Things I support: cost-benefit analysis of public health interventions; understanding risk; accepting trade-offs; taking vaccines. Willing to change my mind.
The inconvenient truth of our times. 👇
"In the final analysis, these infringements generated negligible public health benefits while imposing a set of massive costs on society."
#lockdown#CovidEnquiry
@TheEconomist Let me get this straight - if I'm scared and saddened by what is happening on our streets and I want my elected representatives to do something decisive about it, The Economist says I'm a "bastard"? 🤨
@afneil Precisely. Are the editorial staff really so appallingly blinkered and/or partisan that they think the correct response to recent events is to hector the little people even more vociferously?
📢 "Plebs, don't know you know how deplorable your views are?!" 😠
@TheEconomist When are you going to stop yelling at the little people about how deplorable their opinions are, and consider examining the substance of the issues, like the analytical current affairs magazine you once were?
@TheEconomist Let me get this straight - if I'm scared and saddened by what is happening on our streets and I want my elected representatives to do something decisive about it, The Economist says I'm a "bastard"? 🤨
@JohnHealey_MP 👏 Good on you. I cannot recall the last time a cabinet minister resigned on a point of principle. Maybe Clare Short, over Iraq, more than 20 years ago?
we live in age of great moral panics about things that don’t matter and zero moral outrage over some of the most egregious societal sins we’ve ever seen
Here’s the problem. The liberal political class wants us to treat atrocities like Belfast as single, random, isolated incidents. “Yes, it’s horrific, but don’t overreact,” they say. “Let the police do their job. Justice will be delivered. Let’s remain united,” and so on.
But the public can see that such incidents *aren’t* random or isolated. They are, in fact, all the consequence of massive state failure in the area of asylum and immigration. All roads lead back there.
That’s why people are angry.. They are sick of the platitudes that get trotted out after each fresh incident. They don’t want to hear them anymore. They know that the decisions of establishment politicians have brought us to this current pass, and they don’t trust those same politicians to fix things, especially when some of them refuse to even recognise that the public’s anger is justified.
There has been a huge vibe shift in recent years. Imagine - God forbid - there were another 7/7. Does anyone think the public response would be anything like as restrained as it was then? We are in really dangerous territory.
The public don’t want flowers and candles and “Don’t let them divide us.” They want someone who says, “I recognise that the state has failed abjectly. We have allowed far too many people to settle in the country without knowing who they truly are. It has disrupted your communities. Your anger is justified. And I will do everything in my power to put things right.”
Any politician unwilling to articulate that message, fully and sincerely, is effectively sanctioning more years of growing social disharmony and discord. Things cannot heal until those in power recognise the extent of the problem and what it will take to fix it. And, on both counts, most of them don’t.
That’s why the next few years are going to be very, very turbulent.
The Justice Committee has given its verdict on Labour’s plans to restrict our ancient right to a jury trial.
It’s utterly damning.
It says there is NO evidence for David Lammy’s claim that judge only trials will take 20% less time than jury trials. 🧵
David Lammy wants to appoint more judges based on their racial and religious identities.
Now he’s appointing a woke ally to run the Judicial Appointments Commission.
She says equality is “not about treating everyone the same”.
Lol. BBC turned off replies as I was typing this. So Repost instead.
"Ed Davey asks if there should be a crackdown on platforms like X where ordinary people are able to voice their legitimate concerns about political issues, expose events which politicians want to remain hidden, and repeatedly call out lying politicians via Community Notes".
The idea that a government populated by ministers who, combined, have close to zero proper business experience, dribbling out small dollops of cash to companies they favour will play any role in finding ‘the UK’s first trillion-dollar firm’ really is one for the ages. If it ever happens it will be despite the government, not because of it. They really have no clue.
@LostinAylesbury@jan_murray@Fox_Claire Of course, that may be the explanation. But without knowing the truth, a sensible application of Bayesian principles suggests the more likely explanation is that it was a male.
Does the Northern Ireland Secretary really not think that attempting to behead someone in the street is alien to our culture?
Why do they insist on not seeing what is plain as day to the rest of us?
@Ameer_Kotecha Government lawyer: no can do Minister. That’s unlawful.
Should be followed by:
Minister: Then I shall legislate to make it lawful.
End of circle.