UK politics - Dry Your Eyes Mate, ...

[Hereward]

It’s not, though. He’s advocating prioritising treatment for those with the best potential outcomes. Which doctors routinely do, and, absent an infinite supply of expert practitioners and resources, always will do. That is not the same as attempting to artificially improve the genetics of humanity or a “race”. He’s still a dick, though.

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Hereward said:

He’s not, though. He’s advocating prioritising treatment for those with the best potential outcomes. Which doctors routinely do, and, absent an infinite supply of expert practitioners and resources, always will do. That is not the same as attempting to artificially improve the genetics of humanity or a “race”. He’s still a dick, though.

Yes, that's precisely the sort of crap he was coming out with yesterday.

If our health service hadn't been systematically run into the ground over the past ten years, perhaps we wouldn't have to consider going down this grim path.

Also, the term eugenics is these days used to describe a whole bunch of questionable social engineering practices.

There are plenty of scholarly articles out there talking about the link, today, between Covid and Eugenics. Usually in response to the advocation of bonkers herd immunity strategies or other insane Capitalist Death Cult responses to Covid (of which Sumption appears to be a leading purveyor).

 

[ants]

13 hours ago, mormont said:

Might be worth drawing attention to this research:

Around a quarter of over-60s are not self-isolating at all if they show symptoms. Many may be unable to, of course. I'm not blaming them, necessarily. But this does help to show why the idea of simply 'walling off' the vulnerable is a nonsense. People do not work that way.

The start of that tweet thread is also really interesting.  People's adherence of the rules is generally really good.  Except the key rule of how long you isolate when you've got symptoms/are positive!  Plus, the rules are laxer and the virus is more contagious, which means adherence won't necessarily have the same level of impact as the first lockdown.  

[Spockydog]

Priti Patel says she wanted UK borders shut last March

I'll bet she did. 

Quote

 

In comments first reported by the Guido Fawkes website and made a day after the new policy came into effect, Patel said she had been an advocate of tightening borders at the start of the pandemic. Patel reportedly told the Conservative Friends of India group during a Zoom call on Tuesday: “On ‘should we have closed our borders earlier?’, the answer is yes, I was an advocate [of] closing them last March.”

Travel corridors allowing arrivals from certain destinations with low rates of Covid-19 to avoid quarantine were introduced in July last year, the month after the government moved to implement quarantine restrictions on international arrivals. There have been frequent changes to the corridors in recent months, with countries dropped from the list as infection rates have fluctuated.

At PMQs, Starmer said the government was not disputing Patel’s version of events, asking: “Why did the prime minister overrule the home secretary?”

Johnson ignored the question, saying only that the UK had “introduced one of the toughest border regimes in the world”

 

Could this be the start of her campaign to oust Johnson and claim the top job for herself?

Someone hand me my popcorn.

 

 

[Hereward]

Not a cat in Hell’s chance. I wonder if Johnson has the balls to sack her, as he should, though.

[Spockydog]

22 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Not a cat in Hell’s chance. I wonder if Johnson has the balls to sack her, as he should, though.

She should have been sacked two or three bullying scandals ago. She is truly awful.

[BigFatCoward]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

Priti Patel says she wanted UK borders shut last March

I'll bet she did. 

Could this be the start of her campaign to oust Johnson and claim the top job for herself?

Someone hand me my popcorn.

 

 

I'm now convinced that shutting borders is the incorrect course of action, and the policy should be reversed immediately. 

[mormont]

The problem for Johnson is that, as he's already implicitly accepted that her previous sacking offence - holding secret meetings behind the FO's back - should be overlooked and presented no impediment to appointing her to one of the top four jobs in government, it's difficult for him now to sack her for any less serious offence. It's particularly difficult to sack her for positioning herself for a run for PM by publicly saying she disagreed with party policy, as that's what Johnson himself spent all his ministerial time doing.

[Derfel Cadarn]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55738174
 

1800 covid deaths over past day. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Well....

Brexiters got their wish withless Europeans coming to the UK, sorta...just not exactly what they meant.

[Spockydog]

16 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55738174
 

1800 covid deaths over past day. 

Strong and stable mortality rate.

[Hereward]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

The problem for Johnson is that, as he's already implicitly accepted that her previous sacking offence - holding secret meetings behind the FO's back - should be overlooked and presented no impediment to appointing her to one of the top four jobs in government, it's difficult for him now to sack her for any less serious offence. It's particularly difficult to sack her for positioning herself for a run for PM by publicly saying she disagreed with party policy, as that's what Johnson himself spent all his ministerial time doing.

It’s a morally less serious offence, but constitutionally a greater one. The principle of Cabinet Responsibility should require that he sack her for picking and choosing which Cabinet decisions she’s going to back. 

[The Anti-Targ]

Dunno if anyone has seen this, but here is a 93 slide powerpoint presentation on Brexit from the EU perspective. I see that the presentation doesn't completely avoid having a few little digs at the UK.

https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/html/159266.htm

It might make for an interesting exercise to do a bit of a side by side comparison with information coming from the UK side. I'm not that personally interested or affected to do it myself though.

 

[ants]

The interesting one for me was slides 20 and 22, which pretty much claim that the EU internal market is protected because the rules will be based on EU origin.  Slide 23 also says there are controls on state-aid and standards (labour, environmental, etc.).  With robust enforcement tools.  

I didn't read all the detail after the main summary. 

[The Anti-Targ]

The presentation clearly intends to convey the impression that while there is accommodation for the UK given it's former status as a member, it is now a 3rd country just like the rest of us. There is the clear warning that divergence will not be without its consequences, the level playing field is sacrosanct from their perspective, and they reserve the right to take unilateral action. They see the things the UK put in the political declaration as just as binding as those put into the legal agreement and if the UK moves from those positions there will be a cost.

I see more videos popping up on Youtube about CANZUK. It's quite ridiculous to think that idea is any kind of substitute for what the UK had as an EU member. I fully support the idea of free movement and mutual recognition of qualifications that is part of the CANZUK concept, but I see no good rationale for limiting it to CANZUK. Free movement and mutual recognition of qualifications should really apply to all OECD countries, at least, and probably several more besides.

[Heartofice]

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Dunno if anyone has seen this, but here is a 93 slide powerpoint presentation on Brexit from the EU perspective. I see that the presentation doesn't completely avoid having a few little digs at the UK.

https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/html/159266.htm

It might make for an interesting exercise to do a bit of a side by side comparison with information coming from the UK side. I'm not that personally interested or affected to do it myself though.

 

My big take away from this is, why is this presentation so ugly and why is it a powerpoint deck on the internet that took about 5 minutes to load on my machine. Is there not a HTML version that the EU have created? What year is this?

[The Anti-Targ]

Yeah, I have no idea why some pdfs take ages to download only about 3Mb and others open as quickly as you would normally expect.

I won't criticise the aesthetics of the presentation, because mine are way worse while also being way shorter.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Yeah, I have no idea why some pdfs take ages to download only about 3Mb and others open as quickly as you would normally expect.

I won't criticise the aesthetics of the presentation, because mine are way worse while also being way shorter.

I looked for the UK version which I guess is this
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/agreements-reached-between-the-united-kingdom-of-great-britain-and-northern-ireland-and-the-european-union/summary-explainer

Though they do also have a PDF online, even though .gov have recommended never using PDFs online in the future. 

I think most business presentation decks  I've seen are some of the ugliest creations on the planet, the intention being to cram as much useless information onto one page as possible so that nobody could possibly read it.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I looked for the UK version which I guess is this
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/agreements-reached-between-the-united-kingdom-of-great-britain-and-northern-ireland-and-the-european-union/summary-explainer

Though they do also have a PDF online, even though .gov have recommended never using PDFs online in the future. 

I think most business presentation decks  I've seen are some of the ugliest creations on the planet, the intention being to cram as much useless information onto one page as possible so that nobody could possibly read it.

Does that mean you are volunteering to prepare a side by side comparison for us? I mean, you've done half the work of finding the UK govt version...well maybe slightly less than half the work.

[Heartofice]

23 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Does that mean you are volunteering to prepare a side by side comparison for us? I mean, you've done half the work of finding the UK govt version...well maybe slightly less than half the work.

Lol, no thanks I'll pass on that.