Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
- Start date
Might not have the legs to really cause a problem but:
Raab has admitted it would have been a breach of Covid restrictions if a Christmas party was held in No 10 Downing Street in the run up to last Christmas; a party the prime minister does not deny took place.
That follows reports Boris Johnson’s staff held the gathering on 18 December last year, when London was under Tier 3 restrictions.
Despite the prime minister’s deliberate and public refusal to deny those reports, Raab has described them as “unsubstantiated claims all on the basis of anonymous sources”. Nevertheless, the justice secretary admitted, if true, they would describe a breach of the rules the rest of the country was being expected to follow. He told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show:
Until there is something substantiated, until it is more than anonymous sources, I think we are chasing shadows. If there is a breach of the rules there is a breach of the rules. But I don’t know the full facts because I wasn’t there.
Of course, if there was a formal party held, of course that it something that is clearly contrary to the guidance. If anyone held a party that it is contrary to the rules, of course that is the wrong thing to do.
If something unsubstantiated from anonymous sources actually materialised then of course it would be wrong.
So the formal-ness of the party is what matters?
Is there a murder/manslaughter distinction applicable to party-holding? Pre-meditated versus in the heat of the moment.
Raab has admitted it would have been a breach of Covid restrictions if a Christmas party was held in No 10 Downing Street in the run up to last Christmas; a party the prime minister does not deny took place.
That follows reports Boris Johnson’s staff held the gathering on 18 December last year, when London was under Tier 3 restrictions.
Despite the prime minister’s deliberate and public refusal to deny those reports, Raab has described them as “unsubstantiated claims all on the basis of anonymous sources”. Nevertheless, the justice secretary admitted, if true, they would describe a breach of the rules the rest of the country was being expected to follow. He told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show:
Until there is something substantiated, until it is more than anonymous sources, I think we are chasing shadows. If there is a breach of the rules there is a breach of the rules. But I don’t know the full facts because I wasn’t there.
Of course, if there was a formal party held, of course that it something that is clearly contrary to the guidance. If anyone held a party that it is contrary to the rules, of course that is the wrong thing to do.
If something unsubstantiated from anonymous sources actually materialised then of course it would be wrong.
So the formal-ness of the party is what matters?
Is there a murder/manslaughter distinction applicable to party-holding? Pre-meditated versus in the heat of the moment.
I, m not condoning any rule breaking at all but for goodness sake. It's a year ago, we are getting upwards of 50,000 infections daily, Omicron is likely to rear its ugly side any time soon, Putin and Xi are flexing their muscles, some unfortunate folk are getting buried under volcanic Lava and at home our social care system seems to have failed a poor little 6 year old to such an extent he's been tortured for years and finally died... Yet, what is Starmer attacking government with... An alledged christmas party 12 months ago. And some media and usual culprits are jumping on band wagon... I find it quite appalling that powers that be can waste so much time on stuff like this when things are so terribly wrong in oh so many places.
Starmer should be sacked if he can't find more critical issues than this. He is utterly useless.
What about the Pfizer secrecy pledge? What about that poor lad? What about paying folk to isolate? List is endless. But what is being discussed. Johnson had a party and didn't wear a mask. Absolutely and utterly ridiculous.
Fiddling whilst Rome burned or what.??
I tried out my new heated gloves this morning. The temperature was 5 degrees and there was around a 20 mph wind against me. I ride at around 15 to 16 mph most of the time so wind chill would bring the temp down to a couple of degrees below freezing.
I did a 30 mile ride, stopped half way for a coffee, had the gloves on full power for the entire ride. The instructions state the batteries will last for 2.5 hours on full power I see no reason to doubt that.
The gloves worked fine, my hands stayed warm all through the ride except for the tips of my fingers which although not cold I would describe as cool, but not at all painful.
At £150 they are very expensive but I am happy with their performance, I don’t tend to ride much more than a couple of hours on a winter ride so the fact the batteries can cope with this on full power is what I was hoping they would do.
I got the XL size, if you normally need the large size in gloves then go for the XL when it comes to these otherwise they will be too small for you.
There are quite a few negative reviews on the Sealskinz web site about these gloves but most of them have to do with the gloves being too small. They have a sizing system to help you select the right size glove on their site but it seems to suggest too small a size for lots of people.
I also think some people expect these gloves to keep their hands like toast in sub zero temperatures, they will not do that.
If there was no wind then I would imagine I would be fine riding in them at around zero degrees, but if it was windy then I think I would struggle in those kinds of temperatures. Having said that riding in strong winds when its around freezing my face and feet are usually so cold, I would turn around and head for home after a couple of miles anyway.
I am probably going to try them out on my motorbike tomorrow, although I have heated grips on my motorcycle I still get cold fingers after about 20 minutes or so.
I did a 30 mile ride, stopped half way for a coffee, had the gloves on full power for the entire ride. The instructions state the batteries will last for 2.5 hours on full power I see no reason to doubt that.
The gloves worked fine, my hands stayed warm all through the ride except for the tips of my fingers which although not cold I would describe as cool, but not at all painful.
At £150 they are very expensive but I am happy with their performance, I don’t tend to ride much more than a couple of hours on a winter ride so the fact the batteries can cope with this on full power is what I was hoping they would do.
I got the XL size, if you normally need the large size in gloves then go for the XL when it comes to these otherwise they will be too small for you.
There are quite a few negative reviews on the Sealskinz web site about these gloves but most of them have to do with the gloves being too small. They have a sizing system to help you select the right size glove on their site but it seems to suggest too small a size for lots of people.
I also think some people expect these gloves to keep their hands like toast in sub zero temperatures, they will not do that.
If there was no wind then I would imagine I would be fine riding in them at around zero degrees, but if it was windy then I think I would struggle in those kinds of temperatures. Having said that riding in strong winds when its around freezing my face and feet are usually so cold, I would turn around and head for home after a couple of miles anyway.
I am probably going to try them out on my motorbike tomorrow, although I have heated grips on my motorcycle I still get cold fingers after about 20 minutes or so.
It
It isn't about the event. It is about the attitude.
We need to trust those in power to act in our interests. This shows numerous issues.
When Johnson was in hospital, there was great concern that there were too few healthy and able to actually keep government going. To then hold an event which could have caused the same sort of situation to occur again is simply couldn't-give-a-damn-incompetence.
They had already delayed doing anything because they were worried about cancelling Christmas (wash my hands, it is because you, the public, demanded we do nothing). Yet when eventually they made decisions, they made further decisions that their decisions didn't apply to them. Nor did they do anything like come out and say "We will carry on regardless because <enter your basis for the decision>".
It isn't Starmer.
It isn't about the event. It is about the attitude.
We need to trust those in power to act in our interests. This shows numerous issues.
When Johnson was in hospital, there was great concern that there were too few healthy and able to actually keep government going. To then hold an event which could have caused the same sort of situation to occur again is simply couldn't-give-a-damn-incompetence.
They had already delayed doing anything because they were worried about cancelling Christmas (wash my hands, it is because you, the public, demanded we do nothing). Yet when eventually they made decisions, they made further decisions that their decisions didn't apply to them. Nor did they do anything like come out and say "We will carry on regardless because <enter your basis for the decision>".
Give up.. Starmer started it. Yes, we know full well they have terrible attitudes. But in scheme of things it's petty and time consuming for both sides. Time neither side has. They should all be working on tasks in hand. Vaccine roll out, sorting Social care out, sorting schemes out for isolating workers,second job scandals, like I said the list is endless...
What if they are proved guilty, who will benefit? Nobody, but in mean time things that are way more important and deserving of time get left.. All this argument between Nandy, Rayner and Starmer and then this stupid episode... Just goes to show how detached the lot of them, and some of us, are from reality. Will any of this stop one death, save one child, save one infection, make Putin/Xi/Macron/ think more about what they are doing. Honestly, we must look a complete joke to foreigners. Germany in worst state its ever been in regards covid. SA has Omicron raging, Holland having anti vaxx riots, Trump making a comeback, Putin threatening border countries, Chinese imprisoning Uygurs by the million and probably invading Taiwan, Australia investing billions in its defence... And what are Brits arguing about. A fecking Christmas party. A 12 month old one at that. Give over. It's ridiculous. Kids arguing in playground... You said this, he said that.... But he hit me miss. Its utterly pathetic. The lot of them. Tories for holding the damned party and Labour (or who ever) for bringing it up now.
I believe Police have already said they can't take retrospective action for Covid breaches, so it's wasted their time aswell.
All a complete waste of time when all of them should be running country.
Can you imagine any industry anywhere on earth that could afford to pay its workers to argue about last year's Xmas party. No? But our country does.
Our Xmas parties had to be sorted in our own time.. Not if you are Starmer. Brings it up in HoC..Contacts police about it... Whilst being paid for by us.
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I fully agree with you..its extremely petty in the great scheme of things and should be flagged up only at the doors in an election canvass. Oyster is also correct in that it displays the same arrogance. ..but again the place to bring it up is at the canvass. Having said that I do believe that there should be special licence for senior public representatives, but not for boondoggles. I see nothing wrong with say a PM flying at public expense by helicopter the length of the island, for any good reason.
I have to agree with Zlatan that it's both long out of date and a non issue to boot.
The reason it's a non issue is no doubt why the party was allowed in the first place:
It was a Downing Street staff party. These are people who work closely together and with Johnson and other cabinet members every day, all crowded together in number 10.
So what if they had an extra shift in the form of a party, they couldn't catch any more than they had already in working hours?
And the country has no right to criticise when so many of them did exactly the same and often far worse as I often saw for myself around my area and we all read about in the media.
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That would explain why we're having a lengthy confected debate on it on the thread. BTW did you look up the meaning of "irony"?
Since 1951 there's always been great concern in the country that there are too few able to run the government properly.
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Touché...
We aren't running country tho, I, ve got plenty of time to kill these days. I would have hoped far more than MPs, but it seems they have time to report silly incidents to police and spend valuable time arguing about mentioned incident.
I'm just trying to imagine how many of these you'd need in order to replace the capacity of even something modest like, for example, UK internal flights. Although huge, they have limited passenger capacity, are slow so we'd need many of them, and how would they stand up to Arwen?
If only we could vote much more frequently.
I'd be happy to bring up all my concerns, criticisms, wishes, etc., with anyone standing. But a vote once every five years, with little chance of exerting influence between elections, is lamentably awful.
That is one reason we end up discussing things round and round elsewhere than during canvassing.
(I have expressed at least some of my opinions to my MP. For all the good it will do - and that is not getting at him, for a tory he ain't as awful as many.)
Which ends up depending on whether you accept any particular reason as being "good".
I say, there could well be circumstances which justify doing that. But there are many where it is between questionable and utterly indefensible.
The Americans kept airships in service long after WW2 on coastal patrol duties, but eventually finally gave up as more suitable planes became available. Climate change and the far more frequent occurrences of very powerful winds makes them a dead end now.
It would be a repeat of our failed attempts to make open sea going hovercraft, ending in them broken and battered and cessation of services.
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If they were filled with hydrogen and powered by hydrogen fuel cells, they could waft over deserts making it rain?
Far-infrared LEDs are cheap - I might try stuffing them into gloves:
Determining the voltage used for optimum pinky heating wavelength, would need a bit of fiddling about:
en.wikipedia.org
The advantage over thin surface wires, is deeper heating of tissue. Cooked pinkys could happen, with too many far-infrared LEDs?
Wrapping them around the handgrips would be much easier, I'll try that first. This damned pandemic has me cycling in winter...
One of those cheapo Covid blue face masks can keep some of your face warm, by the way. Easy to breathe through.
Determining the voltage used for optimum pinky heating wavelength, would need a bit of fiddling about:
Far infrared - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
The advantage over thin surface wires, is deeper heating of tissue. Cooked pinkys could happen, with too many far-infrared LEDs?
Wrapping them around the handgrips would be much easier, I'll try that first. This damned pandemic has me cycling in winter...
One of those cheapo Covid blue face masks can keep some of your face warm, by the way. Easy to breathe through.
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I didn't do that. And it is like the widely held view that, for example, police need to avoid criminality and, if they do get sentenced for something, that sentence should take into account their position.
Touché, but not quite my point. The conservative party is desperate to move the debate on, refocus attention on all the imminent external threats. Instead of the corruption, lies, ferry companies, ppe tenders, billions in embezzled loans that won't be paid back deaths in care homes and elsewhere etc etc. It's a familiar strategy of corrupt governments. Unfortunately denial, consciously or unconsciously, never work. We're at the beginning of an omicron wave, we're not locking down, like say in Ireland, for commercial, populist reasons, by a government that, profoundly, doesn't care. In a few months we'll look back on history having repeated itself
Well that's exactly what Starmer should be saying. But he doesn't, he reports Boris to Police and moans about a year old covid rule breach...
And its, Starmer /Labour not attacking Tories on important issues we were discussing. My point was, is, why on earth bring up stupid things like parties with all things you mention along with all things I did not dealt with.
Phoning police, especially when covid breaches are not even investigated retrospectively let alone prosecuted, is utterly pointless. An utter waste of time.
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