UK Politics - It's a bit glitchy

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

1 hour ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

so Tampons are not essential products in Wales, and can't be sold?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54685886

 

 

I should point out the Welsh Government have released a statement saying they can sell sanitary products.

I initially expected that this would have been an employee (probably a man) cordoning off the area without really thinking about it, but it’s quite an impressive cock up that they tried to defend it on Twitter too.

[Heartofice]

It's a stupid policy full stop. This is just one extreme example highlighting it's stupidity.

[BigFatCoward]

Smoke detectors not essential as well. 

We need to change the rules so that there are about 3, and the stupidest person in the UK can easily understand them. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

Clothes too... 

‘Great’ news for parents of babies goingn through a sudden growth spurt, or wanting warmer clothes due to the change in the weather.

[Werthead]

19 hours ago, A wilding said:

Trying to be serious:

It is an undeniable fact that child poverty in the UK is much worse than it was in 2010. It is, I think, very hard to argue that government policy is not a large part of the reason for this, first with austerity (including the evisceration of local authority budgets) and now Covid programs conspicuously not aimed at supporting the less well off, being rather the usual massive handouts to private companies and consultants.

Making windows into people's souls is a dicey business, so quite what the Tories' motivations are is open to question. However, my money would be on some combination of:

I think there is another option, which is that they have never been in that position, don't really understand either the cost of living or the relative paucity of income on benefits and genuinely think that people should be able to afford to live on such an income and ergo if they can't it's because they're reckless or irresponsible.

[mormont]

I'd say there's some truth to that. In my life, because of my line of work, I've run into many young adults from privileged backgrounds who carry around a profound ignorance of what it's actually like to live on a low income. Like all of us, they make assumptions about other people's lives, based on their own. It doesn't occur to them that others might lack things they take for granted - facilities in the home like private bedrooms, or in this case spacious and well-equipped kitchens. Storage space. Utensils. A decent sized oven. A decent sized freezer. There are all sorts of other things, too - social capital, access to knowledge and casual learning, actual leisure time, psychological support, and many others. I've talked to many of these kids about their assumptions and seen the light dawn upon a few of them as they realise what they've been told all their lives about people in poverty might just be unfair. 

But - and this is a huge BUT - if you are an adult and particularly a member of Parliament, you have no excuse for being ignorant. You should understand how your constituents live, all of your constituents, and listen to them instead of lecturing them. That is your job. When you put yourself forward for election, you lost any right to make excuses about this. You have constituents who are barely getting by and struggle to feed their kids. you are their representative. You do not get to lecture them. 

[Hereward]

There’s another aspect which has not been raised and that is pressure from their own most vocal supporters. I can assure you that the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” crowd is not in any way solely comprised of the gilded elite. Many of them still advocate a degree of paternalism.

If you want to see real rage against the “feckless”, try those who have struggled to some decree of comfort, or still strive for it. My email and Facebook pages teem with memes concerning their tax money being wasted on those who can’t be bothered to feed their children, but can’t do without cable TV, iPhones or “makeovers”.

[Heartofice]

Well the whole argument between the left and right is often on the basis of how much of an individuals situation is down to circumstances and luck (or some sort of systemic oppression) vs self sufficiency and yeah 'pull yourself up'. 

Sure there are definitely a lot of people who are completely out of touch with the reality of being poor, and don't understand how that situation can affect your outlook on life and what is possible. 

At the other end of the spectrum however there are those who tend to completely absolve people of personal responsibility and imagine that all problems can be solved if you pump enough money into something. 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

But - and this is a huge BUT - if you are an adult and particularly a member of Parliament, you have no excuse for being ignorant. You should understand how your constituents live, all of your constituents, and listen to them instead of lecturing them. That is your job. When you put yourself forward for election, you lost any right to make excuses about this. You have constituents who are barely getting by and struggle to feed their kids. you are their representative. You do not get to lecture them. 

And yet they do.

This was a particularly impressive example, with the MP in question suggesting that people "sell assets" like "pearls" to feed their children and quite rightly getting dragged for it because his advice seems to have been straight out of the 1950s.

One of my favourite examples of this was a few years ago when an MP railed against people being poor but "somehow affording laptops." It was pointed out to him that if you don't have a computer or some way of accessing the Internet on a daily basis, your benefits would be stopped, so people had no choice but to get hold of a computer somehow.

There's also the constantly asinine complaint of people "affording iPhones" or "flatscreen TVs" (although it would actually be far more expensive to get an antique CRT at this point and you can get secondhand flatscreen TVs in charity shops for about £20) whilst on benefits, whilst not considering the possibility that because someone is on benefits right now, they might have actually had a very good, well-paying job at some previous point in the past, possibly quite recent. You realise people need help when they do not understand the concept of the linear passage of time.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

At the other end of the spectrum however there are those who tend to completely absolve people of personal responsibility and imagine that all problems can be solved if you pump enough money into something. 

I'll plead guilty to that, and I'm certainly not sorry about it.

[Which Tyler]

@RussInCheshire

#TheWeekInTory

 

“Amazingly, this is my third #TheWeekInTory in 7 days, and if anybody wants to pay for me to go somewhere comparatively sane and relaxing for a week, I’m up for it. 

 

I hear Mogadishu is nice. 

 

Anyway, buckle up, here we go...

 

1. Previously on The Week In Tory: the govt campaigned for Brexit so we can “look after our own”, and then immediately voted not to

 

2. Instead they opted to let up to 900,000 children go hungry during school holidays, including – bless you Santa Johnson – Christmas

 

3. In July, when the govt lifted the original lockdown, Rishi Sunak, the nicest Tory, tweeted “I can’t wait to get back to the pub” 

 

4. This week he voted to let thousands of kids starve, and as a result was barred for life from his local

 

5. Ben Bradley, a Tory MP and Al Murray character made of Lego, spent last week appealing for justice and opportunity for “working class white boys who have been left behind”

 

6. He then voted to deprive them of food

 

7. Then this stout defender of the working class said food vouchers for poor kids will just end up being used in brothels and crack dens

 

8. He said he knows kids living in these conditions, and yet, like a true humanitarian, he appears to have done absolutely nothing about it

 

9. He also overlooks the fact that the vouchers can only be used to buy food, and I’ve yet to find evidence that crack dens commonly set up a tuck shop

 

10. He then invited his critics to visit “one of the country’s most deprived schools, who’s Head agrees with me”

 

11. The school’s governors replied to say neither they, nor the Head, agreed with him

 

12. It’s Monday, and most experts estimate that by Wednesday afternoon, Ben Bradley will have dug himself a hole deep enough to see kangaroos

 

13. Tory MP Gary Sambrook said it was OK for kids to go hungry during holidays, because they’ve “been benefiting from free school meals during term time”. It will come as a shock to Sambrook to discover humans require food on quite a regular basis

 

14. Tory peer Baroness Barran went on radio and said Tories had done other things to help poor children, such as extra money for emergency Universal Credit

 

15. So the govt announced it was reducing emergency Universal Credit by £20 a week

 

16. Tory MP Selaine Saxby said if businesses help starving kids she “very much hopes they will not be seeking any further govt support”

 

17. Selaine Saxby consistently votes against measures to reduce tax avoidance, cos avoiding tax is the sort of govt support she’s fine with

 

18. McDonalds offered 1m free meals over half term, proving to the govt that it is possible for clowns to make moral decisions

 

19. At a Downing St press conference, the govt repeatedly declined invitations from the media to praise businesses providing meals to hungry children

 

20. Matt Hancock said local councils had been provided with “a huge amount of extra investment” to feed kids

 

21. Since 2010, Tories cut funding to local councils by 60%

 

22. The Tory council in Boris Johnson’s own constituency joined the campaign to give free school meals

 

23. Matt Hancock, a sentient teaspoon and ever-dependable master of detail, went on radio and said there had been “lines of communication” between Boris Johnson and Marcus Rashford

 

24. Marcus Rashford said there hadn’t

 

25. 2000 paediatricians condemned the govt

 

26. The Children’s Commissioner it was “like something out of the pages of Oliver Twist”

 

27. An anonymous Tory MP said it was a “political disaster” and he had “never known so many Conservative MPs and council leaders so angry”

 

28. Senior Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said the govt had “misunderstood the mood of the country”

 

29. Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP and spine-donor, voted with the govt, but is now openly calling for the policy to change

 

30. Multiple Tory MPs have predicted a U-turn, which means at least the govt won’t go hungry over the holidays: it’ll have all those lovely words to eat

 

31. And then, cos they don’t know when to stop, the govt cut the laptop allocation for England’s most deprived schools by 80%

 

32. In a not-at-all-obvious attempt to distract attention, 112 Tory MPs (98% of whom had just voted to let children starve at Christmas) wrote to Keir Starmer to complain of the “widespread abuse” they received as a result of Angela Rayner calling one of them “scum”

 

33. They must have been unable to find a pen and paper when there was a 375% increase in Islamophobic incidents after Boris Johnson referred to Muslim women as “letterboxes” and "bank robbers"

 

34. They were probably having difficulty with a gummed-up biro when Boris Johnson called gay men “bum boys”. or said black people were “picaninnies with watermelon smiles”, or said in parliament that proven death threats against female Labour MPs were "humbug"

 

35. And perhaps they didn’t have an address for Home Secretary and Thor’s sister Priti Patel after she made an incendiary speech attacking "lefty" immigration lawyers, one of who was stabbed 4 days later by a far-right activist

 

36. Speaking of witch – tsk, me and my spelling – more than 800 lawyers and judges wrote to the govt demanding an apology from Priti Patel, and saying her “rhetoric and hostility” risks “undermining the rule of law”

 

37. After demanding local councils “build build build”, Michael Gove personally stepped in to oppose building in his constituency

 

38. There’s a fine line between spin and outright lies, and that is just one of many lines Michael Gove has caused to disappear

 

39. The govt confirmed it was going to start charging 20% VAT on PPE. In a pandemic

 

40. The govt said it would be fine, cos care homes can claim back the VAT

 

41. But the govt’s own advice says “Care homes … are unlikely to be able to recover any VAT on PPE”

 

42. Rishi Sunak said he would provide the NHS with “whatever resources it needs” to cope with the pandemic, which is why the NHS is £1bn short of funds needed to pay wages to the end of the year

 

43. SAGE said Test and Trace, the centrepiece of our Covid strategy, was “having only a marginal impact”

 

44. Test and Trace system achieved new heroic heights, as it was revealed of 268m records, just 104 cases had been pursued

 

45. Labour’s NHS IT System was described by Tories as “one of the worse scandals ever in terms of waste of public money”, costing £12bn over 6 years

 

46. By contrast, the Test and Trace system has spent £12bn in just 4 months and failed to meet a single target set for it

 

47. Tory MP Bernard Jenkin called for Dido Harding to be sacked

 

48. Matt Hancock said he had (finally) published the highly critical 2016 report into the UK’s lack of preparedness for a pandemic, which his dept had seen and then done nothing at all to act upon

 

49. Due to some terrible and entirely unpredictable oversight, the version he published was incomplete and heavily redacted, cos that’s exactly what you’d do if it wasn’t massively embarrassing

 

50. Only 211 days since South Korea started mandatory test and quarantine at its airports, the UK govt announced plans to do the same

 

51. Except unlike South Korea we’ll charge people for tests

 

53. Deaths per million in South Korea: 8

 

54. Deaths per million in UK: 665

 

54. It was then reported that Bankers and Hedge Fund Managers would be exempt from quarantine because obviously the virus, a non-living sub-microscopic entity with no brain or nervous system, will figure out how rich you are before deciding whether to infect you

 

55. Boris Johnson held a meeting with UK business leaders, and urged them to follow the govt’s guidance in preparing for Brexit

 

56. The govt hasn’t agreed a deal, so has not yet issued final guidance for preparing for Brexit

 

57. Then it was reported Boris Johnson won’t make a decision about whether to accept a Brexit deal until he finds out if Trump has won the election, because an important part of Taking Back Control is not being able to decide a thing until we find out what Donald is up to

 

58. Assuming the election happens cleanly (and Trump is involved, so god knows) this leaves businesses just 31 working days to implement a plan for the end of a 41 year period of stability, in the middle of a pandemic that most believe will be at the peak of its second wave

 

59. But huzzah! the govt announced a deal with Japan that was “even better than the one Japan has with the EU”

 

60. But whoops! the EU/Japan deal prevents either side from offering better terms to anybody else, and our deal with Japan is 5% of the one we lose with the EU

 

61. The former ambassador to USA (under both Tory and Labour govts) said the UK’s plans for handling a Joe Biden presidency are “profoundly clumsy and stupid” and that “Number 10 is absolutely clueless” about how to manage a post-Brexit relationship with the USA

 

62. Between them, the EU and USA account for around 60% of the UK’s total trade, so deliberately losing one, and then accidentally losing another is definitely a reason to be intensely relaxed about the whole thing

 

63. And that's why, spurred by their stunning victory over UK trade, a group of Tory MPs led by Steve Baker, a scale model of C3P0 made entirely out of ham, is urging the formation of a “European Research Group for the pandemic”

 

Gas and air, please. In heroic quantities”

[Heartofice]

22 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I dont think that one’s on the government site, which will force them to discuss petitions that get x signatures

https://fullfact.org/online/mps-expenses-claim-lunch-gym/

Might be worth checking this out.

[Which Tyler]

Indian child poverty charity offers free school meals in England

Akshaya Patra, which feeds millions in India, opens first of three planned kitchens

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/oct/27/indian-child-poverty-charity-offers-free-school-meals-in-uk?

A charity that feeds millions of poor children in India has joined the drive to end holiday hunger in England and distributed its first meals from a new kitchen in Watford.

Hot vegetarian dishes cooked for less than £2 each using a model developed to feed the hungry in cities such as Mumbai and Ahmedabad were dispatched to a school in north London on Tuesday amid growing pressure on the government to reverse its decision not to fund free school meals this half-term.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Maybe Africa will reciprocate Band Aid and have their musicians raise money for our starving children?

[Werthead]

367 new COVID deaths today, the largest number since May. The rolling seven-day average is now well over 200, with 9,000 people in hospital. Leeds NHS trust has cancelled non-urgent operations after noting it now had more COVID cases than during the peak of the first wave.

Interestingly, Vallance was warning a few weeks ago that Britain was on course for 50,000 cases a day by mid-October, which hasn't happened (although we're at half that and rising) and 200 deaths a day by mid-November, which we are now comfortably over. The official death toll is now 45,455, but the general feeling is we are significantly undercounting and the true figure (still conservatively) is now just under 61,500. Either figure comfortably makes us the fifth-worst affected country in the world.

The question now is how long the government is going to hold off on another lockdown. Although figures are rising slower than they were during the height of the first wave, they are inexorably rising and there's limited sign that the local lockdowns are being effective.

On the plus side of things, the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine trials, after a few hiccups, are going very well and early results have been submitted for peer review. Particularly promising is the effectiveness of the vaccine on older people. They have ramped up the initial dose production to 1.5 billion and believe they can start distribution in early 2021 (possibly in some areas in December).

[williamjm]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Interestingly, Vallance was warning a few weeks ago that Britain was on course for 50,000 cases a day by mid-October, which hasn't happened (although we're at half that and rising) and 200 deaths a day by mid-November, which we are now comfortably over.

I'm not clear if Vallance's prediction was for 50000 confirmed cases or for 50000 total cases. If it's the latter then if we're finding 20000+ cases I don't think it's implausible that the real number of infections is nearing the 50000 region.

[Werthead]

10 hours ago, williamjm said:

I'm not clear if Vallance's prediction was for 50000 confirmed cases or for 50000 total cases. If it's the latter then if we're finding 20000+ cases I don't think it's implausible that the real number of infections is nearing the 50000 region.

If it was 50,000 cases total we rocketed past that many days ago.

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

If it was 50,000 cases total we rocketed past that many days ago.

Maybe total wasn't the best word, I was thinking of the number of new daily cases if our testing somehow caught everything.

[Raja]

15 hours ago, williamjm said:

don't think it's implausible that the real number of infections is nearing the 50000 region.

Yeah, I think you're correct given what Vallance had said a week ago and data from ONS and React - There are two studies looking at incidence ( number of new infections) the ONS study and the REACT study ( these are done  through random sampling as opposed to just the new infections that are being picked up by test and trace etc - random sampling like this gives you a better estimate given that it's been going on since April)

All ONS numbers can be found here

As per the ONS numbers for 16th October, new infections are at 35,200 per day but the 95% confidence interval is between 29, 800 and 46,600. So we could well be close to that 50,000 number given the official ONS estimates.

It should also be noted that this data set runs to the 16th and we're now two weeks from that.

 

[Werthead]

Remarkable.

Serco has downgraded the use of trained healthcare professionals and recruited young (as young as 18) people to work in the test and trace system. Some of these 18 years old are being asked to make clinical decisions about people's health with no formal training whatsoever, and talk to people who have just lost loved ones without any kind of bereavement counselling training. The authorisation to make this change came from the government, which the government has admitted (but claimed was voluntary, which was not the case).

We're beyond "shitshow" at this point into some kind of diarrhoea storm of Tory incompetence.