Just how awful is this government? June 2020 edition

[The Clamp]

Actually I do apologise, you post so much bile on this site I’m never sure which thread I’m on when chatting to you, I meant the Brexit thread.

Fancy a sizeable bet on the multiple accounts though, the mods will be able to confirm?

Oh dear, you've been caught in a lie again. Can't help yourself.

It's easy to hide where accounts originate from. So no, I wouldn't make a bet with someone as low and dishonest as you. I don't know how many other accounts you have and frankly, I couldn't care less. You're snide. That's all we need to know. A true troll.

 

[The Clamp]

Oh and It’s obviously your other personality posting now, “lying scum”[emoji23][emoji23]

You've lost me. Quoting yourself, again. Thought we had Pasta switched on did we?

 

[Garry Nelson's teacher]

Oh and It’s obviously your other personality posting now, “lying scum”[emoji23][emoji23]

Goodness me, lads. If the Allied and Axis troops could come out of their trenches in 1914 and play a game of football, couldn't you two call a Xmas truce, if only to give the rest of us a bit of peace?

 

[The Clamp]

Goodness me, lads. If the Allied and Axis troops could come out of their trenches in 1914 and play a game of football, couldn't you two call a Xmas truce, if only to give the rest of us a bit of peace?

Quite right. My apologies.

 

[Chicken Run]

Oh dear, you've been caught in a lie again. Can't help yourself.

It's easy to hide where accounts originate from. So no, I wouldn't make a bet with someone as low and dishonest as you. I don't know how many other accounts you have and frankly, I couldn't care less. You're snide. That's all we need to know. A true troll.

You’re a coward, of course the mods can confirm multiple accounts, take the bet if your that sure, you’re the only nasty snivelling liar around these parts.

More than enough people know that.

 

[WATFORD zero]

Goodness me, lads. If the Allied and Axis troops could come out of their trenches in 1914 and play a game of football, couldn't you two call a Xmas truce, if only to give the rest of us a bit of peace?

Quite right. My apologies.

3,2,1 and Bullseye

*edit*

You’re a coward, of course the mods can confirm multiple accounts, take the bet if your that sure, you’re the only nasty snivelling liar around these parts.

More than enough people know that.

Well that was unpredictable (30 seconds too late)

Maybe you should post as pastafarian for a bit (just trying to help )

 

[Chicken Run]

Goodness me, lads. If the Allied and Axis troops could come out of their trenches in 1914 and play a game of football, couldn't you two call a Xmas truce, if only to give the rest of us a bit of peace?

Fair point [emoji106]

 

[Chicken Run]

3,2,1 and Bullseye

*edit*



Well that was unpredictable (30 seconds too late)

Maybe you should post as pastafarian for a bit (just trying to help )

Happy Christmas x

 

[Hamilton]

Here is an article [MENTION=240]larus[/MENTION] posted on another thread, read it please!


2 Not allowed!
For all those who want to slag off the UK (i.e. using the border shutdown and linking to Brexit), you should be aware that the UK has the most advanced genome sequencing capabilities in the world.

The reason why we are able to identify the new strain is because we have the skills to do it. Most of the rest of Europe either can’t or doesn’t do it.

Post from an article on the Telegraph


Emmanuel Macron’s ban on lorries entering France wins the prize for the most pointless political gesture since the onset of this pandemic. The mutant strain B.1.1.7 is already all over Europe.

British scientists spotted it early and have tracked it in real-time because the UK has carried out almost as much genome sequencing of Covid-19 as the rest of the world combined. Harvard epidemiologist William Hanage says the UK has the most advanced genomic monitoring regime on the planet.

Denmark is one of the few other states in Europe that also does extensive and rapid sequencing. Lo and behold, the Danes have found the same mutation. Many countries do little or no genomic sequencing at all.

It stretches credulity to imagine that a variant picked up in samples as far back as September is not already rampant in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and indeed France. It had months to run when borders were wide open, long before the second lockdowns.

The spectacle of Britain cut off from the world as a leper-state in viral quarantine is unlikely to last more than a few days. The selective discounting of sterling and UK financial assets is the fleeting reaction of skittish markets trying to find their way through the fog. Sterling is undervalued against the euro.

Christian Drosten, Angela’s Merkel’s pandemic guru, says the mutation is almost certainly spreading in Germany already and he is sceptical about the data interpretation by Prof Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial. “I am not particularly worried,” he told Deutschlandfunk, taking a gentle swipe at headline bio-hysteria.

Prof Drosten is careful not to violate scientific etiquette but he came as close as you can to rebuking the British government - and by implication the modellers on the Nervtag committee - for pushing a conclusion beyond the known evidence.

He questions the pseudo-quantification behind claims that the new strain is 70pc more transmissible. “There are too many unknown strains to say something like that,” he told Covid reporter Kai Kupferschmidt.

A similar flap occurred over an earlier Spanish mutation that appeared to be more contagious at first but was in reality spreading faster because people had let down their guard and were traveling more. The problem was behaviour, not mutation.

Prof Andreas Bergthaler from the Austrian Academy of Sciences is equally sceptical, playing down what he called “insane alarmism” and insisting that it is still too early to know whether the new strain fundamentally changes the pathogen.

There are certainly grounds for caution. Eight mutations in the coding of the spike protein are unusual. Two are potentially dangerous: one that makes it easier for the virus to bind to the ACE2 receptor; the other causing a loss of amino acids that play a crucial role in immune defences.

A related strain in South Africa seems to hit the young as well as the old. A twist of this kind - more akin to the flu pandemic of 1918 - would be a truly disturbing development.

Whether or not the new strain proves to be a false alarm, it is Europe that is likely to face greater trouble dealing with the pandemic over the next three months. Media attention will swing back soon to the EU vaccination fiasco.

The UK has already give the first vaccine jab to 500,000 people and should be able to immunise care homes, health staff, and the most vulnerable relatively quickly with the German BioNTech mRNA vaccine - which the Germans themselves do not yet have, and will not have at adequate scale for a long time, thanks to the errors and complacency of the European Commission’s vaccine alliance.

Assuming that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is approved over coming days, the UK will then be able step up the pace to several million jabs a week in an immunisation crescendo that leads the world and effectively breaks the back of the epidemic by late February.

Once the first 10m people deemed most at risk have been covered - and once the next echelon has already had a first shot - there is no longer a compelling justification for shutting down the economy or suspending ancient freedoms.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock should not be talking about “months” of further lockdowns. That implies a zero eradication strategy and pushes the precautionary principle into the realms of lunacy.

The demonstration effect of the UK's vaccination Blitzkrieg is likely to cause political heartburn for European leaders, including Mr Macron. The EU will not start its jabs until next week. The Commission’s vaccine alliance did not get around to ordering the BioNTech doses until mid-November. This has pushed the EU down the delivery list.

Even then, Brussels ordered too few doses - much to the fury of German health minister Jens Spahn - and mostly spread its bets on a range of vaccines that will not be available until the middle of the year or until late 2021. The next three months are going to be a very awkward time for Europe’s political class, and it will be even more awkward if the mutation is as bad as feared.

The irony is that the Oxford vaccine alone will be ready soon enough and in sufficient volumes to avert the worst for Europe this spring. It is Britain that is going to rescue the Continent. This week's headlines will soon give way to a very different tale.

I've only just read this.

My concern with articles like this from The Telegraph is that they perpetuate a narrative where Britain is the greatest in the world. We are no greater than Sweden, Germany, France etc. and they are no greater that us.

COG-UK has played a huge part in genome tracing, as have the WHO and John Hopkins University. These bodies are spread across the world and share data. The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is now in trials combined with Russia's sputnik vaccine.

We really do not help ourselves in listening to jingoistic editorial pieces from the Telegraph who would have you believe this is the greatest nation on earth. It is not. And it is not the worst either.

I am not some proponent of Britain bashing, far from it, but this polarisation of Britain great, everyone else rubbish is just torrid.

Look at one of the greatest British inventions ever. The world wide web from Sir Tim Berners Lee. Created at CERN in Switzerland and while never a formal CERN product, supported by that team and rolled out to the world free of charge.

We work best when we unite. We are at our worst when we pull up the drawbridge and haughtily proclaim to be better than anyone else.

Meanwhile, Boris and his chums have overseen the handing out of billions of pounds of pandemic contracts with no governance and Jacob Rees Mogg's hedge fund friends stand to make millions more from the casualties of Brexit.

It's great you point to these positives. But there are significant negatives we must hold Boris and co to account for.

 

[Machiavelli]

I've only just read this.

My concern with articles like this from The Telegraph is that they perpetuate a narrative where Britain is the greatest in the world. We are no greater than Sweden, Germany, France etc. and they are no greater that us.

COG-UK has played a huge part in genome tracing, as have the WHO and John Hopkins University. These bodies are spread across the world and share data. The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is now in trials combined with Russia's sputnik vaccine.

We really do not help ourselves in listening to jingoistic editorial pieces from the Telegraph who would have you believe this is the greatest nation on earth. It is not. And it is not the worst either.

I am not some proponent of Britain bashing, far from it, but this polarisation of Britain great, everyone else rubbish is just torrid.

Look at one of the greatest British inventions ever. The world wide web from Sir Tim Berners Lee. Created at CERN in Switzerland and while never a formal CERN product, supported by that team and rolled out to the world free of charge.

We work best when we unite. We are at our worst when we pull up the drawbridge and haughtily proclaim to be better than anyone else.

Meanwhile, Boris and his chums have overseen the handing out of billions of pounds of pandemic contracts with no governance and Jacob Rees Mogg's hedge fund friends stand to make millions more from the casualties of Brexit.

It's great you point to these positives. But there are significant negatives we must hold Boris and co to account for.

Yup, this ^.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

I've only just read this.

My concern with articles like this from The Telegraph is that they perpetuate a narrative where Britain is the greatest in the world. We are no greater than Sweden, Germany, France etc. and they are no greater that us.

COG-UK has played a huge part in genome tracing, as have the WHO and John Hopkins University. These bodies are spread across the world and share data. The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is now in trials combined with Russia's sputnik vaccine.

We really do not help ourselves in listening to jingoistic editorial pieces from the Telegraph who would have you believe this is the greatest nation on earth. It is not. And it is not the worst either.

I am not some proponent of Britain bashing, far from it, but this polarisation of Britain great, everyone else rubbish is just torrid.

Look at one of the greatest British inventions ever. The world wide web from Sir Tim Berners Lee. Created at CERN in Switzerland and while never a formal CERN product, supported by that team and rolled out to the world free of charge.

We work best when we unite. We are at our worst when we pull up the drawbridge and haughtily proclaim to be better than anyone else.

Meanwhile, Boris and his chums have overseen the handing out of billions of pounds of pandemic contracts with no governance and Jacob Rees Mogg's hedge fund friends stand to make millions more from the casualties of Brexit.

It's great you point to these positives. But there are significant negatives we must hold Boris and co to account for.

This with knobs on!!

 

[Lever]

I've only just read this.

My concern with articles like this from The Telegraph is that they perpetuate a narrative where Britain is the greatest in the world. We are no greater than Sweden, Germany, France etc. and they are no greater that us.

COG-UK has played a huge part in genome tracing, as have the WHO and John Hopkins University. These bodies are spread across the world and share data. The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is now in trials combined with Russia's sputnik vaccine.

We really do not help ourselves in listening to jingoistic editorial pieces from the Telegraph who would have you believe this is the greatest nation on earth. It is not. And it is not the worst either.

I am not some proponent of Britain bashing, far from it, but this polarisation of Britain great, everyone else rubbish is just torrid.

Look at one of the greatest British inventions ever. The world wide web from Sir Tim Berners Lee. Created at CERN in Switzerland and while never a formal CERN product, supported by that team and rolled out to the world free of charge.

We work best when we unite. We are at our worst when we pull up the drawbridge and haughtily proclaim to be better than anyone else.

Meanwhile, Boris and his chums have overseen the handing out of billions of pounds of pandemic contracts with no governance and Jacob Rees Mogg's hedge fund friends stand to make millions more from the casualties of Brexit.

It's great you point to these positives. But there are significant negatives we must hold Boris and co to account for.

Belated thanks for this post; I think it is balanced and well expressed. I completely agree with it. Thank you.

 

[Randy McNob]

Public Vote of No Confidence in the Tory Government

This government has failed the people.

It has failed to protect lives during the COVID pandemic: the highest death toll in Europe; encouraging easing lockdown with the highest daily deaths; using care homes as death camps for the elderly

And if this is not enough they also heap injury upon injury by failing to protect the economy and jobs, with an insistence on leaving the EU with or without a deal at the end of this year.

Money is pouring out of the Exchequer into the businesses and coffers of their cronies;they penalise disadvantaged pupils with their GCE, and possibly also their GCSE grading algorithm; and all the while stay away on holidays when they should be in Parliament dealing with the shambles they have created.

Now they are prepared to break international law, and give themselves power to override domestic laws.

This is a rogue government working against its own people - incompetent and highly dangerous.

It needs to go.

https://www.change.org/p/uk-parliam...a8f329dee4&utm_content=fht-22495635-en-gb:v12

 

[Thunder Bolt]

A couple of Tory MPs are starting to question the government. Just another 38 to go.

[tweet]1346229802643173377[/tweet]

 

[A1X]

[TWEET]1347192629205807104[/TWEET]

 

[rogersix]

[TWEET]1347192629205807104[/TWEET]

well, can't argue with that assessment.............. or can you?

 

[Randy McNob]

 

[A1X]

[TWEET]1348747916563918849[/TWEET]

 

[mikeyjh]

[TWEET]1348747916563918849[/TWEET]

Amazing that something can be shocking, outrageous, shameful and yet utterly unsurprising all at the same time.

 

[The Clamp]

People who voted for this shambles just to get brexit done should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. They won’t be but they jolly well should.