Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBwMDN9OVrY

Unusually public royal disagreement!

[Valmy]

That was a very mild tantrum

My kids always did the "throw yourself on the ground and passive aggressively go limp" thing as well.

[crazy canuck]

That was a very mild tantrum

My kids always did the "throw yourself on the ground and passive aggressively go limp" thing as well.

good training to be at a protest.

[viper37]

That was a very mild tantrum

My kids always did the "throw yourself on the ground and passive aggressively go limp" thing as well.

One of my niece did this to her mom in a Wal Mart, throwing herself to the ground and screaming and refusing to move.  Ah, the joy of parenting! 

[Josquius]

More brexity rumblings that haven't really hit the news yet coming from my contacts in construction.... Lumber shortage is picking up. Prices expected to go up 40% or more this year.
And this is on top of a long standing brick shortage.
Nothing to do with the vast majority of our lumber coming from Europe of course.

[Sheilbh]

I have to get the feeling the British border authorities being cunts is to blame here:

I think it's just Brexit - we're a third country so we'll need things like proof of accommodation or transport out of a country, or proof of funds etc. All the big and little issues that people from other countries have visiting each member state (because it'll vary a lot) are now for us too.

Meanwhile - ooof

Britain Elects
@BritainElects
Westminster voting intention:

CON: 46% (+1)
LAB: 28% (-2)
LDEM: 8% (+1)
GRN: 8% (-)
REFUK: 2% (-)

via @YouGov, 19 - 20 May
Chgs. w/ 12 May

On the upside Yes still seems to be trending down in the polls.

And reading a biography of Harold Wilson and it is crazy how many of the issues/problems with Labour today were issues/problems with Labour in the 50s and 60s

[Tamas]

More brexity rumblings that haven't really hit the news yet coming from my contacts in construction.... Lumber shortage is picking up. Prices expected to go up 40% or more this year.
And this is on top of a long standing brick shortage.
Nothing to do with the vast majority of our lumber coming from Europe of course.

Yes but passports are blue and Europeans are being put in detention centres. Tit for tat.

[Sheilbh]

So Cummings has been tweeting ahead of his evidence on coronavirus decisions - and, as expected, he was basically Tamas in Number 10. Also reports that he's going to repeatedly accuse Hancock of lying and incompetence and Johnson of missing key meetings because he was working on his book on Shakespeare he needs to finish for divorce settlement money. If we get lots of questions about Barnard's Castle and his trip to Durham this will be very annoying/a wasted opportunity

As ever - much analysis that seems reasonably on point, but is delivered in a way that's really insufferable and not sure he knows how to fix it or move from the analysis/criticism:

Dominic Cummings
@Dominic2306
May 17
1/ Covid... Summary evidence on lockdowns. For UK political pundits obsessed with spreading nonsense on Sweden/lockdowns, cf. SW econ did a bit WORSE than Denmark which locked down, AND far more deaths in Sweden:
Yes, lockdowns were good
It's a moot point now, but let's set the record straight
noahpinion.substack.com
One of the biggest misunderstandings, spread by political pundits even now, is the 'tradeoff' argument. Fact: evidence clear that fast hard effective action best policy for economy AND for reducing deaths/suffering
4/ Best example: Taiwan. Also shows that if you REALLY get your act together not only is econ largely unscathed but life is ~ normal. But SW1 (Remain/Leave, Rt/Left) = totally hostile to learning from East Asia
5/ There's a general western problem based on nonsense memes like 'asians all do as they're told it won't work here'. This is what many behavioural science 'experts'/charlatans argued, disastrously, in Feb2020. This nonsense is STILL influencing policy, eg our joke borders policy
6/ Another confusion re Sweden: data shows despite no official 'lockdown' behaviour changed enormously. The closer your measures are to 'welding people inside homes' (per Wuhan at peak) the >> effect on transmission. Semantics of 'lockdown' obscure this really simple point
7/ If you are going to have to do measures ≈ lockdown to avoid health system collapse then the harder/earlier the better & the sooner they can be released. Pseudo 'lockdowns' w/o serious enforcement are hopeless: econ hit & people die anyway, nightmare rumbles on
8/ Waiting room, 1st jab. Remembered Vallance 24/3 amid disaster: will u support taking vaccines out of DH & a new Taskforce, we need different leadership & skills to drive it? CABSEC supported divvying up DH tasks. If not, normal Whitehall process, probably normal result
9/ Success seems to have blinded SW1 to important Qs. a/ We did it much better than Brussels, obviously, but Brussels is not a good comparison. How well did we do relative to 'how well wd General Groves who ran the Manhattan Project have done it?'
10/ I think we'll conclude we shd have done Human Challenge trials immediately & cd have got jabs in arms summer. This is not criticism of the VTF which has been constrained in ways they shdnt be. It's cnctd to b/ where is the public plan for how the VTF will deal with variants?
11/ One of the most fundamental & unarguable lessons of Feb-March is that secrecy contributed greatly to the catastrophe. Openness to scrutiny wd have exposed Gvt errors weeks earlier than happened
12/ So why are MPs accepting the lack of a public plan now for VTF viz variants? Especially when rumours reach me that the silent entropy of Whitehall is slowly turning VTF back into a 'normal' entity?
13/ The best hedge re a variant escaping current vaccines is PUBLIC SCRUTINY of Gvt plans. This will hopefully show it's been taken seriously. If not, better learn now that the Gvt has screwed up again than when 'variant escapes' news breaks
14/ I can think of no significant element of covid response that wd not have been improved by discarding secrecy and opening up. This was symbolised by e.g how COBR cd not be used: a constrained STRAP environment cd not cope with the scale/speed, another important lesson
15/ Having watched classified elements of covid response, Gvt cd make the vaccine plans 99% public without risks, 'national security' almost totally irrelevant to the critical parts of the problem, a few things cd be withheld while publishing all crucial parts of the plan
16/ These issues are relevant to c/ Who is writing the plan for 'how we deal with something worse than covid?' If we get this right now, we do not need to have this sort of disaster again. We'll also be hedging vs future bioterrorism risks: cf:
17/ The covid plan was supposed to be 'world class' but turned out to be part disaster, part non-existent. I urged inside Gvt to do a review of other contingency plans for more dangerous things than covid, a largely *open* process with e.g @wtgowers helping. Happening?
18/ MPs shd force publication of vaccine/variant plan & require mostly open review of other contingency plans before we find out the hard way they're as 'world class' as the covid plan...
19/ Such reviews shd seek out those were right & early on covid. Such people are more likely to spot that other plans have errors, gaps, that institutional planning has blind spots, failure to look at crucial operational details etc. E.g @MWStory
20/ P Vallance & I supported opening up SAGE much earlier than it happened. I argued before 1st lockdown to open up the CODE of SPI-M models for scrutiny. Barrier = SW1 cultural hostility to openness & this barrier means SAGE still too closed & too little of its workings public
21/ Looking at minutes does not give good insight to reality of discussions. E.g looking at minutes of crucial 18/3, which I attended, does not convey true situation, discussion, atmosphere, effects
22/ With something as critical as variants escaping vaccines, there is *no* justification for secrecy, public interest unarguably is *open scrutiny of the plans*
23/ This point is critical re Groves/Manhattan/vaccines & wider covid & wider issue of gvt performance: our civilisation is *abysmal* at seeking Groves/Bob Taylors & getting them into critical roles, *bureaucracies exclude & expel them*, as they did with Groves/Taylor!
24/ The public inquiry will at no point ask: how does the deep institutional wiring of the parties/civil service program destructive behaviour by putting the wrong ppl in wrong jobs with destructive incentives? It will all be about relatively surface errors
25/ If SW1 wanted to 'learn' there wd already be a serious exercise underway. The point of the inquiry is the opposite of learning, it is to delay scrutiny, preserve the broken system & distract public from real Qs, leaving the parties & senior civil service essentially untouched
26/ J Phillips, a brilliant young neuroscientist I recruited to no10, argued for immediate Human Challenge Trials, as did others. We were *far* too slow to listen to such advice. The science 'misfits' who urged this early were clearly right, the 'ethicists' disastrously wrong
27/ So true from @paulg, it's amazingly rare to find people who *deeply care about results* at senior levels in politics/gvt, those who do are seen as mad/unreliable & are weeded out. SW1 incentives are ~all about rewarding *process + fake signals*. V relevant to covid fiascos
28/ Of the 20 ppl who I saw do most to save 1000s of lives, it's striking how many gone or leaving or planning to leave, & how many who were disastrously wrong/useless been promoted to jobs they can't do/given honours etc
29/ @pmarca on the west's covid failures ('the harsh reality is that it all failed') & the General Groves mentality needed, influential in no10, 4/20, as we pushed thro the vaccine taskforce
30/ Crucial data generally ignored by those who want to downplay covid danger, many 1000s will have serious health problems for years because of our failure to act faster/harder in Feb/March & Sep. Those who predicted this issue wd be 'Gulf War syndrome bollocks' were wrong
31/ There was a PHE exercise called Exercise NIMBUS in a hypothetical future 14/4/20 with mock COBR slides. Assumed peak week 13/5 and >33M cases over 16 week wave, hospitals full by 14/4, >800K deaths, schools told stay open(!!). A/one know *when exercise happened* (think 3/20)?
32/ This, evening of 31/10 re lockdown2, from @wtgowers who was ahead of the game in 3/20, was spot on. If mass testing had been developed properly earlier in year as cd/shd have been, wd probably have avoided lockdowns 2&3 while awaiting vaccine
33/ True but also UK gvt did v badly, turned out we cd/shd have had these tests at millions p/day scale by Sep latest, instead of seriously *starting* in Sep, which wd have greatly changed q42020. Those screaming from ~Feb/March were ignored, months/lives/£ needlessly lost
34/ Mass testing same story as elsewhere: some brilliant/dedicated relatively junior officials (e.g Alex Cooper) + great young scientists (e.g @gaurav_ven) + entrepreneurs held back by senior management/DHSC/PHE (particularly awful) & Whitehall legacy procurement & HR horrorshows
35/ Even tho *the PM/CABSEC/I* all told 9/20 most senior HR & procurement officials to treat mass testing 'like a wartime project', ignore their usual bullshit multimonth processes, mass testing hugely hampered by Whitehall's optimisation for '[awful] process over results'
36/ So much 'lockdown' confusion. Obv they're 'destructive'. But if you have to do it cos alternative is *100s of 1000s choking to death + no NHS for months for everybody else + econ sunk cos everybody hiding in terror* then earlier/harder is better for health AND econ
37/ If we'd had the right preparations + competent people in charge, we wd probably have avoided lockdown1, *definitely* no need for lockdowns 2&3. Given the plan was AWOL/disaster + awful decisions delayed everything, lockdown1 became necessary
38/ Media generally abysmal on covid but even I've been surprised by 1 thing: how many hacks have parroted Hancock's line that 'herd immunity wasn't the plan' when 'herd immunity by Sep' was *literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings* until it was ditched
39/ Yes the media is often incompetent but something deeper is at work: much of SW1 was happy to believe Hancock's bullshit that 'it's not the plan' *so they didn't have to face the shocking truth*. Most political hacks believe in 'the system'...
40/ In week of 9/3, No10 was made aware by various people that the official plan wd lead to catastrophe. It was then replaced by Plan B. But how 'herd immunity by Sep' cd have been the plan until that week is a fundamental issue in the whole disaster
41/ All those referring to the Sunday Times story 22/3/20 re me dramatically 'changing my mind' at SAGE on 12/3: *there was no SAGE on 12/3*! It's an invented meeting & invented story repeated for a year by political hacks as 'fact'
42/ No10 decided to lie: 'herd immunity has never been... part of our coronavirus strategy'. V foolish, & appalling ethics, to lie about it. The right line wd have been what PM knows is true: our original plan was wrong & we changed when we realised

[Sheilbh]

Re a likely digital ID scheme - I saw in the Guardian this morning that Patel is to propose "digitising the border". Basically an electronic travel authorisation and visa scheme - like they have in the US. They also want to actually quantify the number of people entering and leaving the UK as this is currently just an estimate. Apparently the aim is to have this in place by the end of 2025 (given the record of government IT programs - we'll see ):
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/23/patel-unveils-digital-visa-to-help-count-people-entering-and-leaving-uk

As I say I'd be astonished if either in the next few years or after the next election there's not plans for a full national digital ID database.

Edit: And the Mail going in again on Johnson's personal finances/expenses. This time a posh organic meal prep company that's been providing breakfast, lunch and dinner for him and his girlfrend at around £800 a week (though a third was knocked off and they were provided at cost - so about £550 a week) All paid for by a Tory donor Lady Bamford who owns that company (and is related to the rest of the Bamford clan - including Patrick).

Complete with infographic:


It is fascinating how class based a lot of this is. The Mail (tribune of the lower-middle class) going at Johnson's personal (and very upper middle class) consumption: fancy wallpaper, posh ready meals, Caribbean holidays. Not only are his tastes to extravagant for the Mail but he isn't even paying for them.

[Tamas]

I won't read through that long a text what do you mean Tamas in Number 10? I don't take offense at that idea, but I do at being likened to Cummings.


Also, what's the deal with the Guardian going all in on firing up anti-BBC frenzy? I find it highly suspicious and ridiculous that the government digs out the old case of a BBC journo lying to Diana to get her to be honest, and use it as casus belli to probably try and turn the BBC into a Tory mouthpiece.

I understand the thought of a big competitor for news-providing being knocked down a few pegs is a comforting thought, but what is being attempted is far more sinister. I mean, Priti Patel is planning to drastically reorganise the BBC. What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that?!
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/23/charter-review-is-significant-moment-for-bbc-says-priti-patel

It just fuels my growing concern that in the background there is a push towards an Orban-esque far-right autocratic switch.

[The Brain]

Is there anything Hungary a few years back and present day UK have in common? Some factor that could explain this?

[Zanza]

More brexity rumblings that haven't really hit the news yet coming from my contacts in construction.... Lumber shortage is picking up. Prices expected to go up 40% or more this year.
And this is on top of a long standing brick shortage.
Nothing to do with the vast majority of our lumber coming from Europe of course.

Actually the reason is massive demand from the US as lumber is scarce in Germany as well as our lumber is exported to the US as it fetches much higher prices there. Nothing to do with Brexit.

[The Brain]

What is driving the demand?

[Zanza]

Building houses.

[The Brain]

Building houses.

Mom: we have houses in Detroit.