CancerCakes posted:

Wriggle accomplished. Starmer still thinks he is in a court arguing with a lawyer, while he is actually in the circus arguing with the clown. The clown doesn't care if you make him look stupid, or point out he is incompetent. The only thing the clown cares about is that people are looking at him and not you.

quote:

No 10 refused to accept that Johnson had been wrong about the guidance, and declined Starmer’s call for the prime minister to correct the record in parliament.

Johnson’s press secretary claimed that Starmer had “inaccurately and selectively quoted from the guidance”, as he had wrongly used the word “remains” and not quoted the first half of the sentence. They argue Starmer’s wording therefore failed to make clear that the guidance was reflecting the then current position based on low community transmission, not a future prediction.

However, the guidance did use the word “remains” and referred to the future saying: “It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected.”

Denying that the government was wrongly trying to split hairs, Johnson’s press secretary said: “The point we are making is that it’s not true what the leader of the opposition says.”

Downing Street also confirmed that the international comparison of death rates by country had been dropped from the slide at the daily press conference, but denied it was because of embarrassment that the UK is showing the second worst result after the US.

CGI Stardust posted:

stev posted:

Also how filthy are these people? At the moment we're giving our flat a light clean every other weekend and it's fine. Splitting the rooms means it doesn't take all that long - maybe 2-3 hours.

Lord Ludikrous posted:

Regardless of the risk to the cleaner I’m astonished they’re so disinclined to clean their home themselves they’ll allow a potential transmission vector into their home to do it for them.

Wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of middle/upper class families get infected in exactly this manner.

Bloodly posted:

This is...weird.

The closest thing I can think of here is the 'trust the AI/Hive Mind' plot in sci fi. Trust the collective, and it works for a while then something happens and it all goes to hell. Only this showed up before AI was a thing. Maybe a little 'The Market As God'?

This feels like something that would be invented as a system today with our current tech level and level of globalization(I'm not sure if that's the right word), and this was created well before?

Guavanaut posted:

It's also because they were cunts and spent years slashing benefits that even the 90s Tories couldn't have done without being portrayed as ghouls, so you ended up with an Only Nixon could go to China/who else are you going to vote for* situation with Blair.

CancerCakes posted:

Wriggle accomplished. Starmer still thinks he is in a court arguing with a lawyer, while he is actually in the circus arguing with the clown. The clown doesn't care if you make him look stupid, or point out he is incompetent. The only thing the clown cares about is that people are looking at him and not you.

stev posted:

Also how filthy are these people? At the moment we're giving our flat a light clean every other weekend and it's fine. Splitting the rooms means it doesn't take all that long - maybe 2-3 hours.

Lord Ludikrous posted:

Regardless of the risk to the cleaner I’m astonished they’re so disinclined to clean their home themselves they’ll allow a potential transmission vector into their home to do it for them.

Wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of middle/upper class families get infected in exactly this manner.

CancerCakes posted:

Wriggle accomplished. Starmer still thinks he is in a court arguing with a lawyer, while he is actually in the circus arguing with the clown. The clown doesn't care if you make him look stupid, or point out he is incompetent. The only thing the clown cares about is that people are looking at him and not you.

Brendan Rodgers posted:

Yeah and they go directly between multiple houses too. You would need like, a hazmat suit and a guy spraying you down between houses for that to not be a massive transmission vector.

CGI Stardust posted:

I'd argue the reason for the benefit cuts under this framework isn't because New Labour were ghouls who want people to suffer (although in practice that's the effect) but because people who are out of work aren't being disciplined by the market or contributing to the market's information processing - they're avoiding the risk inherent in employment or entrepreneurship, so aren't being good neoliberal subjects.

jabby posted:

So I'm still alive. On the oncology ward we're still getting plenty of Covid cases, and they're mostly mega-depressing since you ain't going to ITU if you've got a diagnosis of cancer. Deaths are definitely being under-reported though, a lot of people swab negative even though their clinical picture is clearly Covid.

Saw Starmer at PMQs today, thought he did pretty well. His style is bound to cheer Labour MPs up, I just hope he's inclined to use that advantage to bring them around to supporting socialist policies.

Guavanaut posted:

Sure, but Thatcher and Major just couldn't get things like punitive benefit cuts for single mothers through without looking worse than even they were willing to. Blair could, and even voiced it as getting people back to work helping themselves. Labour had social permission to do poo poo that Tories couldn't because he could give it a progressive New Labour coating. That's what made him Thatcher's greatest success.

quote:

The government has privately conceded there will be checks on goods crossing the Irish sea post Brexit, months after Boris Johnson insisted there would be no such trade barriers.

The checks were part of the deal struck by Johnson with the EU last October.

However, to the astonishment of the EU, he spent the election campaign in December telling businesses there would be no checks. If they were asked to fill in any paperwork they could call him up and he would tell them to throw it in the bin.
x

ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

If people have been given the go-ahead to go back to work, no-one told the people of Portsmouth as the roads were still exceptionally quiet this morning

learnincurve posted:

My brain shut down and I started blocking blue ticks at “it gives them a sense of self worth”

sinky posted:

Does this mean the Irish Unification of 2024 is still on track?

CancerCakes posted:

Wriggle accomplished. Starmer still thinks he is in a court arguing with a lawyer, while he is actually in the circus arguing with the clown. The clown doesn't care if you make him look stupid, or point out he is incompetent. The only thing the clown cares about is that people are looking at him and not you.

quote:

Q: Why were you happy to stand her and present the global death comparison slide, when the government now says that data is unreliable?

Harries says as a scientist she believes in transparency.

The death data is available, she says.

She says she and other scientist have all highlighted the risks with comparative death data.

The only really good comparison will be all-cause excess mortality, adjusted for age of population, and seasonally adjusted too.

But she says it is always good to look at comparisons on the way, to see what you can learn.

Q: Can you see why people find this suspicious?

Jenrick says the government wants to be as transparent as it can. But accurate comparisons are difficult.

CancerCakes posted:

Wriggle accomplished. Starmer still thinks he is in a court arguing with a lawyer, while he is actually in the circus arguing with the clown. The clown doesn't care if you make him look stupid, or point out he is incompetent. The only thing the clown cares about is that people are looking at him and not you.

Gonzo McFee posted:

"Clean my toilet, for your self esteem"

Is a loving hell of a middle class take even when there's not a plague on.

The Question IRL posted:

So today the Irish High Courts decided on a case brought by Gemma O’Doherty and John Waters.

I won’t bore you with the background, but they used to be important journalists. Then in recent years, both got the brain spiders, went mad and spouse conspiracy theories about how the Gays/Non-Whites are trying to take over. They both had failed bids at running for High Office and ran with Trumps playbook of attacking the establishment.

They launched dubious High Court proceedings challenging the laws the government introduced over Covid-19. They represented themselves. Today they lost the case.

In the courts Judgment, the court had a fantastic closing paragraph.

“The applicants, who have no medical or scientific qualifications, in their Statement of Grounds and submissions to the Court maintained that the figures in relation to the number of persons infected with Covid-19 and number of deaths were overstated. Further, the applicants submitted that the first named respondent was following “fraudulent” science. No factual basis nor any supportive expert opinion was desposed to, to support this. Rather, in court, the applicants gave unsubstantiated opinions, speeches, engaged in empty rhetoric and sought to draw an historical parallel with Nazi Germany. Such a parallel is both absurd and offensive. Unsubstantiated opinions, speeches, rhetoric and a bogus historical parallel are not substitutes for facts;”

And I think that’s where Staimmer is failing.
In Court you can’t use those tactics and win. But you can in Parliament, since this is a post-truth world.

Of course Tory blue ticks cheer on Staimmer as a credible opposition. They know that he is playing the game with an outdated copy of the rules that isn’t going to work.

baka kaba posted:

I mean honestly in this case they just out-lawyered him. He misquoted the document he was quoting and they used it to neuter his argument. This is meant to be his special skill and they forensicked him up real nice


which journo was it that was defending "arbeit macht frei" as having a good point, actually

quote:

How No 10's claim Starmer selectively misquoted from document is based on wrong quote
Andrew Sparrow Andrew Sparrow
It turns out that, when No 10 claimed Sir Keir Starmer of selectively quoting from government guidance on care homes, it was highlighting the wrong quote.

At PMQs Starmer quoted these words from the document.

It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home … will become infected.

At a subsequent briefing No 10 claimed Starmer had quoted selectively from the document, because he had added “remains” and missed out a “therefore”. See 3.10pm.

No 10 was referring to this passage from the document, in section 1.

This guidance is intended for the current position in the UK where there is currently no transmission of COVID-19 in the community. It is therefore very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected. This is the latest information and will be updated shortly.

But Starmer was actually quoting from another passage in the document which uses similar wording, in section 7.

During normal day-to-day activities facemasks do not provide protection from respiratory viruses, such as COVID-19 and do not need to be worn by staff in any of these settings. Facemasks are only recommended to be worn by infected individuals when advised by a healthcare worker, to reduce the risk of transmitting the infection to other people. It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected.

(To be fair, the Labour spokesman who sent out the quote to journalist as PMQs was happening sent out the section 1 version, not the section 7 version. But Starmer was quoted from the section 7 version.)

I am very grateful to BonyTony in the comments for flagging this up.

XMNN posted:

The testing target was missed again yesterday (although they forgot to mark it on their chart for some reason so I've done it for them)



Are they still pretending that they are going to hit 200,000 a day in two weeks

josh04 posted:

https://twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1260539114518130689