate herd immunity. If you target a vaccine at those most likely to spread the virus widely, as opposed to those who are most at risk but spread it very little, then this will be achieved far far quicker.
Re: vaccine testing. Surely it would be far more sensible to target vaccination at the young and economically active, seeing as apparently it is they who are the biggest reason for the virus spreading?
Why reward them for their recklessness?
People aren't just spreading it through 'recklessness'. They are spreading it through going to work and supporting businesses. The point is that there is huge damage caused to the economy by measures put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19. These measures are almost entirely focussed on preventing the spread of the disease - ie. at those who are economically active and generate the wealth of the country by being so.
Given that at the moment we seem to be declaring hundreds of deaths a day "from COVID", despite a large proportion of the people apparently not going anywhere near a hospital, one wonders what the purpose of what is going on at the moment actually is.
As the vast majority of people in the UK live in areas with less than 2 cases per 100,000 people the restrictions remaining in place seem crazy. Take Goodwood tomorrow. It’s a vast outdoor site. There is no Covid in Chichester or the surrounding area. Yet public attendance has been cancelled. Yet those people can go to a gym? It’s madness.
There is a major problem with CV-19.
There's a long time gap between an actual infection happening, and it being recorded.
If you get CV-19 tomorrow, you probably won't feel even vaguely unwell for nine or ten days, and you probably won't get a positive result (assuming you even go to get tested) for two weeks.
In other words, there's a massive gap between infection and measurement. It leads to people mis-attributing cause and effect. And it leads to poor policy decisions. You can do something like open nightclubs, and there's no increase in reported cases for two weeks: hence night clubs don't result in spread.
It's like driving with your eyes fixed on the rear view mirror.
But if you like I will give you a bet at 5-1.
In two years time, after a vaccine has been widely distributed, and lots of decent evidence based peer review papers have been distributed, we will be able to know if mask wearing encouraged the spread of CV19 or helped prevent it.
Come on. Money where your mouth is. (@contrarian, you too)
I always find Claire Fox very eloquent, and what she's saying usually very sound, politically.
However, I am puzzled with how one journeys from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without it being a u-turn.
I do find it strange as well. It is a journey quite a few of them have taken including of course Brendan O'Neil. I must admit I have never bothered to go and look how they justify it but do mean to sometime.
There has been no journey. I`ve been listening to Claire Fox for at least 15 years. She, and O`Neill, have been consistent throughout.
They are strongly anti-authoritarian libertarians (Marxist Libertarian they say) - so are at the extreme (ish) of liberal thought. They stand up for individual flourishment and equality of opportunity, with a particular concern for the working class and suspicion of elites. They love liberal democracy. O`Neill, in particular, argues well and is a cracking good writer.
I`m broadly with them, though they are a touch too libertarian for me.
However ... they are arch humanists - which I am not. They believe that humans are special and good and are not at all responsible for the environmental destruction that abounds. I part company with them there.
Having said that, in this Covid madness, which I believe has quickly transformed into a direct attack on our liberal democracy itself, Spiked provides a dose of sanity in a mad world. I recommend it highly.
How can a libertarian support a genocidal regime? That's arch-authoritarianism.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
Well the son of a Polish-Belgian communist was seeking to become PM in 2015, and no-one cared about that, despite the Daily Mail's best efforts.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
Why do some people think that PR = party list, when actually the party list system is just one of many different PR voting systems.
My preference is for STV, like used in Ireland. It gives a good balance between have a local constituency MP and having a more proportional result.
Because PR with party lists is what we would end up with?
Why?
Even then, you can still have party list PR on a sub-national scale with "constituencies", or an open list.
It doesn't have to be like Israel where the whole country is one super constituency and the seats are distributed directly proportional to the vote share.
I always find Claire Fox very eloquent, and what she's saying usually very sound, politically.
However, I am puzzled with how one journeys from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without it being a u-turn.
I do find it strange as well. It is a journey quite a few of them have taken including of course Brendan O'Neil. I must admit I have never bothered to go and look how they justify it but do mean to sometime.
There has been no journey. I`ve been listening to Claire Fox for at least 15 years. She, and O`Neill, have been consistent throughout.
They are strongly anti-authoritarian libertarians (Marxist Libertarian they say) - so are at the extreme (ish) of liberal thought. They stand up for individual flourishment and equality of opportunity, with a particular concern for the working class and suspicion of elites. They love liberal democracy. O`Neill, in particular, argues well and is a cracking good writer.
I`m broadly with them, though they are a touch too libertarian for me.
However ... they are arch humanists - which I am not. They believe that humans are special and good and are not at all responsible for the environmental destruction that abounds. I part company with them there.
Having said that, in this Covid madness, which I believe has quickly transformed into a direct attack on our liberal democracy itself, Spiked provides a dose of sanity in a mad world. I recommend it highly.
Thanks Stocky that is a very useful summary. I am sorry I have been too lazy or preoccupied to spend the time finding this stuff out for myself. I believe from your descriptions that I am more in common with them than yourself.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
Go back to the name it had in the Middle Ages, when sitting without the Commons:
The Great Council of State.
That works and is better than what I called it.
Even better, we could rename Lords to Councillors then. Get rid of any pretensions of being high and mighty.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
Yes. We're in the toilet. And when we look up what do we see? Indeed. May have lost some flab but it's still horrible. I'm just hoping we can clamber out before completion and the flush.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
That sounds like a total waste of time, on par with your "assign every house a number" idea. If you're going to do that, just abolish it.
I always find Claire Fox very eloquent, and what she's saying usually very sound, politically.
However, I am puzzled with how one journeys from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without it being a u-turn.
I do find it strange as well. It is a journey quite a few of them have taken including of course Brendan O'Neil. I must admit I have never bothered to go and look how they justify it but do mean to sometime.
There has been no journey. I`ve been listening to Claire Fox for at least 15 years. She, and O`Neill, have been consistent throughout.
They are strongly anti-authoritarian libertarians (Marxist Libertarian they say) - so are at the extreme (ish) of liberal thought. They stand up for individual flourishment and equality of opportunity, with a particular concern for the working class and suspicion of elites. They love liberal democracy. O`Neill, in particular, argues well and is a cracking good writer.
I`m broadly with them, though they are a touch too libertarian for me.
However ... they are arch humanists - which I am not. They believe that humans are special and good and are not at all responsible for the environmental destruction that abounds. I part company with them there.
Having said that, in this Covid madness, which I believe has quickly transformed into a direct attack on our liberal democracy itself, Spiked provides a dose of sanity in a mad world. I recommend it highly.
How can a libertarian support a genocidal regime? That's arch-authoritarianism.
Don`t get too hung up on the Marxist thing. To them I think they limit it to advocating for the working classes and it ends there.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
Since when were we meant to care about 'sins of the father'?
"The real Covid-19 death toll in Spain: at least 44,868 victims EL PAÍS used regional records and reports from three different agencies to arrive at a figure that is much higher than the official one of 28,432"
Left leaning El Pais in Spain.
Yes, there's been a big cover up of deaths in Spain.
Anyone who uses any measure other than excess deaths is an idiot...
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
What is Aeroflot worth?
He was worth $3bn a decade ago but seems to have lost most of it according to the rich lists. Id imagine it might be intriguing to see where all the money went.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
Has anyone covered the Herman Cain story yet? Former Presidential candidate goes to Trump rally, catches CV19 (which is bizarre, because he didn't seem to be wearing a mask), and then dies from it.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
That sounds like a total waste of time, on par with your "assign every house a number" idea. If you're going to do that, just abolish it.
It effectively was abolished in 1911 and 1949 already, we just get hung up about it from time to time by people who don't understand our constitution.
I'm proposing we recognise the reality we already have.
I always find Claire Fox very eloquent, and what she's saying usually very sound, politically.
However, I am puzzled with how one journeys from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without it being a u-turn.
I do find it strange as well. It is a journey quite a few of them have taken including of course Brendan O'Neil. I must admit I have never bothered to go and look how they justify it but do mean to sometime.
There has been no journey. I`ve been listening to Claire Fox for at least 15 years. She, and O`Neill, have been consistent throughout.
They are strongly anti-authoritarian libertarians (Marxist Libertarian they say) - so are at the extreme (ish) of liberal thought. They stand up for individual flourishment and equality of opportunity, with a particular concern for the working class and suspicion of elites. They love liberal democracy. O`Neill, in particular, argues well and is a cracking good writer.
I`m broadly with them, though they are a touch too libertarian for me.
However ... they are arch humanists - which I am not. They believe that humans are special and good and are not at all responsible for the environmental destruction that abounds. I part company with them there.
Having said that, in this Covid madness, which I believe has quickly transformed into a direct attack on our liberal democracy itself, Spiked provides a dose of sanity in a mad world. I recommend it highly.
Thanks Stocky that is a very useful summary. I am sorry I have been too lazy or preoccupied to spend the time finding this stuff out for myself. I believe from your descriptions that I am more in common with them than yourself.
Yes you do. So does Philip Thompson but he doesn`t realise it yet. And Isam. And AndyJS. A few others if I thought about it.
I am positive that if you listened to Spiked podcasts and read their articles you would find even less to disagree with than I do.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
That sounds like a total waste of time, on par with your "assign every house a number" idea. If you're going to do that, just abolish it.
It effectively was abolished in 1911 and 1949 already, we just get hung up about it from time to time by people who don't understand our constitution.
I'm proposing we recognise the reality we already have.
Why pay 700 people for "advice" that is not going to be listened to, when the Government could just ad-hoc ask relevant people for advice as part of their job as governing?
May as well just get rid of it. Huge waste of public funds.
Re: vaccine testing. Surely it would be far more sensible to target vaccination at the young and economically active, seeing as apparently it is they who are the biggest reason for the virus spreading?
Why reward them for their recklessness?
People aren't just spreading it through 'recklessness'. They are spreading it through going to work and supporting businesses. The point is that there is huge damage caused to the economy by measures put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19. These measures are almost entirely focussed on preventing the spread of the disease - ie. at those who are economically active and generate the wealth of the country by being so.
Given that at the moment we seem to be declaring hundreds of deaths a day "from COVID", despite a large proportion of the people apparently not going anywhere near a hospital, one wonders what the purpose of what is going on at the moment actually is.
As the vast majority of people in the UK live in areas with less than 2 cases per 100,000 people the restrictions remaining in place seem crazy. Take Goodwood tomorrow. It’s a vast outdoor site. There is no Covid in Chichester or the surrounding area. Yet public attendance has been cancelled. Yet those people can go to a gym? It’s madness.
There is a major problem with CV-19.
There's a long time gap between an actual infection happening, and it being recorded.
If you get CV-19 tomorrow, you probably won't feel even vaguely unwell for nine or ten days, and you probably won't get a positive result (assuming you even go to get tested) for two weeks.
In other words, there's a massive gap between infection and measurement. It leads to people mis-attributing cause and effect. And it leads to poor policy decisions. You can do something like open nightclubs, and there's no increase in reported cases for two weeks: hence night clubs don't result in spread.
It's like driving with your eyes fixed on the rear view mirror.
But if you like I will give you a bet at 5-1.
In two years time, after a vaccine has been widely distributed, and lots of decent evidence based peer review papers have been distributed, we will be able to know if mask wearing encouraged the spread of CV19 or helped prevent it.
Come on. Money where your mouth is. (@contrarian, you too)
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
So no security risk from a peer with access to confidential government secrets having a dad who is ex KGB? No security risk when said family has access to billions and we are concerned about Russian bribery and corruption of our politics? Right!
"The real Covid-19 death toll in Spain: at least 44,868 victims EL PAÍS used regional records and reports from three different agencies to arrive at a figure that is much higher than the official one of 28,432"
Left leaning El Pais in Spain.
Yes, there's been a big cover up of deaths in Spain.
Anyone who uses any measure other than excess deaths is an idiot...
How trustworthy are other nations measures of excess deaths?
I know our GRO would never mess around, but I can imagine countries like Russia and Brazil covering up things if they thought they could get away with it. Do they have open data like our GRO does?
Has anyone covered the Herman Cain story yet? Former Presidential candidate goes to Trump rally, catches CV19 (which is bizarre, because he didn't seem to be wearing a mask), and then dies from it.
There was a concerted attempt yesterday to avoid any suggestion of schadenfreude.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
So no security risk from a peer with access to confidential government secrets having a dad who is ex KGB? No security risk when said family has access to billions and we are concerned about Russian bribery and corruption of our politics? Right!
No absolutely none. Sins of the father is not something we recognise nor should we.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
Since when were we meant to care about 'sins of the father'?
We didn't in 2015.
Whats 2015 got to do with it? Are you saying Miliband's dad was a spy? I couldnt care less that someone has foreign parents, but being the child of an enemy spy does create a security risk even if the child has no control over that.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
Well the son of a Polish-Belgian communist was seeking to become PM in 2015, and no-one cared about that, despite the Daily Mail's best efforts.
To think that the calm and stability we have enjoyed since that year hung on such a thin thread.
I always find Claire Fox very eloquent, and what she's saying usually very sound, politically.
However, I am puzzled with how one journeys from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without it being a u-turn.
I do find it strange as well. It is a journey quite a few of them have taken including of course Brendan O'Neil. I must admit I have never bothered to go and look how they justify it but do mean to sometime.
There has been no journey. I`ve been listening to Claire Fox for at least 15 years. She, and O`Neill, have been consistent throughout.
They are strongly anti-authoritarian libertarians (Marxist Libertarian they say) - so are at the extreme (ish) of liberal thought. They stand up for individual flourishment and equality of opportunity, with a particular concern for the working class and suspicion of elites. They love liberal democracy. O`Neill, in particular, argues well and is a cracking good writer.
I`m broadly with them, though they are a touch too libertarian for me.
However ... they are arch humanists - which I am not. They believe that humans are special and good and are not at all responsible for the environmental destruction that abounds. I part company with them there.
Having said that, in this Covid madness, which I believe has quickly transformed into a direct attack on our liberal democracy itself, Spiked provides a dose of sanity in a mad world. I recommend it highly.
The issue is not 15 years ago but their beginnings as communists 35 yrars ago. That is what gives people a sense they are SeanT-like provocateurs or inconsistent.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
Well the son of a Polish-Belgian communist was seeking to become PM in 2015, and no-one cared about that, despite the Daily Mail's best efforts.
To think that the clam and stability we have enjoyed since that year hung on such a thin thread.
There was always something fishy about that result.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
That sounds like a total waste of time, on par with your "assign every house a number" idea. If you're going to do that, just abolish it.
It effectively was abolished in 1911 and 1949 already, we just get hung up about it from time to time by people who don't understand our constitution.
I'm proposing we recognise the reality we already have.
Why pay 700 people for "advice" that is not going to be listened to, when the Government could just ad-hoc ask relevant people for advice as part of their job as governing?
May as well just get rid of it. Huge waste of public funds.
Because the advice often is listened to. Do you have any idea how many amendments the Lords makes each year to bills that actually get accepted by the Commons. It comes up with good ideas that then get accepted.
Also by having the Chamber unelected it is far less partisan than the Commons. The Commons (and the Lords if it were elected) sticks far more to party lines. The Lords being unelected and knowing they have no real authority tends to take issues on their actual merits instead.
Its basically like having someone proof read and come back with suggestions before it goes to print.
Its entirely undemocratic but it works. If you accept the idea that the Commons is the only Chamber with power it stops being undemocratic too.
Re: vaccine testing. Surely it would be far more sensible to target vaccination at the young and economically active, seeing as apparently it is they who are the biggest reason for the virus spreading?
Why reward them for their recklessness?
People aren't just spreading it through 'recklessness'. They are spreading it through going to work and supporting businesses. The point is that there is huge damage caused to the economy by measures put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19. These measures are almost entirely focussed on preventing the spread of the disease - ie. at those who are economically active and generate the wealth of the country by being so.
Given that at the moment we seem to be declaring hundreds of deaths a day "from COVID", despite a large proportion of the people apparently not going anywhere near a hospital, one wonders what the purpose of what is going on at the moment actually is.
As the vast majority of people in the UK live in areas with less than 2 cases per 100,000 people the restrictions remaining in place seem crazy. Take Goodwood tomorrow. It’s a vast outdoor site. There is no Covid in Chichester or the surrounding area. Yet public attendance has been cancelled. Yet those people can go to a gym? It’s madness.
There is a major problem with CV-19.
There's a long time gap between an actual infection happening, and it being recorded.
If you get CV-19 tomorrow, you probably won't feel even vaguely unwell for nine or ten days, and you probably won't get a positive result (assuming you even go to get tested) for two weeks.
In other words, there's a massive gap between infection and measurement. It leads to people mis-attributing cause and effect. And it leads to poor policy decisions. You can do something like open nightclubs, and there's no increase in reported cases for two weeks: hence night clubs don't result in spread.
It's like driving with your eyes fixed on the rear view mirror.
But if you like I will give you a bet at 5-1.
In two years time, after a vaccine has been widely distributed, and lots of decent evidence based peer review papers have been distributed, we will be able to know if mask wearing encouraged the spread of CV19 or helped prevent it.
Come on. Money where your mouth is. (@contrarian, you too)
Step up and bet on it.
An even £100 but I get masks made no difference.
I share your dislike of masks. But I wouldn`t argue that they make no difference to transmission. So I`ve reluctantly conceded the issue (on grounds of health).
However, there is a principled argument to be had against them. One that centres on freedom and personal choice and the environment. People like Hitchens sometime dally with this but then spoil their argument by going back to alleging that masks are ineffective or make matters worse.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
So no security risk from a peer with access to confidential government secrets having a dad who is ex KGB? No security risk when said family has access to billions and we are concerned about Russian bribery and corruption of our politics? Right!
He's a British citizen. If he was of Iranian origin (as I partly am), would that rule him out, simply because Iran is a hostile state? And since when does being rich mean that he is automatically suspected of wanting to bribe and corrupt our politics?
You are being xenophobic, I'm afraid. You have no criticism of him, just of his background.
Has anyone covered the Herman Cain story yet? Former Presidential candidate goes to Trump rally, catches CV19 (which is bizarre, because he didn't seem to be wearing a mask), and then dies from it.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
That sounds like a total waste of time, on par with your "assign every house a number" idea. If you're going to do that, just abolish it.
It effectively was abolished in 1911 and 1949 already, we just get hung up about it from time to time by people who don't understand our constitution.
I'm proposing we recognise the reality we already have.
Why pay 700 people for "advice" that is not going to be listened to, when the Government could just ad-hoc ask relevant people for advice as part of their job as governing?
May as well just get rid of it. Huge waste of public funds.
Because the advice often is listened to. Do you have any idea how many amendments the Lords makes each year to bills that actually get accepted by the Commons. It comes up with good ideas that then get accepted.
Also by having the Chamber unelected it is far less partisan than the Commons. The Commons (and the Lords if it were elected) sticks far more to party lines. The Lords being unelected and knowing they have no real authority tends to take issues on their actual merits instead.
Its basically like having someone proof read and come back with suggestions before it goes to print.
Its entirely undemocratic but it works. If you accept the idea that the Commons is the only Chamber with power it stops being undemocratic too.
Please tell me how many accepted amendments the Lords made to bills in the last calendar year?
"The real Covid-19 death toll in Spain: at least 44,868 victims EL PAÍS used regional records and reports from three different agencies to arrive at a figure that is much higher than the official one of 28,432"
Left leaning El Pais in Spain.
Yes, there's been a big cover up of deaths in Spain.
Anyone who uses any measure other than excess deaths is an idiot...
How trustworthy are other nations measures of excess deaths?
I know our GRO would never mess around, but I can imagine countries like Russia and Brazil covering up things if they thought they could get away with it. Do they have open data like our GRO does?
Well, I don't know about China, Brazil, India, etc., because they're not - frankly - first world democracies with strong and independent statistics measuring bodies. But Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the US, etc. I would trust the numbers.
That being said, it is worth noting that the UK - with its younger population - is probably slightly disadvantaged by the measurement. If you average 5 deaths per 1,000 people per year, and it goes up to 10 per 1,000, them you see a 100% increase. While if you went from 20 to 27, you'd only see a 30% increase, even though the absolute increase in death rate would be worse.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
So no security risk from a peer with access to confidential government secrets having a dad who is ex KGB? No security risk when said family has access to billions and we are concerned about Russian bribery and corruption of our politics? Right!
No absolutely none. Sins of the father is not something we recognise nor should we.
When we recruit for the security services we vet nearly everyone the candidate is in contact with and definitely their family. Whats the point of all that if the sons of ex KGB are allowed access to state secrets?
I always find Claire Fox very eloquent, and what she's saying usually very sound, politically.
However, I am puzzled with how one journeys from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without it being a u-turn.
I do find it strange as well. It is a journey quite a few of them have taken including of course Brendan O'Neil. I must admit I have never bothered to go and look how they justify it but do mean to sometime.
There has been no journey. I`ve been listening to Claire Fox for at least 15 years. She, and O`Neill, have been consistent throughout.
They are strongly anti-authoritarian libertarians (Marxist Libertarian they say) - so are at the extreme (ish) of liberal thought. They stand up for individual flourishment and equality of opportunity, with a particular concern for the working class and suspicion of elites. They love liberal democracy. O`Neill, in particular, argues well and is a cracking good writer.
I`m broadly with them, though they are a touch too libertarian for me.
However ... they are arch humanists - which I am not. They believe that humans are special and good and are not at all responsible for the environmental destruction that abounds. I part company with them there.
Having said that, in this Covid madness, which I believe has quickly transformed into a direct attack on our liberal democracy itself, Spiked provides a dose of sanity in a mad world. I recommend it highly.
The issue is not 15 years ago but their beginnings as communists 35 yrars ago. That is what gives people a sense they are SeanT-like provocateurs or inconsistent.
I don`t believe they were ever communists. But what hangs on this anyway? I`m interested in what they are saying now.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
That sounds like a total waste of time, on par with your "assign every house a number" idea. If you're going to do that, just abolish it.
It effectively was abolished in 1911 and 1949 already, we just get hung up about it from time to time by people who don't understand our constitution.
I'm proposing we recognise the reality we already have.
Why pay 700 people for "advice" that is not going to be listened to, when the Government could just ad-hoc ask relevant people for advice as part of their job as governing?
May as well just get rid of it. Huge waste of public funds.
Because the advice often is listened to. Do you have any idea how many amendments the Lords makes each year to bills that actually get accepted by the Commons. It comes up with good ideas that then get accepted.
Also by having the Chamber unelected it is far less partisan than the Commons. The Commons (and the Lords if it were elected) sticks far more to party lines. The Lords being unelected and knowing they have no real authority tends to take issues on their actual merits instead.
Its basically like having someone proof read and come back with suggestions before it goes to print.
Its entirely undemocratic but it works. If you accept the idea that the Commons is the only Chamber with power it stops being undemocratic too.
Why pay 700 people for advice?
Well - for a start because they are only paid when they turn up.
And secondly because it actually works very well - in terms of implanting consistency and quality and humanity into some of the gibberish that comes from the Commons.
The Commons postures and preens; the Lords sweats the detail.
I agree that there is an issue with a number of crooks, convicted and not convicted. That's not a justification for demolishing the whole thing; it's a reason for dealing with crooks.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
So no security risk from a peer with access to confidential government secrets having a dad who is ex KGB? No security risk when said family has access to billions and we are concerned about Russian bribery and corruption of our politics? Right!
No absolutely none. Sins of the father is not something we recognise nor should we.
When we recruit for the security services we vet nearly everyone the candidate is in contact with and definitely their family. Whats the point of all that if the sons of ex KGB are allowed access to state secrets?
I think you have a rather over-enthusiastic view of the access of peers to state secrets!
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
That sounds like a total waste of time, on par with your "assign every house a number" idea. If you're going to do that, just abolish it.
It effectively was abolished in 1911 and 1949 already, we just get hung up about it from time to time by people who don't understand our constitution.
I'm proposing we recognise the reality we already have.
Why pay 700 people for "advice" that is not going to be listened to, when the Government could just ad-hoc ask relevant people for advice as part of their job as governing?
May as well just get rid of it. Huge waste of public funds.
Because the advice often is listened to. Do you have any idea how many amendments the Lords makes each year to bills that actually get accepted by the Commons. It comes up with good ideas that then get accepted.
Also by having the Chamber unelected it is far less partisan than the Commons. The Commons (and the Lords if it were elected) sticks far more to party lines. The Lords being unelected and knowing they have no real authority tends to take issues on their actual merits instead.
Its basically like having someone proof read and come back with suggestions before it goes to print.
Its entirely undemocratic but it works. If you accept the idea that the Commons is the only Chamber with power it stops being undemocratic too.
Please tell me how many accepted amendments the Lords made to bills in the last calendar year?
The full list of bills is here, although it doesn’t note specific amendments.
Re: vaccine testing. Surely it would be far more sensible to target vaccination at the young and economically active, seeing as apparently it is they who are the biggest reason for the virus spreading?
Why reward them for their recklessness?
People aren't just spreading it through 'recklessness'. They are spreading it through going to work and supporting businesses. The point is that there is huge damage caused to the economy by measures put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19. These measures are almost entirely focussed on preventing the spread of the disease - ie. at those who are economically active and generate the wealth of the country by being so.
Given that at the moment we seem to be declaring hundreds of deaths a day "from COVID", despite a large proportion of the people apparently not going anywhere near a hospital, one wonders what the purpose of what is going on at the moment actually is.
As the vast majority of people in the UK live in areas with less than 2 cases per 100,000 people the restrictions remaining in place seem crazy. Take Goodwood tomorrow. It’s a vast outdoor site. There is no Covid in Chichester or the surrounding area. Yet public attendance has been cancelled. Yet those people can go to a gym? It’s madness.
There is a major problem with CV-19.
There's a long time gap between an actual infection happening, and it being recorded.
If you get CV-19 tomorrow, you probably won't feel even vaguely unwell for nine or ten days, and you probably won't get a positive result (assuming you even go to get tested) for two weeks.
In other words, there's a massive gap between infection and measurement. It leads to people mis-attributing cause and effect. And it leads to poor policy decisions. You can do something like open nightclubs, and there's no increase in reported cases for two weeks: hence night clubs don't result in spread.
It's like driving with your eyes fixed on the rear view mirror.
But if you like I will give you a bet at 5-1.
In two years time, after a vaccine has been widely distributed, and lots of decent evidence based peer review papers have been distributed, we will be able to know if mask wearing encouraged the spread of CV19 or helped prevent it.
Come on. Money where your mouth is. (@contrarian, you too)
Step up and bet on it.
An even £100 but I get masks made no difference.
I'll take the bet, but I would also point out that you have claimed that wearing masks causes faster spread of CV19. And I've offered you 5-1 on your belief proving to be correct. That you're not willing to take that bet, but only one on them "making no difference" is a bit of a cop out.
"The real Covid-19 death toll in Spain: at least 44,868 victims EL PAÍS used regional records and reports from three different agencies to arrive at a figure that is much higher than the official one of 28,432"
Left leaning El Pais in Spain.
Yes, there's been a big cover up of deaths in Spain.
Anyone who uses any measure other than excess deaths is an idiot...
How trustworthy are other nations measures of excess deaths?
I know our GRO would never mess around, but I can imagine countries like Russia and Brazil covering up things if they thought they could get away with it. Do they have open data like our GRO does?
Well, I don't know about China, Brazil, India, etc., because they're not - frankly - first world democracies with strong and independent statistics measuring bodies. But Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the US, etc. I would trust the numbers.
That being said, it is worth noting that the UK - with its younger population - is probably slightly disadvantaged by the measurement. If you average 5 deaths per 1,000 people per year, and it goes up to 10 per 1,000, them you see a 100% increase. While if you went from 20 to 27, you'd only see a 30% increase, even though the absolute increase in death rate would be worse.
Excess deaths is clearly a useful foundation for any analysis. But I would query whether it is really the gold standard for measuring how successful countries have been in responding to the virus because, by definition, it brings into play very many other factors.
For example imagine a country that has a truly terrible road accident record such that, in a normal year, many people die in road accidents. Further imagine that its overall response to the virus (testing, treatment, hospital capacity, social distancing etc.) is poor, but the one thing they successfully do is stop people driving during the crisis. The excess death figure would be hugely flattered by the absence of road deaths, even if people were dying in large numbers in hospitals.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
So no security risk from a peer with access to confidential government secrets having a dad who is ex KGB? No security risk when said family has access to billions and we are concerned about Russian bribery and corruption of our politics? Right!
He's a British citizen. If he was of Iranian origin (as I partly am), would that rule him out, simply because Iran is a hostile state? And since when does being rich mean that he is automatically suspected of wanting to bribe and corrupt our politics?
You are being xenophobic, I'm afraid. You have no criticism of him, just of his background.
Absolute nonsense.
If it was a son of an Iranian spy, yes that would be a risk too, that we cannot completely discount and that should disqualify from a tiny part of public life. If it was an Iranian businessman of good standing then of course not.
The same would also apply to the sons or daughters of UK citizens who worked for the KGB, it would be folly to give access to classified information to Philby's children.
It is the job of being an enemy spy that is problematic not their nationality.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
What is Aeroflot worth?
He was worth $3bn a decade ago but seems to have lost most of it according to the rich lists. Id imagine it might be intriguing to see where all the money went.
I don't think any airline is worth much at the moment. I flew Aeroflot back from the World Cup. Seemed fine to me.
Re: vaccine testing. Surely it would be far more sensible to target vaccination at the young and economically active, seeing as apparently it is they who are the biggest reason for the virus spreading?
Why reward them for their recklessness?
People aren't just spreading it through 'recklessness'. They are spreading it through going to work and supporting businesses. The point is that there is huge damage caused to the economy by measures put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19. These measures are almost entirely focussed on preventing the spread of the disease - ie. at those who are economically active and generate the wealth of the country by being so.
Given that at the moment we seem to be declaring hundreds of deaths a day "from COVID", despite a large proportion of the people apparently not going anywhere near a hospital, one wonders what the purpose of what is going on at the moment actually is.
As the vast majority of people in the UK live in areas with less than 2 cases per 100,000 people the restrictions remaining in place seem crazy. Take Goodwood tomorrow. It’s a vast outdoor site. There is no Covid in Chichester or the surrounding area. Yet public attendance has been cancelled. Yet those people can go to a gym? It’s madness.
There is a major problem with CV-19.
There's a long time gap between an actual infection happening, and it being recorded.
If you get CV-19 tomorrow, you probably won't feel even vaguely unwell for nine or ten days, and you probably won't get a positive result (assuming you even go to get tested) for two weeks.
In other words, there's a massive gap between infection and measurement. It leads to people mis-attributing cause and effect. And it leads to poor policy decisions. You can do something like open nightclubs, and there's no increase in reported cases for two weeks: hence night clubs don't result in spread.
It's like driving with your eyes fixed on the rear view mirror.
But if you like I will give you a bet at 5-1.
In two years time, after a vaccine has been widely distributed, and lots of decent evidence based peer review papers have been distributed, we will be able to know if mask wearing encouraged the spread of CV19 or helped prevent it.
Come on. Money where your mouth is. (@contrarian, you too)
Step up and bet on it.
An even £100 but I get masks made no difference.
I'll take the bet, but I would also point out that you have claimed that wearing masks causes faster spread of CV19. And I've offered you 5-1 on your belief proving to be correct. That you're not willing to take that bet, but only one on them "making no difference" is a bit of a cop out.
Sorry I did not see that . I will have £20 at 5/1. I am in form at the moment, I had the 50/1 winner at goodwood yesterday
Please tell me how many accepted amendments the Lords made to bills in the last calendar year?
An interesting question. A quick google throws up stats for the 2017-19 session which at a glance suggests a lot more amendments ar etabled in parliament than are ever made (I assume most are in the Commons), though Table 11 shows a pretty high number of motions and amendments tabled in the Lords being accepted, though its a small total, and inflted by the number on the EU bill.
But that's just at a glance, I defer to more expert knowledge.
I always find Claire Fox very eloquent, and what she's saying usually very sound, politically.
However, I am puzzled with how one journeys from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without it being a u-turn.
I do find it strange as well. It is a journey quite a few of them have taken including of course Brendan O'Neil. I must admit I have never bothered to go and look how they justify it but do mean to sometime.
There has been no journey. I`ve been listening to Claire Fox for at least 15 years. She, and O`Neill, have been consistent throughout.
They are strongly anti-authoritarian libertarians (Marxist Libertarian they say) - so are at the extreme (ish) of liberal thought. They stand up for individual flourishment and equality of opportunity, with a particular concern for the working class and suspicion of elites. They love liberal democracy. O`Neill, in particular, argues well and is a cracking good writer.
I`m broadly with them, though they are a touch too libertarian for me.
However ... they are arch humanists - which I am not. They believe that humans are special and good and are not at all responsible for the environmental destruction that abounds. I part company with them there.
Having said that, in this Covid madness, which I believe has quickly transformed into a direct attack on our liberal democracy itself, Spiked provides a dose of sanity in a mad world. I recommend it highly.
Given what you say, which I accept fully, surely what is most surprising is that Claire Fox would accept a gong even if offered one? It hardly fits with the anti-elite, rather radical views that you set out so clearly to receive such an undemocratic, elitist trophy. I'd have expected her (and Spiked generally) to be in favour of abolishing the Lords.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
So no security risk from a peer with access to confidential government secrets having a dad who is ex KGB? No security risk when said family has access to billions and we are concerned about Russian bribery and corruption of our politics? Right!
He's a British citizen. If he was of Iranian origin (as I partly am), would that rule him out, simply because Iran is a hostile state? And since when does being rich mean that he is automatically suspected of wanting to bribe and corrupt our politics?
You are being xenophobic, I'm afraid. You have no criticism of him, just of his background.
Absolute nonsense.
If it was a son of an Iranian spy, yes that would be a risk too, that we cannot completely discount and that should disqualify from a tiny part of public life. If it was an Iranian businessman of good standing then of course not.
The same would also apply to the sons or daughters of UK citizens who worked for the KGB, it would be folly to give access to classified information to Philby's children.
It is the job of being an enemy spy that is problematic not their nationality.
I take the argument, but if an ex-KGB person is permitted to be a Billionaire here I'm not sure their son, a British citizen, being a Peer makes all that much difference.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Is getting your own house in order first out of fashion these days ?
+1
He’s saying it because the same criticism Richard attempts is regularly thrown at him. The Tories having tried to score cheap points at his expense now think it reasonable to stuff the House with the likes of the PM’s own brother, assorted Tory donors and Brexit supporters.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
So no security risk from a peer with access to confidential government secrets having a dad who is ex KGB? No security risk when said family has access to billions and we are concerned about Russian bribery and corruption of our politics? Right!
He's a British citizen. If he was of Iranian origin (as I partly am), would that rule him out, simply because Iran is a hostile state? And since when does being rich mean that he is automatically suspected of wanting to bribe and corrupt our politics?
You are being xenophobic, I'm afraid. You have no criticism of him, just of his background.
Absolute nonsense.
If it was a son of an Iranian spy, yes that would be a risk too, that we cannot completely discount and that should disqualify from a tiny part of public life. If it was an Iranian businessman of good standing then of course not.
The same would also apply to the sons or daughters of UK citizens who worked for the KGB, it would be folly to give access to classified information to Philby's children.
It is the job of being an enemy spy that is problematic not their nationality.
I take the argument, but if an ex-KGB person is permitted to be a Billionaire here I'm not sure their son, a British citizen, being a Peer makes all that much difference.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
Experts can give advice without a second chamber. We should just abolish the Lords. New Zealand works perfectly fine with a unicameral Parliament.
Getting to be a habit? Though there's far worse thanhim out there.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he "made a mistake" by joining in talks for giving a government contract to a charity that paid his family.
We Charity was tapped by his government to oversee a C$900m ($664m, £533m) youth volunteer programme in June.
It later emerged that We previously paid Mr Trudeau's relatives over C$280,000 to speak at events.
Mr Trudeau now faces his third ethics commission inquiry in office over the scandal.
I always find Claire Fox very eloquent, and what she's saying usually very sound, politically.
However, I am puzzled with how one journeys from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without it being a u-turn.
I do find it strange as well. It is a journey quite a few of them have taken including of course Brendan O'Neil. I must admit I have never bothered to go and look how they justify it but do mean to sometime.
There has been no journey. I`ve been listening to Claire Fox for at least 15 years. She, and O`Neill, have been consistent throughout.
They are strongly anti-authoritarian libertarians (Marxist Libertarian they say) - so are at the extreme (ish) of liberal thought. They stand up for individual flourishment and equality of opportunity, with a particular concern for the working class and suspicion of elites. They love liberal democracy. O`Neill, in particular, argues well and is a cracking good writer.
I`m broadly with them, though they are a touch too libertarian for me.
However ... they are arch humanists - which I am not. They believe that humans are special and good and are not at all responsible for the environmental destruction that abounds. I part company with them there.
Having said that, in this Covid madness, which I believe has quickly transformed into a direct attack on our liberal democracy itself, Spiked provides a dose of sanity in a mad world. I recommend it highly.
How can a libertarian support a genocidal regime? That's arch-authoritarianism.
RCP challenged the SWP for the number of front orginisation they created to launder their ideas through.
In a very Stop The War manner the RCP believed The West intervention in a country Bad, not The West intervening Good.
Eight new outbreaks with 40 cases in the Valencian Community: The Department of Universal Health and Public Health of the Valencian Community has registered 85 new positives, 40 of them divided into eight outbreaks, in addition to three hospitalizations and one death. The eight outbreaks are as follows: Elda: 10 positive cases (2 hospitalized) in the social field Elche: 4 positives in the workplace Altea: 3 positives in the social sphere Moncofa: 6 positive cases in the social sphere Valencia: 4 positive cases of non-community origin Fenced: 6 positives in the social sphere Benigànim: 4 positives (1 hospitalized) in the social field Benaguasil: 3 positives in the workplace
I always find Claire Fox very eloquent, and what she's saying usually very sound, politically.
However, I am puzzled with how one journeys from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without it being a u-turn.
I do find it strange as well. It is a journey quite a few of them have taken including of course Brendan O'Neil. I must admit I have never bothered to go and look how they justify it but do mean to sometime.
There has been no journey. I`ve been listening to Claire Fox for at least 15 years. She, and O`Neill, have been consistent throughout.
They are strongly anti-authoritarian libertarians (Marxist Libertarian they say) - so are at the extreme (ish) of liberal thought. They stand up for individual flourishment and equality of opportunity, with a particular concern for the working class and suspicion of elites. They love liberal democracy. O`Neill, in particular, argues well and is a cracking good writer.
I`m broadly with them, though they are a touch too libertarian for me.
However ... they are arch humanists - which I am not. They believe that humans are special and good and are not at all responsible for the environmental destruction that abounds. I part company with them there.
Having said that, in this Covid madness, which I believe has quickly transformed into a direct attack on our liberal democracy itself, Spiked provides a dose of sanity in a mad world. I recommend it highly.
The issue is not 15 years ago but their beginnings as communists 35 yrars ago. That is what gives people a sense they are SeanT-like provocateurs or inconsistent.
I don`t believe they were ever communists. But what hangs on this anyway? I`m interested in what they are saying now.
And what they are saying now is that they utterly unrepentant in their genocide denial.
Spiked has published plenty denying what happened in Srebrenica and Fox has refused to apologise for the ITN libel when given the chance.
I had the dubious pleasure of watching the Prime Minister's briefing (sound off) while enjoying a late breakfast in my favourite cafe in Barking.
There are several fine lines being walked here - the foremost is economic health vs public health. The fact 5,000 annual members and their guests won't attend Goodwood tomorrow is a financial blow for Goodwood Racecourse but beyond that and the wailing from ITV racing there's no atmosphere, it's frankly not the end of civilisation as we know it.
The other fine line is the line between mental health and public health - that's the mental health of children and those adults who are apparently bereft if they aren't commuting and sitting in an office with their "chums". I suspect the pressure on school re-openings will rise if case numbers continue to rise and this isn't going to be an easy one for Government to get right.
There seem to be any number of anomalies and contradictions in what is being allowed and what isn't which is recognition of the complexities of the decisions being made and the consequences deriving therefrom.
As I ranted last night, the public have only themselves to blame if we see a big new rise in cases (suspect we won't). The "rules" on mask wearing and social distancing (which were of course unenforceable) have frayed to the point of irrelevance in some areas and the price of the large scale flouting of these rules may be played out in the weeks to come.
Has anyone covered the Herman Cain story yet? Former Presidential candidate goes to Trump rally, catches CV19 (which is bizarre, because he didn't seem to be wearing a mask), and then dies from it.
Apparently point g out the fact he dismissed Covid as fear mongering before dying of Covid is in bad taste.
Just as an aside, the Rasmussen approval numbers for President Trump have gone into positive territory (+2, 50-48) having been -9 just a couple of days ago.
I wonder if this is some form of "rolling" poll - I remember we had those at one GE and you could tell from day to day which was the more pro-Conservative or pro-Labour sample. I suspect this Rasmussen poll isn't as significant as I thought.
"The real Covid-19 death toll in Spain: at least 44,868 victims EL PAÍS used regional records and reports from three different agencies to arrive at a figure that is much higher than the official one of 28,432"
Left leaning El Pais in Spain.
Yes, there's been a big cover up of deaths in Spain.
Anyone who uses any measure other than excess deaths is an idiot...
So what do you make of France having 30,000 deaths and no excess deaths at all?
Back on-topic - I'm in the dark as to any requirements of "transition".
I know the incoming President forms a transition team which I presume is effectively his administration-in-waiting and I remember a couple of awkward meetings between Obama and Trump but is there any required or mandated transition process?
Could, for instance, Trump simply ignore Biden and his people and do nothing until January 20th 2021? Presumably, IF the Democrats win the Senate and hold the House, the new Congress meets in the New Year and can conduct business but Trump could veto any and every bill and rule by executive order until 20/1/21?
That suggests a degree of paralysis but worse it would allow Trump and his cohorts to destroy incriminating data in a "scorched earth" exercise leaving the incoming administration with nothing.
It would look like something out of the Scottish Play with Trump wandering round an increasingly empty Castle while Biden and his army camp outside.
I have to admire the chutzpah of my old pal Dick Newby:
The Liberal Democrat Lords leader Lord Newby also weighed in on the “bloated” second chamber: "By giving a large number of his cronies peerages, he has shown that the Tories have abandoned any pretence of reducing the size of the bloated House of Lords."
It's bloated partly because it is over-stuffed with LibDems!
Nick Clegg would have been much better served asking for a second chamber elected by PR on the basis of the nationwide vote in a general election than agreeing to AV.
Discuss.
That would certainly have been a better idea, although I think there is a useful role for a bunch of old duffers distinguished former statesmen.
A second chamber based on national share of the vote in a General Election was/is an absolutely terrible idea that has been doing the rounds for ages. Because it leaves large numbers of people in the ridiculous position of deciding whether they prefer to use their vote to have some influence over the membership of the House of Commons, or over the House of Lords. And leaves both sides claiming a democratic 'mandate' when in one or other of the cases their votes might have been achieved without actual popular support.
Is it a more ridiculous idea than a bunch of people who were selected on the basis of the size of the cheque they wrote?
Yes, because at least the current House of Lords doesn't claim a democratic mandate for occasionally interfering in the passage of legislation.
That doesn’t stop it interfering. It’s just a term of abuse for the likes of Baroness Amos when it doesn’t slavishly wave through the government programme.
I think the best thing we should do to clear it up is to rename the House of Lords to the House of Advisors or something like that.
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
Go back to the name it had in the Middle Ages, when sitting without the Commons:
The Great Council of State.
That works and is better than what I called it.
Even better, we could rename Lords to Councillors then. Get rid of any pretensions of being high and mighty.
It is absolutely not having foreign parents that make it an unsuitable decision. It is the parent being a spy from a hostile country and somehow acquiring 30% of aeroflot. Can you not see a difference?
No, I can't actually. Do we have some kind of hereditary enemy system that I wasn't aware of?
So no security risk from a peer with access to confidential government secrets having a dad who is ex KGB? No security risk when said family has access to billions and we are concerned about Russian bribery and corruption of our politics? Right!
No absolutely none. Sins of the father is not something we recognise nor should we.
When we recruit for the security services we vet nearly everyone the candidate is in contact with and definitely their family. Whats the point of all that if the sons of ex KGB are allowed access to state secrets?
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
What is Aeroflot worth?
He was worth $3bn a decade ago but seems to have lost most of it according to the rich lists. Id imagine it might be intriguing to see where all the money went.
I don't think any airline is worth much at the moment. I flew Aeroflot back from the World Cup. Seemed fine to me.
Depends on the route
BA London to Moscow is low profit route so it gets the crappy old planes. For Aeroflot it is their premier route so it gets the best. But that’s not a good comparison to judge Aeroflot on.
President Trump will require the owner of TikTok, China-based ByteDance, to sell its ownership in the app's U.S. operations, a person familiar with the matter said.
President Trump will require Beijing-based Bytedance Ltd. to sell its ownership in TikTok, the popular video-sharing app that U.S. officials have deemed a national security risk, according to a person familiar with the matter.
U.S. officials have been concerned that TikTok could pass on the data it collects from Americans streaming videos to China’s authoritarian government. TikTok has said it would never do so.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
What is Aeroflot worth?
He was worth $3bn a decade ago but seems to have lost most of it according to the rich lists. Id imagine it might be intriguing to see where all the money went.
I don't think any airline is worth much at the moment. I flew Aeroflot back from the World Cup. Seemed fine to me.
Depends on the route
BA London to Moscow is low profit route so it gets the crappy old planes. For Aeroflot it is their premier route so it gets the best. But that’s not a good comparison to judge Aeroflot on.
I wonder if Nigel F was offered a peerage. He would have fitted nicely with the nominations for non-affiliated Peerages.
Surely he belongs in the Natural History Museum with Jeremy Corbyn rather than the House of Lords?
He is arguably the most effective politician of the last 30 years. If that doesn't merit a peerage what does?
The most effective politician of the last 30 years, who has never won a seat at Westminster?
So what? He achieved, via political campaigning, a seismic change in British politics against just about everyone's expectations.
He believes he did.
Just as Cummings believed that he, and he alone, thwarted John Prescott's plan for a NE Assembly.
As always, it is more complicated than that. Many factors combined to take us out of the EU of which he was one part, but not the only or even the most important part.
Ultimately, looked at with a cold eye he is a serial party hopper and egoist who campaigned on one issue and on that one issue won two minor elections with low turnouts that, rightly or wrongly, nobody took seriously. He has no friends, no influence and now he's quarelled with Banks and left the European PArliament gravy train, no money.
So no, he doesn't deserve a place in the Lords and even if he did he's so unpopular with the actual powerbrokers nobody would nominate him for one, even without the rumours swirling of dubious foreign business activities.
Sorry that's deluded. If there was one person who was responsible for Brexit it was Nigel Farage.
I wold certainly agree that he was the man who got us to the point where we were actually given the choice. That took decades of campaigning and for that alone I am very grateful to him.
He used to bang on about it when he worked in the City and many people thought him a loon. Done more damage this country that Hitler and Kaiser Bill combined.
Ah the bitterness of losers.
I wouldn't deny that. I've been involved in pro-Europe campaigns at various levels since the late 60's. I hope you're not going to suggest that Johnson and Cummings are other than totally self-interested.
Not for a second. But that is not the question being debated. The vast majority of politicians are totally self interested. I wouldn't trust any of them as far as I could throw them.
What matters is what they are fighting for and whether they achieve it and Farage was fighting for something I wholeheartedly supported and had the nous, the skill or the cunning - whichever you prefer - to actually get us to the point where we were able to make a choice.
The comment about Hitler and Kaiser Bill is just fatuous bollocks. Hence my sore loser retort.
Fair comment about the Hitler etc comment. However, in the end the proof of the pudding.......
...is that you are indeed a sore loser. Correct!
I am indeed very sore at prospect of the level to which my country looks like falling. As are my children and and grandchildren who have stayed here. I don''t think those who have been brought up elsewhere are likely to return.
Then they will be missing out and I pity them. I certainly wouldn't live anywhere else in the world by choice.
Seriously? I don't mean that disparagingly but I could real off 10 countries in a minute I'd prefer to have been born in / live in than this wet congested island. In fairness I can also think of plenty that I would prefer the UK to as well.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
What is Aeroflot worth?
He was worth $3bn a decade ago but seems to have lost most of it according to the rich lists. Id imagine it might be intriguing to see where all the money went.
I don't think any airline is worth much at the moment. I flew Aeroflot back from the World Cup. Seemed fine to me.
Depends on the route
BA London to Moscow is low profit route so it gets the crappy old planes. For Aeroflot it is their premier route so it gets the best. But that’s not a good comparison to judge Aeroflot on.
BA fly 787s with a first class cabin to Moscow.
I haven’t been regularly since the mid 2000s so may be out of date.
OK, so I'm not a statistical, but when, on the same day we get told:
1. Daily infection rates have increased by 50% 2. R is still less than 1.0
It looks like bollocks.
AIUI. The R rate is a 2 or so weeks lagging indicator. It takes that long from being infected to discovering you have been. Which somewhat undermines its usefulness.
Daniel Moylan (another contemporary of Philip & Theresa May) on the peerage list too. Fun that Frank Field. Kate Hoey, Ian Austin, Gisela Stuart and John Woodcock were not nominated by Corbyn!
Pretty good list all in all. Charles Moore is a bonus.
Claire Fox is an interesting choice.
An utter disgrace. An apologist for the IRA. Someone who denies the Srebrenica massacre, who libelled the ITV journalists who reported on the war crimes the Serbs perpetrated against Bosnian Muslims during the civil war, who like Corbyn associates with Holocaust deniers. A woman who has said that child abuse images should remain on social media because they are mostly simulated.
This is who a Tory PM thinks should be in the legislature. Because.....
This business of cancelling/delaying the "pilot" sporting events with spectators. I understand the concerns about indoor events like World Snooker, but what on earth is the logic behind thinking there are particular risks involved in experimenting with outside events like County cricket? When thousands of people are allowed on Bournemouth beach in a far less controlled socially distance environment? Is it just because everyone at County cricket is thought to be over 80?
Cricket is possibly one of the few sports that could quite easily co-exist with covid regulations. I cannot honestly see crowds coming back to football next season either. Anyone who has ever been for a pee at a PL game at half-time knows there is no way on earth crowds can come back until there is an effective vaccine.
This business of cancelling/delaying the "pilot" sporting events with spectators. I understand the concerns about indoor events like World Snooker, but what on earth is the logic behind thinking there are particular risks involved in experimenting with outside events like County cricket? When thousands of people are allowed on Bournemouth beach in a far less controlled socially distance environment? Is it just because everyone at County cricket is thought to be over 80?
Cricket is possibly one of the few sports that could quite easily co-exist with covid regulations. I cannot honestly see crowds coming back to football next season either. Anyone who has ever been for a pee at a PL game at half-time knows there is no way on earth crowds can come back until there is an effective vaccine.
Standing pointlessly about in a field doesn’t spread the virus? Who knew.
Who decided on Jo Johnson being a peer, is that his brother or would that be seen as a conflict of interest? We also have the son of a former KGB agent who somehow acquired 30% ownership of aeroflot.
It's enough to make you weep. In fact I am. I'm weeping as I type.
If you wrote in a spy thriller, Russian KGB spy comes to England, acquires a third of a national airline, and son becomes a lord a couple of weeks after parliament points out malicious Russian interference in our elections, it would seem ridiculous. Yet no-one even cares! Let alone being anyone surprised by it.
Well the son of a Polish-Belgian communist was seeking to become PM in 2015, and no-one cared about that, despite the Daily Mail's best efforts.
The threat from Polish-Belgian communism seems somewhat distant, and probably not much less distant in 2015.
This business of cancelling/delaying the "pilot" sporting events with spectators. I understand the concerns about indoor events like World Snooker, but what on earth is the logic behind thinking there are particular risks involved in experimenting with outside events like County cricket? When thousands of people are allowed on Bournemouth beach in a far less controlled socially distance environment? Is it just because everyone at County cricket is thought to be over 80?
Cricket is possibly one of the few sports that could quite easily co-exist with covid regulations. I cannot honestly see crowds coming back to football next season either. Anyone who has ever been for a pee at a PL game at half-time knows there is no way on earth crowds can come back until there is an effective vaccine.
Standing pointlessly about in a field doesn’t spread the virus? Who knew.
I thought it was the spectators that was the issue?
Nice story developing at the English Men's Amateur Championship in Golf this week. Local to the course (Woodhall Spa) 59 year old through to the quarter finals in the matchplay format
Comments
Make it clear that we have a unicameral Parliament with the House of Commons elected Chamber is the only one that can make actual decisions. The House of Advisors (formerly Lords) can be packed full of any 'experts' who can give advice to the House of Commons to then act upon or ignore as they please.
Not some dogs breakfast that gives people a false claim to a democratic mandate and a clear incentive to use it.
The Great Council of State.
There's a long time gap between an actual infection happening, and it being recorded.
If you get CV-19 tomorrow, you probably won't feel even vaguely unwell for nine or ten days, and you probably won't get a positive result (assuming you even go to get tested) for two weeks.
In other words, there's a massive gap between infection and measurement. It leads to people mis-attributing cause and effect. And it leads to poor policy decisions. You can do something like open nightclubs, and there's no increase in reported cases for two weeks: hence night clubs don't result in spread.
It's like driving with your eyes fixed on the rear view mirror.
But if you like I will give you a bet at 5-1.
In two years time, after a vaccine has been widely distributed, and lots of decent evidence based peer review papers have been distributed, we will be able to know if mask wearing encouraged the spread of CV19 or helped prevent it.
Come on. Money where your mouth is. (@contrarian, you too)
Step up and bet on it.
Even then, you can still have party list PR on a sub-national scale with "constituencies", or an open list.
It doesn't have to be like Israel where the whole country is one super constituency and the seats are distributed directly proportional to the vote share.
Even better, we could rename Lords to Councillors then. Get rid of any pretensions of being high and mighty.
We didn't in 2015.
I'm proposing we recognise the reality we already have.
I am positive that if you listened to Spiked podcasts and read their articles you would find even less to disagree with than I do.
May as well just get rid of it. Huge waste of public funds.
I know our GRO would never mess around, but I can imagine countries like Russia and Brazil covering up things if they thought they could get away with it. Do they have open data like our GRO does?
Just as in Australia a referendum for an elected president would be won easily, but no Prime Minister wants that level of diminution in their power.
Also by having the Chamber unelected it is far less partisan than the Commons. The Commons (and the Lords if it were elected) sticks far more to party lines. The Lords being unelected and knowing they have no real authority tends to take issues on their actual merits instead.
Its basically like having someone proof read and come back with suggestions before it goes to print.
Its entirely undemocratic but it works. If you accept the idea that the Commons is the only Chamber with power it stops being undemocratic too.
However, there is a principled argument to be had against them. One that centres on freedom and personal choice and the environment. People like Hitchens sometime dally with this but then spoil their argument by going back to alleging that masks are ineffective or make matters worse.
You are being xenophobic, I'm afraid. You have no criticism of him, just of his background.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/remembering-my-friend-herman-cain-k-t-mcfarland
That being said, it is worth noting that the UK - with its younger population - is probably slightly disadvantaged by the measurement. If you average 5 deaths per 1,000 people per year, and it goes up to 10 per 1,000, them you see a 100% increase. While if you went from 20 to 27, you'd only see a 30% increase, even though the absolute increase in death rate would be worse.
Well - for a start because they are only paid when they turn up.
And secondly because it actually works very well - in terms of implanting consistency and quality and humanity into some of the gibberish that comes from the Commons.
The Commons postures and preens; the Lords sweats the detail.
I agree that there is an issue with a number of crooks, convicted and not convicted. That's not a justification for demolishing the whole thing; it's a reason for dealing with crooks.
https://services.parliament.uk/bills/
For example imagine a country that has a truly terrible road accident record such that, in a normal year, many people die in road accidents. Further imagine that its overall response to the virus (testing, treatment, hospital capacity, social distancing etc.) is poor, but the one thing they successfully do is stop people driving during the crisis. The excess death figure would be hugely flattered by the absence of road deaths, even if people were dying in large numbers in hospitals.
If it was a son of an Iranian spy, yes that would be a risk too, that we cannot completely discount and that should disqualify from a tiny part of public life. If it was an Iranian businessman of good standing then of course not.
The same would also apply to the sons or daughters of UK citizens who worked for the KGB, it would be folly to give access to classified information to Philby's children.
It is the job of being an enemy spy that is problematic not their nationality.
But that's just at a glance, I defer to more expert knowledge.
He’s saying it because the same criticism Richard attempts is regularly thrown at him. The Tories having tried to score cheap points at his expense now think it reasonable to stuff the House with the likes of the PM’s own brother, assorted Tory donors and Brexit supporters.
Beer garden rules FINALLY explained: You CAN still meet friends and family in them... but private gardens are still off limits
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/beer-garden-rules-finally-explained-18695562
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he "made a mistake" by joining in talks for giving a government contract to a charity that paid his family.
We Charity was tapped by his government to oversee a C$900m ($664m, £533m) youth volunteer programme in June.
It later emerged that We previously paid Mr Trudeau's relatives over C$280,000 to speak at events.
Mr Trudeau now faces his third ethics commission inquiry in office over the scandal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53394272
In a very Stop The War manner the RCP believed The West intervention in a country Bad, not The West intervening Good.
Elda: 10 positive cases (2 hospitalized) in the social field
Elche: 4 positives in the workplace
Altea: 3 positives in the social sphere
Moncofa: 6 positive cases in the social sphere
Valencia: 4 positive cases of non-community origin
Fenced: 6 positives in the social sphere
Benigànim: 4 positives (1 hospitalized) in the social field
Benaguasil: 3 positives in the workplace
Social sphere main driver
Spiked has published plenty denying what happened in Srebrenica and Fox has refused to apologise for the ITN libel when given the chance.
This is your friendly public service announcement of just how little they cost compared to the Lords:
and how the Lords is actually about 5-10% smaller than it was a few years ago:
I had the dubious pleasure of watching the Prime Minister's briefing (sound off) while enjoying a late breakfast in my favourite cafe in Barking.
There are several fine lines being walked here - the foremost is economic health vs public health. The fact 5,000 annual members and their guests won't attend Goodwood tomorrow is a financial blow for Goodwood Racecourse but beyond that and the wailing from ITV racing there's no atmosphere, it's frankly not the end of civilisation as we know it.
The other fine line is the line between mental health and public health - that's the mental health of children and those adults who are apparently bereft if they aren't commuting and sitting in an office with their "chums". I suspect the pressure on school re-openings will rise if case numbers continue to rise and this isn't going to be an easy one for Government to get right.
There seem to be any number of anomalies and contradictions in what is being allowed and what isn't which is recognition of the complexities of the decisions being made and the consequences deriving therefrom.
As I ranted last night, the public have only themselves to blame if we see a big new rise in cases (suspect we won't). The "rules" on mask wearing and social distancing (which were of course unenforceable) have frayed to the point of irrelevance in some areas and the price of the large scale flouting of these rules may be played out in the weeks to come.
I wonder if this is some form of "rolling" poll - I remember we had those at one GE and you could tell from day to day which was the more pro-Conservative or pro-Labour sample. I suspect this Rasmussen poll isn't as significant as I thought.
I know the incoming President forms a transition team which I presume is effectively his administration-in-waiting and I remember a couple of awkward meetings between Obama and Trump but is there any required or mandated transition process?
Could, for instance, Trump simply ignore Biden and his people and do nothing until January 20th 2021? Presumably, IF the Democrats win the Senate and hold the House, the new Congress meets in the New Year and can conduct business but Trump could veto any and every bill and rule by executive order until 20/1/21?
That suggests a degree of paralysis but worse it would allow Trump and his cohorts to destroy incriminating data in a "scorched earth" exercise leaving the incoming administration with nothing.
It would look like something out of the Scottish Play with Trump wandering round an increasingly empty Castle while Biden and his army camp outside.
Sturgeon: 40% / 30%
NET: +10% (+3)
BA London to Moscow is low profit route so it gets the crappy old planes. For Aeroflot it is their premier route so it gets the best. But that’s not a good comparison to judge Aeroflot on.
1. Daily infection rates have increased by 50%
2. R is still less than 1.0
It looks like bollocks.
President Trump will require Beijing-based Bytedance Ltd. to sell its ownership in TikTok, the popular video-sharing app that U.S. officials have deemed a national security risk, according to a person familiar with the matter.
U.S. officials have been concerned that TikTok could pass on the data it collects from Americans streaming videos to China’s authoritarian government. TikTok has said it would never do so.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-order-demanding-chinas-bytedance-to-divest-tiktok-11596219920
It takes that long from being infected to discovering you have been.
Which somewhat undermines its usefulness.
This is who a Tory PM thinks should be in the legislature. Because.....
.https://www.englandgolf.org/day-four-mens-amateur-the-fairytale-continues-for-golden-oldie-wharton/