Quacks and their models

 

Quite long, but entertainingly robust sense and more from William Briggs.

The obvious next step

 

Some trepidation as the procedure is explained

The government has tentatively approved the obvious next step in its Covid vaccination programme. In order to protect the unborn, men who plan to father children will be offered the opportunity to have their testicles vaccinated. 

In a courageous move, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock has volunteered to be the first to try this new procedure. Parliamentary gossip suggests that he did not actually volunteer but the Cabinet unanimously put his name forward as the ideal test subject. Almost unanimously perhaps we should say.

Fake Politics

Cripes – why did Sir Keir bother with a reshuffle? This is surely not the time to dwell, head in hands, on the miserable quality of Labour MPs available to fill the role of shadow minister. Useless, inexperienced, malevolent pettifogging loons - and those are generally the best of the bunch.

It leaves us with a conclusion which keeps suggesting itself. At least one of the two major political parties needs to be completely dissolved to make way for a new party without the baggage of the old. The main candidate for constructive dissolution at the moment seems to be the tired old Labour socialists rather than the newbie Conservative socialists.

Without something as drastic as this we seem doomed to continue with what we have now, fake politics - or wall to wall socialism with no opportunity to change anything at all through the ballot box.

No chance of dropping to one

 

Source

Covid alert level reduced as lockdown set to ease

The UK's coronavirus alert level is being lowered from four to three on the advice of experts.

Alert level three means that although the virus is still in general circulation, transmission is no longer high or rising exponentially.

It comes as Boris Johnson is due to confirm at a Downing Street briefing England's pubs can serve indoors in the latest easing of lockdown next Monday.

The PM may also announce guidance that it is safe to hug friends and family.

It's a guess of course, but the chance of the Covid alert level dropping to one seems to be zero. A situation where Covid-19 is not known to be present in the UK and all we have is international monitoring? I don't think so. Not unless this game is replaced by another.

Scrape that barrel

COVID-19: Hugs set to return from 17 May as PM expected to outline next stage of lockdown easing

Michael Gove tells Sky News the prime minister is set to give the green light to lifting lockdown as planned on 17 May.

Meanwhile we hear the distinct sound of deep barrel scraping, as if the intention is to keep the thing going for as long as possible.

World of Scam

We hardly use our landline phone these days and although I haven’t counted, it wouldn’t surprise me if we receive more scam calls than genuine ones. Calls supposedly about our Amazon account about to expire or from the National Crime Agency or obvious robot calls which never manage to begin the spiel in a realistically human manner. Cheap apps for scammers presumably. Surely none of it can be worth the effort as people wise up to it.

Texts and emails provide us with a rich source of scam messages too. A new payee set up on the bank account we don’t have, a mobile phone account about to expire, £2.99 demanded as excess postage for an unspecified item from an unspecified supplier.

Grandson receives email and text scam messages all the time. He’s only thirteen but already quite familiar with it all. Such as the new payee message for the bank account he’s not old enough to have. He just treats scams as part of daily life. It's an important lesson.

Yet the media would have us believe that the biggest internet problems are fake news, hate speech and online transphobia. Ironic really, because these are mostly scams too.

Labour's Hartlepool debacle

CAPX has an interesting piece on Labour's Hartlepool debacle -

The modern Labour Party, packed to the rafters with radical student activists who specialise in undemocratic thought-policing behaviour and indulge in overzealous forms of identity politics, is unmoored from the traditional, undemonstrative views held in many English towns. Youthful Corbynites in the parliamentary party such as Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome may be wildly popular in their hard-left echo chambers, but their brand of social media savvy student politics is totally alien to places like Hartlepool. The fact that some on the Labour left genuinely see these MPs as the future of the party speaks volumes.

A sound analysis in my view, but it doesn't really explain why Labour lost so badly. However this part of the piece corrects that.

In contrast the Tory blueprint is clear, simple and unburdened with much ideological baggage – win the hearts and minds of as many pro-Brexit voters as possible through an ambitious economic plan for reducing regional inequality, pushing back on the excesses of identity politics and framing itself as an optimistic, patriotic force. Creating a well-ordered immigration system and reversing previous Tory cuts to frontline policing are two key policy areas for shoring up cultural conservatives who value both the stability and security of their local communities.

To my mind, the key word here is optimistic. Maybe this is the second part of Labour's losing equation. Boris Johnson certainly comes across as an optimistic leader and this appears to be important. It's something I tend to underestimate, but optimism certainly provides a stark contrast between Johnson and Starmer and the contrast certainly spills over into their respective parties.

Something to consider when assessing Boris Johnson perhaps. Easily dismissed as style over substance, but style wins elections. As we have just seen.