I agree with all this though. People are far too reactionary and giving twats a platform like that means I avoid it like the plague. He's done okay. The main mistake was obviously locking down a week or so too late, but let's get through this before casting him to the inevitable Prime Ministerial scrapheap with May, Cameron, Brown, Blair, Major, Thatcher etc. I don't even know who the last one to come out reputation in tact was. Probably Churchill.Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
You keep going after Blair. I don't like Blair. Fill your boots. I think Brown was unfairly treated if you want someone to target.
Brown is a good man whose eventual premiership came at the most inopportune possible time given his technocrat skillset. Tony fucked him over as well.
I also liked Alistair Darling, if we're rehabilitating prominent figures from 2007-10.
Yeah, Brown was probably the best Labour have had in my lifetime time. Very unfortunate.
On the rehabilitation front you can have May, who was fucked over by Brexit, in a similar way to Brown by the financial crisis, and was reasonably well intentioned. Can't give you Thatcher though. Sorry. Birmingham is culturally more aligned to the North than the South.
Thatcher was at her most American in foreign policy, where she was unusually universalist and 'values'-driven (they all have been since, but it was new then - probably Second World War legacy stuff). Economically her influences were almost entirely domestic.
The fixation on the COBRA meetings seems to work on the weird assumption that 1) everything discussed in them is massively important all of the time; and 2) that none of this then gets reported back to absent parties. I don't see how both of those things can be true, unless the British civil service has reached levels of uselessness beyond what even I can imagine.
This was news to me. I know the bastards impounded a load at the border a few weeks later, but our main contingency order (placed when they were supposedly wanking the days away) getting pinched seems like a half-decent mitigating factor that we should have heard more about. We ought to bin all of our bilateral defence agreements in return.
Shit like that will have happened all over Europe Lewis, which isn't to defend it, more further evidence that the European project is over.
Yev knee-jerk #379
Logically it ought to expose a lot of their bullshit, but as if they're going to waste a crisis like this. Only a European budget can whatever whatever whatever, and then before you know it the Germans are running Italy again.
It's a good shout.
First sign of real trouble and not a single country listened to what the EU was saying.
And you can have supposed knee jerk, or you can go back to the halcyon days of the beginning of this thread, where apparently there was approximately a 0% chance any of us ever have anything to do with this virus.
Birmingham is culturally devoid.
Alright Cov and Southend. Calm down.
Please not take my statement as an endorsement for either of those 2 places.
I’m derailing the thread here but I’ve a question.
I work with an ex-miner. He gives talks (lol) and the one I attended was delivered to about 100 over-70s. Part of his performance, for lack of a better word, asked everyone to raise their hands if they respected Margaret Thatcher and about 15 people raised their hands. He then asked the same for Arthur Scarsgill and one solitary person regretfully raised their hand and a few people jokingly jeered them for doing so.
What’s so bad about Scarsgill?
I have no clue when it comes to politics and recent history like this but, living where I live, I feel like I should have some idea. Educate me?
I'm a twit
He forced the 1984 strike through without having a full vote of the membership, and the violence that followed went a long way towards killing public sympathy towards the miners.
Do you have the internet on your PC?
He set the National Union of Mineworkers on a ridiculous course by making it effective policy to oppose any pit closure (at a time when the National Coal Board was pissing money), gave the government three years to prepare for a strike (at a time when there were fewer miners than ever), refused to hold a national vote on the 1984/85 strike because he knew he would lose, led half of the workers out anyway, inevitably lost and cost them all a year of their lives and wages, and then he's been scamming the union ever since.
It's a great myth about Thatcher busting the unions. The government just gave them the rope to hang themselves. Once they had to start behaving like normal organisations and not weird like secret societies they found that half of their members thought they were twats.
Ours is what, 8 or 9 percent from all positive tests? There's not a chance the true rate is over 0.5%.
Sorry, I got that number from a Yahoo article. It's miles out. They're at 4.7%.
EDIT: Actually, they account for 23% of all Covid deaths.
There is an interesting quirk to the numbers though on that side of things. The following all have death rates (per reported case) of between 10 and 15%:
UK
France
Italy
Spain
Belgium
Holland
Sweden
Then the following all have rates at 5% or under:
Canada
Switzerland
Ireland
Germany
Austria
Denmark
Korea
Japan
Australia
NZ
But not a single country, in the developed world, has a rate between 5 and 10%.
I had a handshake bet with the wife at the very start that the rate will be 0.7%. I'd revise that way down if I could now.
Ours is only high because we're still testing almost exclusively in hospitals.
Looking like no pubs til 2021 at the earliest here. Main objectives will be getting leaving cert kids back in the 6 weeks and all of them back by Sept.
Sport won't come back here either this year I'd reckon. The GAA is lucky in a way that even though there's no money coming in there's no players waiting on wages or anything. And nobody would notice if most of the soccer clubs folded.
Last edited by Giggles; 20-04-2020 at 06:36 AM.
I can't imagine what people will be like by the autumn. We've been locked down for a month so far and people are already going mental.
Bunch of entitled cunts.
Though if it means more months of C Listers dancing and miming on TikTok for attention I might go on a murder spree myself.
Last edited by Giggles; 20-04-2020 at 06:37 AM.
'Entitled' gets put about a lot but I can't think of a period of such curtailment of day to day freedom in all of human history.
I think as they loosen restrictions things will become easier, weve already got people treating the weekly food shop as a weekly highlight.
Once you can have small social gatherings, picnics in the park etc and more people back at work things will get a lot more normal.
Aren't we lucky that entails watching television and not slave labour or fighting wars.
Yeah because all comparisons are to conscription or slavery, which in this part of the world haven't happened for 70 and 200 years respectively.
But people are going on like theyre both happening yesterday.
"Hey Giggsy, you seen those students protesting in Tienanmen Square?"
"Entitled cunts!"
I'm with Giggles here.
Also, Sweden, being weeks away from herd immunity, have donned us all senseless, with their no lockdown and vanishingly small ICU capacity.
We should nuke them really.
Fake news. Trump shined the beacon of truth on them last night, clarifying that the people are actually ignoring the government there and staying at home which is the only reason they're not being shattered like everywhere else.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ving-effective
This is quite interesting on Sweden.
The number one gating factor is average household size. In a hypothetical world where everyone lived alone, I don't think there would even be a need for social distancing in the era of corona. Vast majority of transmissions result from within the household, and it's also why the immigrant populations in Stockholm are very disproportionately affected, since they've got generational admixture going on
There seems to be a huge ethnic bias in the UK as well, even accounting for the fact that London is generally densely populated and more ethnic minorities live there than elsewhere.
How?! Staying at home all day everyday is awesome.
I'm a twit
The UK going from 'we don't need to copy Europes lockdown procedures we're much smarter than them' to 'our lockdown procedures will go until 2021, while Europe opens up in July' is fucking incredible.
Just the most special people.
Meanwhile, we're lighting up the Matterhorn with the Saudi flag in solidaritySo we all have our foibles, I guess.
If the rest of Europe 'opens' in July, they will be closed again by September.
Djokovic might be off the tour because he's a big ol anti-vaxxer
Be interesting if that rings true. I doubt they have enough data to know whether or not they have gained community immunity. But at the same time- we have no idea if you can be immune so lolidk.
Lol, stop being so special.
No-vax Djokovic.Djokovic might be off the tour because he's a big ol anti-vaxxer
He should be even more vegan for the duration.
Imagine how fit he'll be after taking all that extra veganism.
UK vs Europe is by far the most important thing in all this.
Holidays in July, August and September it is.The UK going from 'we don't need to copy Europes lockdown procedures we're much smarter than them' to 'our lockdown procedures will go until 2021, while Europe opens up in July' is fucking incredible.
Just the most special people.
Meanwhile, we're lighting up the Matterhorn with the Saudi flag in solidarity
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