The UK has less than 0.9% of the global population. We've had, optimistically, nearly 10% of the confirmed cases of global covid deaths. So no, I don't care if Beth Rigby or any journo makes Dominic Raab or Boris or anyone in this government feel uncomfortable.
The eye-watering immaturity of the British left is on full display today, attacking Sir Keir Starmer for not sufficiently frothing at the mouth. We have an actual Tory government and these people want to tear down the singular realistic proposition of defeating it.
@RadioFreeTom
He cheaped out on Google Cloud services, went all Stockton Rush on the hotfixes, ballsed it when the clock ran out yesterday, and is now making shit up to cover his ass.
Patrick Vallance is getting a grilling right now, and a couple of things stand out. First, sending infected patients into care homes WAS a policy decision. Second, testing was completely deficient in the early phase when a robust response would have saved the most lives.
@JohnBrennan
Then you consider the small margins in only a few states that swung the election to Trump. It's more than possible that Russian influence did get Trump the win.
If you’re impressed by the Captain Hindsight jab then you’re probably the kind of person who is impressed by Boris in general. For those over the age of 12, that was another very good
#PMQs
for Starmer.
Sam Coates is trending because he asked a question and now all the right wing melts are sobbing about how mean and negative he is. Why are these people so fragile?
Agree with Prof Chris Whitty. Follow the damned advice. 2m. Err sorry, 1m+. I mean 2m where possible. Except indoors where transmissions are highest, just do your best. And stay alert. Unless you're getting an eye test, in which case do breath in the face of your ophthalmologist.
@ClaudiaBoleyn
Hi Claudia, hope you’re not paying heed to some of the more deranged, conspiratorial comments here. The stated reason is that family members of the victims have requested the video is sealed. It’s a shocking record of extremely violent acts, which are not suitable for general
Seeing another legion of putrid morons going after another journalist. Beth Rigby today, again just for basic scrutiny of government. Perhaps seeing Dominic Raab drowning in his own panic made them leap into defensive mode.
With an R above 1 in London, SAGE papers apparently identify bars and pubs as "superspreaders" of the disease, making it further clear that government is throwing caution to the wind with regards to our health and safety.
#DowningStreetBriefing
@mrjamesob
Leaver brother-in-law asked last night if I thought the EU had our interests at heart. To which I responded, clearly more so than the Brexiteers.
@Conservatives
@RishiSunak
Shameful and meaningless when your government has abused and degraded the spirit of the day with its shabby and divisive politics.
No, Boris did not do well in Prime Minister's Questions today. Some folks swooning over his obscure classical reference while ignoring the fact that PMQs isn't LotOQs, and that once again Starmer exposed Boris' broad lack of engagement with a range of serious government failings.
Jesus
@Channel4News
don't ever have Paris Dennard on again, especially not to spout shite on behalf of a non-existent org like "Black Voices for Trump". The tango shitgibbon polls around 3% among African Americans on a good day. Do some f**king diligence, eh?
@GoodwinMJ
Go for it Matt, redefine it anew. You, Suella, a few dozens brownshirts, nothing could stop you. Except for maybe the electorate who largely seem to think you lot are mildly grotesque. Small details.
The only thing more staggering than Laura Kuenssberg giving Boris Johnson the softest interview after his diabolical mishandling of covid is the army of goons who think she was being tough and unfair on him. Kafka couldn't have written this nonsense.
@jaketapper
Jake... do you actually hate the Obama's or something? You were quite the attack dog during those years, now you're all.... "let's interview the Mooch for the 10th time this week" ???
Mark Francois is basically the Prime Gammon. A blustering, red-faced, unintelligent, odious tub of mediocrity with a Beano-level understanding of British character and history.
Crude maths: £15m/.34pKwH = ~44m KwH saving to meet the cost of info campaign. There are ~28m households in the UK. So that's less than ~1.6KwH/household saved to cover. So let's say each household tried to save that every day... VAST savings for gov on covering energy costs.
Twaddle, plain and simple. The saving through lower energy use on the tens or hundreds of billions that the state energy subsidy will cost would render nugatory the up to £15m cost of a public information campaign.
If you're surprised to learn today that Boris, Hancock et al have been lying to your face about the safety of lockdown easing while the coronavirus R number floats around 1, you need to work more on nurturing your healthy scepticism of blatant lies, you mug.
@jonsopel
None of the above, it just doesn’t qualify for these when it’s little more than a heavily revealing, self-aggrandising screed of a nationally unpopular racist.
@markvipond
What a fragile load of drivel. It is literally his job in that seat to ask probing questions as part of scrutinising government. If you can’t stand to watch Boris bungle everything, don’t watch
#PMQs
@jonallendc
@KenDilanianNBC
I haven't watched because I refuse to indulge in either the Sanders or Conway circus anymore, but did any journos push back on her deluge of lies this time?
@waltshaub
@Susan_Hennessey
I take your point that the silence has been galling, but it feels like an unfair purity test to reject him now he's coming out of the weeds.
Today we’ve pretty much had it confirmed that the NHS track and trace programme touted by government is a sham. The thing Boris and Hancock kept claiming was world beating and up and running and meant lockdown easing was appropriate. I don’t think I trust a single thing they say.
@broseph_stalin
The man who can’t call a terrorist a terrorist and then lies about his past expressions of sympathy towards them? Corbyn isn’t even good enough for the bin.
@paulw92_paul
@mrjamesob
This only seemed to occur to most of them when confronted with May’s deal. All the acquiescence - none of the input. Suddenly the virtue of membership dawned upon them.
@waltshaub
@Susan_Hennessey
That may yet come. But at a dinner engagement, after Trump's comments in the meeting yesterday... I can see why he perhaps just ran out of patience and took his shots. And I do think they have substance - the military establishment is openly mocking the President.
@AyoCaesar
Sure, but when you add the entire climate of language the left have adopted to accuse their opponents - genocide supporters, mass murder enablers - you’re painting a target on people’s backs. You all know exactly what you’re doing.
@AyoCaesar
Ash this is straight up dishonest of you. You seem to be ignoring the key detail of hostages, which is what the majority of people were concerned with as a condition for a ceasefire, but that the left have been happy to almost completely ignore.
@ThatTimWalker
Throwing a heavy object through my screen the next time Boris whinges at Starmer about not supporting government front the Dispatch box.
@Peston
Robert, what is the threshold of clownishness past which you or your colleagues would consider just chucking a minister off an interview? Or is it seen as more revealing to let a politician be clownish with the idea that the public understand this?
@CliveWismayer
Feel like I’ve been looking from the outside in since the referendum, a moment that made the country and many it in feel alien to me. It’s a little kind of hell when you realise people don’t occupy the same realities.
@AoDespair
You can’t win with these people, David. You’re about to enter the Julia Hartley-Brewer realm, a hellscape of toxically bad faith gut-think in which every sinew is bent towards confounding basic sense and logic.
@sarahkendzior
Why is it implausible that Trump didn't want to win? Genuine question. The look on his face as the results came in, his body language... he did not look happy. Petrified really.
@MartinSLewis
Games. 100 games would offer the greatest variability of experience compared to the other three. One game of the right type can provide 1000+ hrs of distraction over a given time.
@mkraju
Goodlatte was a joke today, even by his usual partisan standards. This hearing was and still is a stupid waste of time, being conducted like a kangaroo court.
@zoesqwilliams
Much of this is birthed from Owen’s behaviour. He’s spent weeks accusing anyone not on his script of being “genocide enablers” or worse, and this polarising discourse is growing his platform. He knows what he’s doing. It’s dishonest and harmful.
@BethRigby
Or, you know, the Labour left could stop to reflect on this report and consider that Starmer has dragged the party back into viability, and not faceplant themselves into the asphalt of British political history.
@LBC
@mrjamesob
Big fan. But this tipped into unedifying, as it generally is watching someone hopelessly out of their depth have rings run around them. The diminishing returns of schadenfreude.
@michaeljswalker
@afneil
Cool, a comment concerning independent thought from a kool aid swilling Novara acolyte… Michael apparently isn’t aware of his perspectives being the most crude, dull, dyed in the wool and predictable of any out there.
@OwenJones84
You grotty little liar Owen, I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve lobbed out “genocide supporter/enabler”. You are so second rate.
@AyoCaesar
@OwenJones84
Again, horrible this happened. There were a lot of very not hypothetical confrontations yesterday. Everyone has a responsibility to lower the temperature, it’s a public safety issue now. That includes Owen Jones, whose rhetoric is persistently inflammatory.
@bbcnickrobinson
@simoncoveney
To be fair it's not difficult to understand the Irish, you just have to listen to them and not plough ahead with your own myopic acts of pure idealogical f**kery that explicitly do them harm. Simples.
@PickardJE
Objectively, his support for Ukraine was important. Domestically, I can't think of any single thing that is better today because of his leadership.
@AyoCaesar
Yep. And some on the left have been slinging around dehumanising accusations like “genocide supporter”
@OwenJones84
which hasn’t helped anyone. Hold these people to account as well.
Energy bills hitting £4,200 in January... might be the suppliers are pushing hard on price inflation because we have a government on holiday doing nothing to restrain them, and a leadership race obsessed with irrelevant dogwhistling. The British public are prey right now.
@emptywheel
The narcissistic tedium of the "intellectual's" self-affirmation of available evidence. As if his own revelation is more important that the overwhelming consensus of experts.
@MYangon
@Keir_Starmer
I disagree. "Defund the police" is not helpful language, as made clear by focus group outcomes. Disengages the centre from the objective. Mature of Starmer to reject that, but as Ash Sarkar said, perhaps a missed opp to emphasis community support funding over blunt policing.
@EricBoehlert
I think it was people who agree with his reopening. Economy at the expense of lives. And that's why the economy is still going to take painful hits as the pandemic gets worse.
@RVAwonk
The immense degrees of distortion that we’ve seen in the last few years keeps bringing me back to Frank Schaefer’s definition of hell, where lies masquerade as truth and people just nod along. An unchallenged landscape of deception that drives good people insane. To paraphrase.
But because Aylesbury Vale Council, the overriding authority, were set to make a large sum of money in selling the access for the development site to the contractors, they rubber stamped a clearly deficient dev plan.