Blah Blah

Narcissists have no compulsion around taking what they want from others, money included. They only surround themselves with people who are useful to them, and drop them as soon as they are no longer of use.

UG has been called out on his racism more than enough times that if he was interested in addressing his own prejudices, he would have done it by now.

Recruitment is decided by area UC. Some local forces are indeed not recruiting, while others are. I suggest you ditch your race baiting accusations and do some actual research for a change. There are 43 Police forces in England and Wales, of which 30 are currently recruiting. It really wasn't that hard to find that out. https://www.joiningthepolice.co.uk/which-forces-are-recruiting

This article pretty much nails it. Trump is heading for nothing but embarrassment in the courts. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/10/donald-trump-longshot-election-lawsuits So what then? And that is the really scary question. Trump is ramping up the rhetoric on twitter. There is an emerging insanity which is then echoed and amplified by an army of gullible supporters. Where are the adults in the room? Who in the GOP has the balls to tell him it is over? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-trump-lost-too-many-republicans-keep-pretending-he-didnt/2020/11/09/01ff8684-22c6-11eb-952e-0c475972cfc0_story.html Is Trump really going to incite civil war, or his armed supporters to lay siege to the White House? Or will he eventually leave, but vow to be back, and spend the next four years taking America further into a divisive abyss? Undermining Biden in every way he can. This is a dangerous family, judging by comments also made by his sons.

Trump's tweets are becoming multi tweet rants. Now he is even blaming the machines! The descent into madness deepens. But at some point, someone is going to have to stop it. Someone is going to have make him hand over the office. He has no say or power over that.

The messaging coming from the inner circle is that Trump would agree to a non disruptive handover if certain conditions were met. That could literally be anything of course but I would hazard a guess that immunity from prosecution over his tax and loan affairs might be in there. Moe than that, it sounds as though he is going to try and blackmail his way out of the White House door and that is absolutely something that can not be allowed to happen.Time for the law to show him who is boss.

Sue Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > They can be sure that a disposable mask is clean. It is exactly this. It is the only way hospitals can be sure that the masks people are wearing are clean. In reality, you have to change a mask several times a days for it to remain an effective barrier. Putting the same mask on and off all day adds to the contamination risks. Doing that for several days without washing the face covering speaks for itself.

Close margins are nothing new in the USA and the swing states are always the same. Every now and then, they get a swing that breaks that mould. The media and social media are in an era of making mountains out of molehills. Take the rust belt for example. Those states are normally Democrat. Trump broke the mould to take them last time round. He made promises to those states he has not delivered on. Is anyone really that surprised they are swinging back to Democrat? Similarly, the swings in Wisconsin, Nevada,etc. These are big farming states. What did Trump do to farmers? He started a trade war with China that wiped out their exports overnight. Then, realising this was going to hurt him in the election, he scrambled together an aid package about 18 months ago. But the damage was already done. So no surprise to people in those states that a swing away from Trump is emerging.

At the end of the day, this is the same process that every US election has been decided upon all the way back to the civil war. Trump didn't mind postal ballots when he won did he? Five times Republicans have lost the popular vote and still won the college. This has never been the case for the Democrats. Trump is in no place to complain about the system. Nor is anyone else. Essentially he is a man who can not deal with losing, that is all there is to it. And both parties seem to have increased their vote this time round. Claiming ballot fraud, when every single postal ballot is checked and verified is the rant of an imposter who doesn't even understand the electoral process that put him in the White House. There is nothing illegal about postal ballots, and although the Supreme Court decided that ballots posted before election day that arrive up to three days later can be counted, they are not likely to be in the kinds of numbers that decides the outcome. Sometimes elections are close, especially in the USA. Trump needs to learn some grace, let the count finish, and if following any reasonable recounts, he loses, take it on the chin and respect democracy.

I am inclined to agree TheCat. There are different factions opposing lockdown but they are rudderless, with cranks trying to fill the void. Farage is probably gambling on the notion that he can be the sane voice on that side of the fence, pulling people together behind him into some kind of meaningful political consensus. The other thing to factor in is that this is the first time a global pandemic is being addressed in this way. There is much discussion to be had around the role our stripped back services have played in the decisions made. Fear of overwhelming inadequate health resources etc. There are real opportunities here for genuine change for the better if a sensible debate can be had. But at the moment we are locked into a mindset that has never been the case in past pandemics. We need to understand why that is as much as anything else.

The only way a lock could be opened with out a key is by picking it, but most thieves doing that, would not bother to lock it up again afterwards. Someone must have had a key somehow.

Spartacus Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Blah Blah, I'm curious > How are you going to explain how Santa is able to > visit every house despite a covid ban on visiting > other people's houses potentially in place at > Christmas ? HA HA.......I hadn't thought about that lol. I think DR has given me the perfect way out though, plus I will add that Santa is a key worker ;)

Agree with all of that DR and think you are spot on. He has made a living out of being the political outrider. Without that, who is he? This is Farage being opportunistic again imo. If Trump loses the election tm, that will have a major impact on all sorts of things, not least the EU negotiations and a NI border issues. But Farage is miscalculating if he thinks that all those Tory voters who voted Brexit want the chaos of a no deal. A lot of them are deeply unhappy with the way the Boris and his government try to bypass Parliamentary scrutiny.

Penguin is right. Under the new rules from Thursday, there can be NO household mixing of any kind indoors. The only exception is for people living alone who may visit ONE household as part of a bubble, and it must be only that one household for the period of lockdown. Outdoors, the rule of six applies for same households, and individuals may meet one person from another household. Edited to add though that this is going to be a nightmare to Police as people are subject to all sorts of different rules, with schools and workplaces still open. I personally fail to see how this is going to work to reduce infection rates, given that an ONS assessment recently claimed that 70 plus percent of new infections were caught through schools, universities and workplaces.

Agreed. He seems far more rational as a commentator than he ever did as a politician. He seems to have found the road to Damascus too.

On Tommy, as irritating as he is, there is something to be said about abuse of Police powers at the moment. His arrest was planned, on bogus charges, and he has been released without charge or bail. It seems as though Police are using the blanket excuse 'coronavirus regulations' for dispersal, instead of using the correct process of obtaining dispersal orders. And we should all be worried about that. Most of these arrests, if they ever get to court, will be thrown out. The coronavirus act does not empower Police to disperse at a whim. There have to be certain factors in play. And social distancing, or lack of, seems to be the most common citation from Police. However, they have been very selective about which gatherings/ protests they break up and which they leave alone. And that of course, gives Farage the perfect angle back into politics, back to being a pain in the Tories backside, back to being the center of attention and champion for the people who feel ignored, disenfranchised, and back to rabble rousing the racists and bigots.

LOL Malumbu...that is not the right spirit :D We have children and parents, so cancelling xmas is not an option, but it won't be as lively as other years of course. No pantomimes, nativities, carol singing etc. But xmas day will still happen, with presents under the tree and some kind of xmas feast :)

That isn't just a problem during the pandemic John but a problem at the best of times as you would probably agree. There is a lack or resources for combating isolation and loneliness, especially in age groups outside of the elderly and much of what does exist, like buddy schemes, are led by volunteers. Southwark does have various schemes for helping those isolating during this pandemic but they do not have enough people and reources to cope with demand, so switched to only tracking those who are elderly/ vulnerable and/or self isolating some time ago. I would argue that much more could be done to help people socialise, even if that is only online, or via phone, at this time, that isn't being done. There is an assumption that everyone has family, or friends, or neighbours, they can connect with and just a distinct lack of understanding of how isolation comes about and how interconnected that is with mental wellbeing and the ability to connect with others. And the longer this pandemic goes on, the more this is going to need to be addressed imo.

Admittedly, we are trying to get all our xmas shopping done before Thursday (from the shops that will have to close for lockdown), in case the lockdown goes into December.

A higher than average turnout is always bad for the Republicans.

The 1 in 20 figure comes from a range of western countries with equitable health resources. But even 1 in 40 would be too high. This is why I expressly ask how many have to die before that is too many? It is all very well criticising restrictions, lockdowns etc, but the one thing detractors never address is the inevitable rise in infections and death when restrictions are relaxed, and when enough people will not comply with known methods of mitigation. All mortality figures are based from known cases and deaths. They are then adjusted for estimations of wider infection. This is as true for flu as it is for covid. The main difference between flu and covid however, is that flu symptoms appear 2-3 days after contracting the virus, whereas with covid it can be up to 14 days. THIS is what makes it a much harder virus to track. The other big unknown at this stage is the impact and rate of reinfection. Data on that front is likely to emerge over the Winter. Most epidemiologists are pretty pragmatic about the challenge of epidemics, because they understand that viruses, like bacteria, will sadly kill some people. That is just a fact of life. Politicians however, have other considerations, because they are elected and want to be re-elected. Providing health care that prevents death where it can, is part of that contract they have with the public. Doctors and nurses depend on those politicians to provide the resources they need to prevent as much death as possible. In reality, none of this is an easy debate to have. We all know that people are dying, just as we can all see the livelihoods being destroyed around us too. If we argue that we should let the virus run its course and take the death figures 'on the chin', that is insensitive to all those people who have lost parents, partners and loved ones, often unable to say goodbye or have the funeral they would have wanted to have. Their pain is real. Similarly, locking everything down, without regard to how people will survive in other ways, financially and mentally, is insensitive to all those people who are going to have to rebuild their lives when and if this is ever all over. None of if is easy to balance, and I suspect the world is going to have to change, starting by changing the fractional reserve banking system we use and cancelling a lot of debt. But that is another debate for another time.

They seem to be still striving for a deal though, so I'm not convinced they really are prepared to go no deal on Brexit. They backed themselves into a corner on both Brexit and the Pandemic, by promising things that can not be delivered. It is their mess to sort, but it won't be them who pay for it sadly.

0.3 per cent is still 30 times the mortality rate of Influenza A, and if half those over 70 years of age contract the virus (there are 9 million of those people in the UK), there could be as many as 400,000+ deaths, as current stats show that 1 in 20 in that age group die if they contract the virus. That is the reality of a highly infectious virus that has no vaccine. These are not unfounded projections, They are based on the real data that we now have. How many would have to die in your mind before you begin to understand the risks?

The point still remains though that where people comply with the social distancing, mask wearing and hand washing, infection rates are mitigated. The mistake the government made was in underestimating the extent to which people would comply when pubs opened for example, and protests restarted, and households were allowed to mix again etc. Now they are learning the hard way. Today at 4pm Boris will once again address the nation with an announcement of a national lockdown, starting at some point next week, and lasting for all of November probably, with only schools, essential shops and essential workplaces remaining open. The failure to get a working track and trace system going, with a high rate of compliance is also a failure. Instead, government ministers and advisors have ignored the rules they set, and got away with it, and they have failed to enforce the rules they set elsewhere. Meanwhile, bonkers conspiracy theories have taken hold and little has been done to mitigate that either. All entirely predictable.

Press conference from Boris at 4pm today. National Tier 3 lockdown or higher to be announced from either midweek or the end of the week, for probably the whole of November.