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Daily Telegraph Editorial, by the Editor, says, "Governments are rarely able to survive the stench of incompetence" and predicts "a catastrophic economic doom loop."

With friends like that, how long can the Tories keep up the facade?

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I doubt the editor of the Torygraph had any answers, and his counterparts globally may well be penning much the same polemic. Governments are between a rock and a hard place: lives versus wealth. Government incompetence in dealing with the unknown is not to me proven. Not yet. Brazil has put the economy before lives, is that what the Telegraph editor promotes?

He'd be on sounder ground over Offqual.Maybe HMG would best apply a little pragmatism to algorithms and epidemiological models fed to them.
Peter

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I think you should look at a wider field of countries for competence, Peter.  Bolisaro doesn't strike me as any better, if not worse than El de Pfeffel,

New Zealand? Covid deaths  in hundreds - compare with Eire, same population, deaths in thousands.    OK, NZ is at the end of the world, 'easy' to quarantine.    Lets choose another.

Bangladesh.   Deaths, about 3500, not bad for a third world country, crippled by debt, poverty and forced immigration (Rohinga).   Pakistan, same population , similar problems?  6000 deaths.      Too far away, too 'different' from the UK?

OK, Germany. less than 10,000 deaths.  Compare that with the UK, FORTY THOUSAND DEATHS.

And then look at the leaders of the low death rate countries, competent, decisive, intelligent, AND WOMEN.

We are not adequate for the task.  Any task.

John

 

 

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UK has had some rubbish governments over the years, several of them very recently, but the current shower plumb new depths, with rank, shameless incompetence in pretty much every department - and I have no doubt Sunak’s day is coming soon enough.

However, when it comes to handing out our money to their mates in return for piss-poor performance - they are indeed world beating. Even the Nigerians would be impressed.

Something of a surprise that the Torygraph are going after them though. Guess they are safe enough with the Wail though given that it’s in the family.

40k deaths though John? Even the re-revised official figure is higher? And the total excess deaths far higher even though that measure has been running negative for a while?

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The high death rate wrt Germany resulted from SAGE modellers' bad advice resulting from an assumption that like flu SARS_COV-2 was infectious only when symptomatic. HMG cannot be blamed for that. However the buck stops with them and we are paying the price of an administration populated almost entirely by politicians and civil servants whose exposure to science and maths ended at age 14. They are incapable of assessing or questioning their experts' advice in any meaningful depth. C P Snow will be laughing.

Peter

 

 

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2 hours ago, JohnD said:

I think you should look at a wider field of countries for competence, Peter.  Bolisaro doesn't strike me as any better, if not worse than El de Pfeffel,

New Zealand? Covid deaths  in hundreds - compare with Eire, same population, deaths in thousands.    OK, NZ is at the end of the world, 'easy' to quarantine.    Lets choose another.

Bangladesh.   Deaths, about 3500, not bad for a third world country, crippled by debt, poverty and forced immigration (Rohinga).   Pakistan, same population , similar problems?  6000 deaths.      Too far away, too 'different' from the UK?

OK, Germany. less than 10,000 deaths.  Compare that with the UK, FORTY THOUSAND DEATHS.

And then look at the leaders of the low death rate countries, competent, decisive, intelligent, AND WOMEN.

We are not adequate for the task.  Any task.

John

 

 

There are biological and seasonal explanations for low death rates in Oz, NZ and many near equatorial nations. centred upon D3 status and source. Finland has lowest rate in europe and the highest D3 intake.

Peter

 

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I don't think it's unusual for the pro-Tory papers to be critical of the government this far (4 years?) from the next election.  They probably (correctly?) assume every one will have forgotten by then anyway..  In the meantime they can push their own agendas for a bit and add weight to their argument that they're not *that* biased after all.

It would seem to me that the government and subsequent cabinet was elected and assembled based on the 'Get Brexit Done' platform rather than anything else.. Their lack of competence doesn't seem surprising to me.  I mean Boris wasn't a great journalist, nor mayor, neither did he shine as foreign secretary and aside from him being 'ok' once or twice on HIGNFY what were people honestly hoping for?  

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The question mostly seems to be which Brexit supporting Tory donor / Cummings associate owns/ has financial interest in the companies in question.

Then we have the truly alarming scenario where PHE is dismantled in the middle of the worse epidemic we’ve seen without consultations and while parliament is in recess, then effectively put in the charge of a woman with no meaningful health industry track record (unless you count her dismal track and trace effort) or indeed track record of success in anything but failing upwards. But... oh wait, she is the wife of an influential Tory with a track record of try to flog the NHS to US insurance companies......

NHS safe in their hands? - not flippin’ hardly..... these people are stealing the country!

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9 hours ago, richy_rich said:

It would seem to me that the government and subsequent cabinet was elected and assembled based on the 'Get Brexit Done' platform rather than anything else.

Although that was indeed their entire election manifesto, I suspect an equally pressing reason for their majority was the failure of the Opposition to field a credible alternative.

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3 minutes ago, PaulAA said:

Although that was indeed their entire election manifesto, I suspect an equally pressing reason for their majority was the failure of the Opposition to field a credible alternative.

Don't disagree, at all... However, once they'd won it might have been time to take stock and maybe consider some of the other aspects of actually running the show.  I guess we'll never know what deals were made behind the scenes, but even May seemed better at stocking her cabinet with a mix of loyalties and competencies. 

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What you need to appreciate is that the cabinet have been selected for their blind allegiance to brexit. This doesn’t correlate well with smarts. Hence the general air of farce and endless cock-ups.

Then we have the poisonous Cummings, who is apparently really in charge. Whether he is responding to the voices In his head, Vlad the Poisoners directives or what, I’m really not sure- but he definitely does not have the best interests of the UK at heart.

I can tell you that the civil service is being manipulated and civil servants who are bold enough to point the problems with particular brexit strategies find themselves squeezed out.....

As for Al de Piffle, where has he gone? I rather think he finds this “prime minister” business a bit onerous. He certainly really stinks at it. Who would ever have though we’d be pining for the competence (relative!) of Theresa May.....

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10 hours ago, Nick Jones said:

The question mostly seems to be which Brexit supporting Tory donor / Cummings associate owns/ has financial interest in the companies in question.

Then we have the truly alarming scenario where PHE is dismantled in the middle of the worse epidemic we’ve seen without consultations and while parliament is in recess, then effectively put in the charge of a woman with no meaningful health industry track record (unless you count her dismal track and trace effort) or indeed track record of success in anything but failing upwards. But... oh wait, she is the wife of an influential Tory with a track record of try to flog the NHS to US insurance companies......

NHS safe in their hands? - not flippin’ hardly..... these people are stealing the country!

That's another blame shifting ploy.    If it works, PHE was at fault.  If it doesn't then we were betrayed.

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11 hours ago, Nick Jones said:

What you need to appreciate is that the cabinet have been selected for their blind allegiance to brexit. This doesn’t correlate well with smarts. Hence the general air of farce and endless cock-ups.

Then we have the poisonous Cummings, who is apparently really in charge. Whether he is responding to the voices In his head, Vlad the Poisoners directives or what, I’m really not sure- but he definitely does not have the best interests of the UK at heart.

I can tell you that the civil service is being manipulated and civil servants who are bold enough to point the problems with particular brexit strategies find themselves squeezed out.....

As for Al de Piffle, where has he gone? I rather think he finds this “prime minister” business a bit onerous. He certainly really stinks at it. Who would ever have though we’d be pining for the competence (relative!) of Theresa May.....

Could be still suffering from COVID.

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Yes, he could. However, his performance after Covid is little different from his performance pre-Covid.

Frankly if he’s to broken to do the job he should resign.

IMO he’s just workshy - as he’s always been.

10 hours ago, JohnD said:

That's another blame shifting ploy.    If it works, PHE was at fault.  If it doesn't then we were betrayed.

Oh, we’ve been betrayed alright, in so very many ways. The profoundly depressing thing is though that a large segment of the voting public hasn’t even noticed yet.

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  • 4 weeks later...

All interesting but impossible to stop this corrupt , dog eat dog world slipping every faster down the edge of a one way precipice .

I think people will be shocked how quickly melt down comes .

sorry , but Just can’t see what could change it 

HOWEVER ,

Keep smiling and enjoy your motors whilst you can .  :biggrin: 

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14 hours ago, Spit131 said:

All interesting but impossible to stop this corrupt , dog eat dog world slipping every faster down the edge of a one way precipice .

 

It is interesting (I use the word advisedly) to see how much damage access to almost unlimited information has done and how single-issue voting is rapidly becoming the norm in supposedly advanced nations. 

Conspiracy theories that just cannot stand up to any degree of analysis abound and truly reprehensible people are corralling an increasing proportion of public opinion.  That ostensibly educated people will believe the current wave of conspiracists, absorbing and disseminating the palpable bilge of 'deep state', 5G illness, Pizzagate and other nonsense churned out to by the Q-anon brigade, to promote anarchy and hold Trump up as their saviour, speaks volumes about the utter bankruptcy of democracy in the age of the internet.

It beggars belief the degree to which shabby would-be sages, like Farage and Kate Shemirani, are able to penetrate from their perches on the fringe, deep into mainstream politics with thier narrow and prejudicial views.  It is also deeply worrying that so much of the current drive towards social and political anarchy, supposedly in the name of Freedom and Liberty, is based on the same drivel that gave National Socialism its grip on the rudderless Weimar Republic, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

I despair.

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As a long-standing misanthrope......... most people are stupid in some way (even the bright ones); many people are stupid in many ways and some people are very stupid in nearly all ways (and I'm not talking about the ones society judges defective).  All have the vote........

The new dark ages are coming...... if not already here :pinch:

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3 hours ago, Spit131 said:

You may despair , but not for long .

Why not educate me and forecast your prediction for the future ?

Do you foresee some relief to my despair?

As for predictions, I would offer two visions from (as Wikipedia terms it) popular culture:

 - the dystopian near future portrayed in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men, and

 - the dystopian near future portrayed in Sebastian Faulks' A Possible Life

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I'm not trying to give you a hard time - I read your previous post as a flippant rebuke to mine.  Let's start afresh.

My predictions still stand and they're far from 'clever' - one is a decent film with Clive Owen, portraying the severely damaged two-tier society that the UK seems to be heading towards and the other is a very readable book in which the background is Italy, bankrupted and semi-agrarian.  This seems to be where we are heading.

As for more immediate predictions, I'll go with these:

 - Trump will have RBG's replacement installed early in October and will win on 3rd November, even if he doesn't.  He will begin the dismantling of State aparatus almost immediately thereafter, setting a series of stool pigeons to carry the blame for half a million COVID deaths and the failure to rectify the relationship with China.

 - BoJo will be out of No.10 shortly after Christmas and the 1922 Committee will ensure that Gove takes his place, so that the UK can formalise No Deal with the EU.

 - The size of Trump's bribe to achieve the status of mutual recognition in the Middle East will be leaked and there will be much wringing of hands, but no retribution, even when the accord falls apart.

 - China will start to roll back democratic reform, on the basis that the experiment has failed and their economy is showing signs of stalling.  There will be a break of diplomatic relations with the UK over HK, without particular benefit to HK'ers.

 - With Angela Merkel's departure, there will be a significant power vacuum in Germany and the void will be increasingly filled by the fringe right.  COVID will prove to be a far bigger challenge to the stability of the Euro than either the GFC or Brexit.

 - This will impact on the EU's internal balance between 'old' and 'new' Europe and the mainland members of the Accession 10 will group under the Visegrad 4 banner, undermining the bloc's ability to be a positive counterbalance between Russia, China and an increasingly errant US.

Lot's of obvious stuff, I know, but plenty to argue with (I hope)

Paul

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2 hours ago, Nick Jones said:

most people are stupid in some way (even the bright ones); many people are stupid in many ways and some people are very stupid in nearly all ways 

Can't agree more as i've worked with plenty of people who are physically dyslexic and would cut themselves with a hammer.

Am just wondering where i slot into the equation, as the more you do the more chance you have of fecking up and i've nearly learnt a lot of lessons.

I have had jobs with 'Scientists' who honestly shouldn't even have lace up shoes then people who left school with nothing who are gifted but no certs.

Its all messed up

RR

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