neilj
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Post by neilj on May 16, 2023 8:27:13 GMT
Shocker... www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61264369A top businessman whose foreign companies were part of a global money laundering investigation is a major donor to the Conservative Party. Javad Marandi, who has an OBE for business and philanthropy, can be named after losing a 19-month legal battle with the BBC to remain anonymous. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 16, 2023 8:29:57 GMT
I thought the 'British Right' was supposed to have been bought by Russian billionaires/Putin? Or are we talking a New World Order conspiracy theory where Davos attendees and others arrange things for their own benefit? This morning's news included an item about someone found to have been money laundering, who donated 3/4 million to the conservatve party and got an OBE. Obviously he knew what he was paying for. |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 16, 2023 8:32:16 GMT
From GB news' Tom Harwood now
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 16, 2023 8:37:03 GMT
More from Tom Harwood, the tories have even lost their normally most adamant supporters
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 16, 2023 8:37:52 GMT
ONS employment data; days lost through long term sickness rise again, hitting record levels. Mystery. No. They said the top two reasons were mental illness and backache. Both of which seemed to have been made worse by lockdown. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 16, 2023 8:51:26 GMT
Long term sick numbers reached a new record of 2.55m people, up from 1.99m, 1.97m, and 2.00m in 2017-2019 respectively, so an increase of around 27.6%. In absolute terms, that extra 0.5m is almost exactly the level of severe long covid picked up by other ONS surveys. Long term means more than three years. So this being May 23, it means you had to be sick before May 20. You did not start to be off work sick beause of covid. But this trend was still too early for it to have been caused by covid. Unless you are arguing that people already sick enough to be off work were more affected by covid than people who were not already sick, and so they have stayed on the sick list longer? If so, then I would agree, the people most affected by covid were those already sick.
However, that says nothing about the impact of covid on ordinary people. Sure, covid predominantly is a dangerous disease for people already sick, and most who died from covid were already sick, especially with age related illness.
Thats the whole point of my argiments, we could have handled the covid epidemic much better with a split herd approach, isolating pensioners and sending the rest to work as usual. In other words, this is pretty much what would have happened anyway because pensioners stop working. What was needed was to concentrate on the crossover, peope over pension age still working and those younger with contributory risk factors.
Sure, we did not know this when it began. But you are still denying it. What we did was wrong not through malice but lack of knowledge, but it was wrong. Sweden did it much better by having far fewer lockdown restrictions and had a better outcome than the UK. Thats a trillion pounds wasted.
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 16, 2023 8:55:50 GMT
Can't say I'm surprised, the rehabilitation of the lib-dems following the disastrous coalition has been going on for a while now
I also suspect PR voting and wanting a much closer relationship with the EU is also playing their part
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 16, 2023 9:00:32 GMT
You're going on the official stats, which are hugely under counted. Er no, there is plenty of evidence they are OVER counted. eg someone with terminal cancer locally who was recorded as a covid death despite the attempts by his family to have his death properly recorded as a result of cancer. He died earlier because of catching covid, but if he had just had covid he would have lived. If he had just had cancer he would have died. The real cause was the cancer, but it was recorded as covid just because it got in first. people with pre existing illnes got worse covid. See my example above. You are trying to argue such people should be counted as covid deaths because covid may have sped up their deaths a bit. But you cannot crdibly do that. They would have died anyway. If you want to make an argument covid sped up deaths eg 3 months, that would likely make more sense, but you are trying to dramatise this as people dying significantly early who would not have died except for covid. Its simply not true. if it was, we would be counting the bodies not arguing about obscure reserch papers whether there might be an effect. undefunding of the NHS is far more significant in early death. Go put effort into persuading lab to promise to boost NHS funding, whch they wont promise any more than con are. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 16, 2023 9:06:11 GMT
There is no world in which covid is remotely like a common cold, even allowing for vaccination. Covid is exactly like other corona viruses. People have had epidemics of corona viruses in the past which now are amongst those which just cause 'colds'. These are exactly analogous to covid. We have many corona virus illness every year. schools are full of them. Whether the vaccines have made a significant long term benefit is debateable. we would have ended up immune anyway, so the question is did vaccines arriving after the first tww waves had hit anyway, actually make a significant reduction in the final death toll? Not least considering they did not end the epidemic, only moderate it, so there is a lot of scope for arguing that vaccines contributed to lengthening it and so creating the opportunity for more deaths later on. People dont die from covid beecause they catch it, but only if they catch it and also have a weakened imune system for one reason or another. So the longer it goes on, the more people come into the latter category and so become susceptible. |
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on May 16, 2023 9:11:10 GMT
I'm not ignoring it. I am very alarmed about the trends in the Conservative Party, given it is one of the two major British political parties. However, I don't see it as a winning proposition and nor do many Conservatives. What more moderate Tories lack is the guts to throw these people out of their party wholesale and it may indeed be too late to do so. I take your last sentence to be a reference to trans issues. I don't believe Starmer as has ever used the phrase "legitimate concerns" (nor have I in my comments on this site as I appreciate it is a loaded term), although I am happy to be proved wrong if you can find a reference. What he has said is that if you want to make a change you have to take the public with you and the more recent polling on this issue demonstrates that unfortunately the Scottish Parliament ultimately failed to do this: www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23256763.gender-recognition-reform-polls-people-say/Just to emphasise, I support the change the Scottish Parliament proposes and oppose the UK government veto. The only thing I would contend is that Trans rights activists have on occasion been too ready to dismiss all concerns expressed by women as due to bigotry (and certainly there was plenty of that from the far and Christian right), when some came from very dark and terrible places of women who have suffered horrible abuse by men. A degree of sympathy and understanding was needed in dealing with winning those people round (which was doable I think) by assuaging their fears that that was not always forthcoming. Just telling them they were transphobes and not recognising their trauma was just going to force them into the arms of the genuine bigots. so do you consider those as "illegitimate " concerns then ? The problem with the phrase "legitimate concerns" is that it has been hijacked by far-right activists to imply that all trans-women represent a threat to biological women, which is patently untrue - that is why hireton as an advocate of trans rights referenced it; it has become a loaded term. On the other hand the more fervent end of the trans-rights lobby have gone too far the other way in suggesting it is a myth that male sexual predators would ever use trans status to gain access to women. In truth such cases are extremely rare (off hand I can think of 2 out of the thousands of people who have transitioned) but they do exist, as the Scottish Government found out recently. Given the devastating impact that male sexual violence has on women, the phrase I would use for those expressing concerns who are not motivated by extremist ideology is "understandable". And if you start from the position that a person's view is understandable given their life experience rather than proceeding from bigotry, then you can can have a discussion about how to achieve an improvement in the horrible burdens faced by trans people (who have the highest suicide rate of any group in society) while mitigating any increased risk to biological women. This compromise was doable at one stage (as I have noted before Theresa May intended to introduce a similar reform), but given the mess the whole thing has descended into I fear that the opportunity has now been lost for a decade. What I assume everyone can agree on is that more should be done to protect women generally from male sexual violence which, based on what I have seen, is endemic in society. Improving the safety of women would help frame the trans debate in a more coherent context. |
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Post by alec on May 16, 2023 9:13:35 GMT
Danny - "Long term means more than three years. So this being May 23, it means you had to be sick before May 20. You did not start to be off work sick beause of covid." I've no idea why you feel this constant need to make shit up. It's weird - I don't think I've ever come across anyone quite like you, who seems willing to trot out complete fabrications without any sense of shame, nor feel any need to fact check the rubbish you produce. Surely you would understand by now that if you talk rubbish on UKPR, someone will dig out the reference, even if you can't be arsed? If you download the data from this link - www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/sicknessabsenceinthelabourmarket and then check the check Note 20 on the 'Notes' tab, you'll see it says "Long term health condition is defined as lasting 12 months or longer." So once again, you're talking total bollocks. A withdrawal and apology for fabricating stuff would be well received, I think. The rises in short and long term sick leave is entirely consistent with the progression of a serious disease through the population, with the level of long term sickness matching the time profile we would expect from the observed incidence of long covid. You might also care to ponder the earlier links I provided that show one of the commonest long term symptoms of covid is mental health deterioration, and as a vascular disease known to generate a strong immune response, rheumatic joint pains, particularly in the major joints, such as hips, which will commonly present as back pain in general ONS classifications, are a pretty standard feature of post covid syndromes. All very consistent with widespread covid induced sickness, as the data keeps telling us.
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domjg
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Post by domjg on May 16, 2023 9:30:34 GMT
More from Tom Harwood, the tories have even lost their normally most adamant supporters Sure as heck not watching the next series of Bakeoff if this is what Prue Leith's offspring look like.. Eton educated I see, what I surprise. This is a further step in the English upper classes seeking to re-establish their dominance over us and just having a laugh while doing it. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 16, 2023 10:22:10 GMT
This morning ISW have an interesting report on Ukraine, "Leaked US intelligence accessed by The Washington Post indicates that Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin offered to disclose the locations of Russian positions to Ukrainian intelligence in exchange for Bakhmut.[1] The Washington Post reported on May 15 that Prigozhin offered the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) information about Russian troop positions in exchange for a Ukrainian withdrawal from Bakhmut, and two Ukrainian unnamed officials confirmed that Prigozhin had spoken to GUR officials on numerous occasions. GUR officials reportedly rejected Prigozhin’s offer because they did not trust Prigozhin, and some documents indicate that Kyiv suspects that the Kremlin is aware of Prigozhin’s communication with Ukrainian intelligence. The Washington Post reported that Prigozhin urged Ukrainian officials to attack Russian forces and revealed the problems that the Russian forces are facing with morale and ammunition stocks. The Washington Post published an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on May 13 about GUR Chief Major General Kyrylo Budanov’s interactions with Prigozhin and his operatives in Africa in which Zelensky did not confirm Ukraine’s contacts with Prigozhin.[2]" www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-15-2023They continue discussing this further, but in particular observe that Putin might not have opposed such action if it achieved a nominal victory at Bahkmut which initially was one of the aims at least of the campaign, to show Russian forces could still make gains. Whereas currently they seem to be losing ground again. The relationship betwee Putin, Prigozhin and the official Russian army is somewhat complex. |
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steve
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Post by steve on May 16, 2023 10:38:57 GMT
alecWhere did I suggest that covid was like the common cold? Even if the official data is an "underestimate" ( everywhere in the world?) That would imply it always was and you'd still be faced with the fact that death rates are at just 2% of 2022 peak. There are around 340,000 deaths per day in the world official figures for covid deaths equate to around 0.15% of these ( about 500) in order to be the fourth highest cause of deaths in the world the official figures would need to be increased by around 2000%, it's ludicrous.
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Post by leftieliberal on May 16, 2023 10:44:47 GMT
It's interesting that the debate on the franchise for UK General Elections seems to have totally ignored the right of Commonwealth citizens to vote. This from the official UK Government website: "The definition of a 'Commonwealth' citizen includes citizens of British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories. A 'qualifying' Commonwealth citizen is someone who has leave to enter or remain in the UK, or who doesn't require that leave." So I look forward to finding out why somebody from the Kingdom of Eswatini with leave to remain in the UK should get a vote but not somebody from Germany or any other country. If you go back far enough, residents of countries in the British Empire always had the same voting rights as native residents of the UK when they came to live in this country (France's ex-colonies still do, in that representatives from them sit in the French Parliament). It was only the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 that placed any restrictions on immigration from Commonwealth countries and that did not include depriving their citizens of their voting rights in this country. I find it strange that you argue that it should have done. |
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Post by leftieliberal on May 16, 2023 11:10:18 GMT
An insightful article by Tomiwa Owolade in New Statesman. www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2023/05/against-race-essentialismHe begins: The now suspended Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington Diane Abbott recently wrote in a letter to the Observer that Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers “undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.” But they are not.
In expanding his argument why Abbott was wrong, he discusses the plot of a 1957 film "Island in the Sun" which I knew about (it stars Harry Belafonte) and a novel "Black No More" by a black American journalist named George Schuyler. This novel is unfamiliar to me but from his description of its plot I can see its relevance. He also comments later: The analogy between racism and witchcraft is one made by Barbara and Karen Fields. As they put it in their book Racecraft (2012), writing about racial caste systems, “Obviousness is the hallmark of such a world. The evidence is everywhere, populating the banalities and the showstoppers of life. So the results of telling any inhabitant of such a world that races do not exist are like those I used to read from colonial district commissioners’ reports of informing villagers that witches do not exist.”
Their argument can be summed up more succinctly: race doesn’t produce racism, racism produces race. (my emphasis) In witch hunts, the need to find scapegoats to explain society’s problems and to bind the in-group together necessitated the existence of witches; the same is true of race. The existence of race as a fixed and essential category arises out of a community’s desire to legitimise a pre-existing social hierarchy.
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Race doesn’t always map to skin pigmentation. As Malik writes, Irish immigrants in 19th-century America were seen by some nativist groups as “niggers turned inside out”. In 1864, a London newspaper called Saturday Review described the Bethnal Green poor as “a race of whom we know nothing, whose lives are of quite different complexion, persons with whom we have no point of contact”. |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 16, 2023 11:20:45 GMT
Dan Hodges is on fire
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Post by alec on May 16, 2023 11:22:28 GMT
steve - "There are around 340,000 deaths per day in the world official figures for covid deaths equate to around 0.15% of these ( about 500) in order to be the fourth highest cause of deaths in the world the official figures would need to be increased by around 2000%, it's ludicrous." Well that's where we are with excess deaths, and basically you're calling the mortality experts ludicrous. Meanwhile: Just posted a couple of new papers on the covid thread, one detailing levels of long covid in children, and finding the rates are the same for subsequent infections, rather worryingly, while the other details a promising new monoclonal antibody treatment targeting the ACE2 binding region, which seems to be effective against all sarbecoviruses using ACE2 receptors.
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domjg
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Post by domjg on May 16, 2023 11:23:48 GMT
This reminds me chillingly of the motto of Vichy France which dropped the terribly woke 'Liberté égalité fraternité' and replaced it with 'Travail, Famille, Patrie' .. I can't believe these cretins are not aware of what they are referencing. Apart from anything else of the three f's Britons seem in general only to have time for 'flag' and not so much the other two! |
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on May 16, 2023 11:27:07 GMT
Can I politely suggest to our Scottish nationalist colleagues that they tone down the Labour bashing somewhat. While a hung parliament is obviously a best bet for you, you do need the Tories ousted as it seems if the NatCons (or NatCs as they are increasingly known) take over the prospects for Scotland are grim. Today at the NatC rally Sir John Hayes MP said:
"That Conservatives have failed to dismantle the destructive machinery of Blair’s failed constitutional experiment is largely the result of timidity – a failure to do what is truly conservative."
Since the only significant Blair "constitutional experiment" was devolution, it is hard to see what else this could mean. The National Conservative Statement of Principles gives a clear idea of how they think 'rebellious provinces' should be dealt with:
"We recommend the federalist principle, which prescribes a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom. However, in those states or subdivisions in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order."
So if any Scot thinks a Conservative government is going to further the cause of Scotland they might want to be careful what they wish for.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on May 16, 2023 11:29:55 GMT
I imagine they will offer to make the trains run on time. |
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Post by alec on May 16, 2023 11:30:12 GMT
steve - I meant to add, many of the 'normal' causes of death are strongly associated with recent covid infection. So if you appreciate that risk of strokes are 3 times higher for a year after covid, someone who has died of a stroke is quite likely to actually have died as a result of covid. Same goes for heart attacks, dementia, suicide, and so many other illnesses. As a vascular disease, covid affects anywhere the blood system operates, and so the increased mortality rate is reflected across the board. This is why global excess deaths are huge at present.
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Post by hireton on May 16, 2023 12:09:42 GMT
It's interesting that the debate on the franchise for UK General Elections seems to have totally ignored the right of Commonwealth citizens to vote. This from the official UK Government website: "The definition of a 'Commonwealth' citizen includes citizens of British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories. A 'qualifying' Commonwealth citizen is someone who has leave to enter or remain in the UK, or who doesn't require that leave." So I look forward to finding out why somebody from the Kingdom of Eswatini with leave to remain in the UK should get a vote but not somebody from Germany or any other country. If you go back far enough, residents of countries in the British Empire always had the same voting rights as native residents of the UK when they came to live in this country (France's ex-colonies still do, in that representatives from them sit in the French Parliament). It was only the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 that placed any restrictions on immigration from Commonwealth countries and that did not include depriving their citizens of their voting rights in this country. I find it strange that you argue that it should have done. The Commonwealth is not the British Empire. So why should a citizen with leave yo remain from a loose association of former dominions and colonies be able to vote in UK General Elections and not citizens of other states who have leave to remain? |
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Post by hireton on May 16, 2023 12:25:24 GMT
pjw1961I wasn't thinking so much about transgender issues but more generally where Labour supporters see the boundaries of "legitimacy" in dealing with far right policies in relation to the NatCon conference. So, for example, if the NatCon position ( and probably soon the Tory Party position) is that the only legitimate family and relationship is a married man and woman becuase of "concerns" about other relationships ( fill in whatever concerns you like) is that something which left of centre poloticians engage with and compromise on? Re self ID, the established organisations representing abused women in Scotland supported the legislation. The connected moral hysteria about transgender people had one and only one intention which was to remove the protections for transgender people in the Equality Act. There are absolutely no grounds for thinking that any degree of compromise would have changed the views of those who oppose self ID which makes absolutely no change to the Equality Act and has been introduced successfully in many other countries. The Scottish case you referred to arose in and was handled within existing legislation and self ID would have made no difference to the outcome.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 16, 2023 12:28:12 GMT
Well thats interesting but the last numbers i heard discussed, which i think was on more or less, defined 'long term' as three years. perhaps they were using a different data set? Both someone from the ONS and a minister interviewed on R4 this lunchtime said the rise in long term sick started before covid began. And again they talked about back pain and mental illness as the top two causes, saying both may have been agravated by lockdown. Post viral syndrome was mentioned as a possible further cause. actually, no, I dont recall any such evidence...Ther was one very small study which I thin klloked at mental ability, but it was in no way generally applicable. Do we have a link saying that, zoe study of symptoms maybe, they have listed symptoms? This is all rather like the situation at the start of covid when they said look out for cough and temperature. Which were pretty useless determinants of covid. As we now know, the signature symptom of moderately severe covid is loss of taste and smell, which zoe posted as 95% certain identifier back in late 2020. Are you suggesting my backache which I have experienced off and on for 40 years is due to covid? Maybe covid makes it worse, but there is no clear induications this is the case. You keep postings studies which are simply not supported by adequate blind trials. No one has done big blind trials on covid vaccines, or outcomes of covid. We simply dont know if there is a significant population effect. We cannot even prove how many people have had covid how often! |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 16, 2023 12:30:23 GMT
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 16, 2023 12:51:30 GMT
"However, in those states or subdivisions in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order." Is he talking about London which keeps persisting in voting Labour? |
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Post by leftieliberal on May 16, 2023 12:53:24 GMT
If you go back far enough, residents of countries in the British Empire always had the same voting rights as native residents of the UK when they came to live in this country (France's ex-colonies still do, in that representatives from them sit in the French Parliament). It was only the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 that placed any restrictions on immigration from Commonwealth countries and that did not include depriving their citizens of their voting rights in this country. I find it strange that you argue that it should have done. The Commonwealth is not the British Empire. So why should a citizen with leave yo remain from a loose association of former dominions and colonies be able to vote in UK General Elections and not citizens of other states who have leave to remain? You don't seem to understand the difference between not giving rights to people and taking away rights from people. The latter is far more serious. While I would support the giving of the right to vote in UK elections to some people who do not already have it; I would be strongly opposed to taking that right away from people who already do have it. You, by your own words, would be quite willing to take the right to vote away from Commonwealth citizens which you denigrate by describing it as "a loose association of former dominions and colonies". |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 16, 2023 13:00:13 GMT
steve - I meant to add, many of the 'normal' causes of death are strongly associated with recent covid infection. surely what you mean is that cases of covid sufficiently severe to be recorded at all correlate strongly with other illnesses, not least ones likely to be fatal in a relatively short time? If you are defined as at high risk of a stroke, then its very likely you would also be defined as at high risk of serious covid. People who have had covid sufficiently sevre to be recorded are a group selected for having higher risk factors for other diseases too. Its like asking people if they are black or white and then predicting which of the two groups is more likely to suffer racial abuse. But it wasnt the skin colour itself which causes the problem, but other factors. Ah, now i havnt seen evidence that global excess deaths are huge, so i guess you havnt presented any. I did hear that there are excess deaths in the UK most likely caused by failings of the NHS, and failings in the rcent past when services were suspended. |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 16, 2023 13:09:48 GMT
The National Conservatives are beyond the pale
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