Rayvin

I mean yeah fair enough, although the article you cited mentions that the SAGE is advocating for waiting until September - ties in with school return, all adults will be double vaccinated by then, etc. I think the decision is between July 19th or September - at least based on what the BBC says anyway.

I'm not arguing per se, I'm just trying to understand the rationale so I can form an opinion

I know. I wasn't arguing otherwise. I was asking what actual benefit is of opening up - not about the number of deaths, not about what we think the disease will do, just the benefit of opening back up again - because that's the "prize" for the gamble. And it'll be weighed in pounds sterling clearly, so I was wondering if there was any actual data on the cost benefit. I'm getting the sense that you just want to open up for life to go back to normal again - which is fine but that's not quite where I am on this. If the cost benefit is solid I'm all for opening up, but that's the line for me I suppose. Given that we don't have any real appraisal of this that I can see, I remain fairly hesitant.

Right but that can't be all of it. If minimising deaths was the only metric for success here then the gamble wouldn't be worth taking. I mean it would be a wholly unnecessary risk when you could achieve at worst the same result by locking down. The metric for success in this gamble, I'd imagine, is GDP versus lives. If a 1% GDP boost only costs 100 lives, maybe we have put a price on life and decided that we can live with that. If its 10,000 then maybe not. Or according to the BBC, how many children missing school is each death worth. Something like that needs to be our measure for success I would think - so what the BBC should be telling us is how many deaths the GDP boost or whatever it is, is worth. That's what it would take for me to be able to make an informed opinion on this - and while they're giving us vague nonsense like that article, it makes me concerned that no one has done the numbers, or they're higher than they think people would want them to be. For what it's worth, I do believe that there is a lives versus GDP trade off line, sad as that might be.

I mean, what do you mean by 'work'? What is success?

This article appears to just present the information on both sides. In fact it's not especially clear on the benefit of opening up other than sending children back to school and keeps referring to it as a big gamble. I'm curious about the logic there a bit though, given kids will be on summer holidays soon anyway - so effectively back at home either way. Why has the BBC not listed any other positives? Presumably there's a huge economic benefit to opening back up as well? In fact I would have thought that was the primary driver, how bizarre that they'd give a solitary example of a benefit. That's got nothing to do with the argument mind you, just fucking weird from the BBC. But to take the article in good faith, the claim is that we should be the guinea pig for the rest of the world by opening back up because the worst case estimates of doing so are that we end up with 1000 hospital admissions every day by the end of summer, and we believe that the NHS can cope with that on the basis that it's no more than what we'd expect during winter as a consequence of the flu. That on its own isn't enough for me, but that's more on the pathetic writing in the article than the actual reality of the argument. When you put the hospital admissions against a context of economic benefit, then the picture may be enough to convince me that we should do this. It's a shame they've not bothered to make that case. Assuming you're armed with the facts on the estimated weekly cost of continuous lockdowns or some manner of economic measure of the harm it's doing, I could potentially see how you got to where you are. Unless your metric is also children being able to go to school again which would be fine I guess but I wouldn't agree that it's all that important at this stage in the academic year.

I really don't think this is what's happening. Starmer doesn't have enough loyalty amongst even most people on here for that to be the truth. I couldn't give a fuck what he thinks we should do and frankly, I don't even know what his position is. Also fwiw, I'm open minded about this in general as long as someone, somewhere has given an evidence based assessment of why opening back up is a good idea. If the government have expert advice that has supported them in developing a position based on available data, then I'm all for it. I'll continue wearing a mask myself because I wouldn't want to risk the lives of even antivaxxers tbh, but that's just a personal choice that I'm ok with. This is the common issue though - it's not polarised by left versus right - it's polarised by informed versus uninformed. And you can freely argue that it cuts both ways - but you'd need to have the evidence. If the evidence is there, I would suggest most on here would be open minded enough to support the point. And I mean serious evidence i.e. not given by someone in government. Although I would accept information given by credible healthcare professionals who work for the government.

Yeah that's strategic, meant to follow on from the club's statement. Takeover definitely dead though Edwards said so.

Yeah I'm not really sure what to make of this but you have to give Southgate credit for getting to a second semi-final. I still weirdly find myself a bit unenthused about the whole thing, but perhaps getting to an actual final would fix that. As it stands, even if we won the thing I think beating Germany would be the highlight for me Genuinely, properly enjoyed that.

Ah, there's the issue I think - I'm not trying to improve democracy in this action. Honestly even before all the recent examples of "democracy in action" I've been lukewarm on it as a system of governance at best. I could get behind it fully if people were forced to learn civics and could be tested for their political competence prior to being allowed to vote but it'll never happen - and yet without it, the whole thing is just a farce IMO. I just want the Tories out of power. They're killing people. They've been killing people for a decade. I couldn't care less about how proper the solution is at this point, if we get that coalition in (which is just so unlikely in the first place that it would almost have to be a perfect storm of calamities for Johnson) we should make it stick so that this country can be forever saved from that fucking party. As I've said before, I'd even be prepared to work with Farage on it on the basis that he'll bring some of the Brexity working class with him and seems sympathetic to the cause. If we get in and have a referendum we're risking the whole thing on a battle that we have at no point proven we are capable of winning. The Tories would fight this with so much ferocity that it would take a fully united and competent progressive alliance to face them down - and we have never, ever, ever proven that we are capable of being that. They'd be claiming socialism, rejoining the EU, more immigrants, threats to freedom of speech, all of it. Plus, their option on the referendum ticket would be "None of the above, Rule Britannia". Ours would be 4 or 5 options that no one fully understands that splits the vote every which way. And frankly, if we're going to be fully above board on this in a democratic sense, we should have to pass a 60% threshold for the change to come in otherwise we're "just as bad as they are".

I think we disagree on the semantics of the phrase here somewhat - I see acts of desperation as being things like launching a nuclear missile at your enemies in the face of obliteration, which this certainly is not - but I get the overall point nonetheless.

Just going to break this up in turn for ease: 1 - Why? Which demographic of pro PR voters is going to want it to be subject to a confirmatory vote? That's something you put in as a safety net to capture people who don't want PR but do want the other policies your party votes for. I don't understand how those people can exist as a demographic within any of the smaller parties, and surely we're talking about an absolute minority of Labour voters at this point. 2 - Why? Why does the electorate need to ratify it? I appreciate that this would be desirable in an informed and functioning democracy - but we aren't one. We're a basketcase of a democracy with near American levels of political ignorance. How easy would it be for the right to whip this up into some kind of assault on freedoms, make it another angle of the culture war, threaten everyone with socialism by stealth etc etc. We aren't equipped to fight these battles with the right, we lose them over and over again. 3 - That didn't seem to be the case at the last PR referendum wherein nobody understood how it worked. It also didn't seem that people understood how it worked when we were dealing with MEPs. Contrastingly, while it was a woeful oversimplification of the EU issue, "In or Out" was pretty straightforward. 4 - We both know it won't be. Who on earth are you trusting to pull that together? There is utterly no leadership in the progressive political wing of the country. None whatsoever. If we lost this referendum, we'd lose the coalition the next time out as it would break down into petty squabbles and infighting - the Tories would win again as they're the only side that can demonstrate consistent unity, largely through their ability to compromise on everything except power. I really don't think it's worth the risk, and I would ask what the downside would be if we just put it into law? Who gets up in arms about it? What serious consequence could it realistically have? Johnson has already pissed all over the concerns we had about the same issues on Brexit and has sailed right through - why are we playing this with one hand tied behind our backs?

I mean aye, I did think that while typing it

I wouldn't risk it on a referendum myself. I'd put it straight into law on the basis that we would be able to demonstrate that "a majority of voters voted for parties which supported PR". Force feed the Tories the same lines they fed us. This country, I'm sorry to say, is too poorly informed to be trusted with referendums.

What would it achieve as an act of desperation though? I think the very most we can say about it is that it's telling us absolutely nothing other than arbitration is still ongoing, and that the club believes it has a case but has concerns about how 'fair' the final decision will be without public scrutiny. If the club didn't have a case, it wouldn't be clamouring for transparency. I suppose the other interpretation would be that the Ashley knows he's lost and is seeking to poison the well ahead of the outcome being issued - but I'm not sure what he would stand to gain from that unless he's just being vindictive. As for the takeover itself, I was under the impression that the Saudis had indicated that they were still prepared to look at this? I can't remember the source though so maybe it was nonsense.

From a tactical perspective though, we'd be unlikely to get an actual referendum in place without winning power. And if we actually managed to get a coalition government into power, I'm tempted to say we shouldn't bother with the referendum and just make it law. Boris Johnson style.

Luke Edwards has no fucking idea whatsoever. He's not insightful enough to have any clue what that statement might or might not mean - at this point he's no different to some random bloke offering an opinion down at the pub. Added to that, his original comment somewhat contradicts his previous views on this, does it not? I thought he had said that the takeover was already dead and had been for a year now. His comments suggests that he's now decided that it wasn't in fact dead, but it now is. I know we know this, but it's worth repeating - he knows the square root of fuck all about this takeover.

There's not a lot of margin for error on that though - 54% means you'd need basically everyone to vote for an agreed party in their local area. It would be an enormous achievement for political strategists, and frankly, if it's going to happen, they should start building up for it now. Not just hamfistedly pull it together later on.

54% sounds about the size of the overall progressive majority that this country has. We are crying out for PR as a nation - at that point all the stupid petty divisive nonsense between the left, the left of centre and the centre can transform into robust and useful debate without offering landslides to the far fucking right.

The people who orchestrated it, even the ones in charge who understood all of this but went through with it anyway (we'll call them the Tory party for simplicity) don't care about the long term standing of the nation or its finances, IMO. They'll be dead by the time we really have to confront what we've lost - i.e. 15-20 years on from now.

I reckon no with respect of the takeover. I mean it depends a bit on the nature of the takeover, but if it was the Saudi one then I think we could probably find alternatives who might better fit the direction we wanted to go (although he'd still be a steady pair of hands in a transitional sense). If it was a run of the mill takeover (i.e. a sideways step financially but ideally with some more long term ambition) then I would have had him back though. I thought he was great for the team and the club in many senses. I appreciate that's not your view like, but I was really impressed with him.

I mean, fair enough but the processing time for my partner was 6 weeks. And all EU citizens have had 5 years. It sounds as though a lot of people have literally started applying within the past couple of months - and I mean fair enough to an extent, they're still ahead of the deadline, but I do think there does actually have to be a deadline. As much as I disagree with every single reason about why we're doing this.

Yeah but I'm normally one of those people and yet I managed to get this sorted out back in October. Struggling to believe there are 300k people who procrastinate more than I do

I'm struggling a bit with that mind - my partner had to apply for pre-settled status or whatever it was called and did so last year. Process was confusing as fuck for sure, but it didn't actually take that long. Why have so many left it this late?

That latter group being the ones who will vote for Galloway, I suppose. I mean I can understand the thinking from group 1 tbh, it's not like Labour will be in power any time soon, this result won't change anything in terms of the overall make up of the country, so why not throw it to the Tories and gain the extra funding - can always vote them out next time when it might actually matter. It's entirely logical, sadly.