Bye Bye Boris!

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Swervin_Mervin
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by Swervin_Mervin »

ZedLeg wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 7:05 pm
duncs500 wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 6:34 pm
ZedLeg wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 11:45 am
The mood has changed over the last 15 to 20 years. The cost of living keeps climbing while wages have stagnated, I'm not saying it's a sure thing but I think a lot of middle aged people are overlooking how aware young people are of how they've been fucked over for short term gain and how angry they are about it.
Sometimes I question that, it's total old fart thinking of course, but businesses (as all good businesses do) have persuaded us that we need a lot of stuff that we probably didn't need or have 20 years ago. People are not prepared to live without it now, but I think it makes a significant difference. I don't think housing and utility bills as a proportion of salaries has changed as much as you might think.

Doesn't change the perception of the young people I suppose, I wouldn't know whether that was accurate or not.
Wages have been driven down to the point that people earn less in real terms than they did 20 years ago. From some quick Googling the average graduate starting salary is worth about £3k less than it was in 1999. Meanwhile the cost of living has gone up.
I know that's averages but that does intrigue me. 20yrs ago a grad starting salary in my industry was £14k. That's almost your entire tax free allowance these days and grads in our sector now start on north of £30k! More senior positions haven't risen anything like the same amount so the wage bands have compressed hugely
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duncs500
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by duncs500 »

Swervin_Mervin wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 7:54 pm
ZedLeg wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 7:05 pm
duncs500 wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 6:34 pm

Sometimes I question that, it's total old fart thinking of course, but businesses (as all good businesses do) have persuaded us that we need a lot of stuff that we probably didn't need or have 20 years ago. People are not prepared to live without it now, but I think it makes a significant difference. I don't think housing and utility bills as a proportion of salaries has changed as much as you might think.

Doesn't change the perception of the young people I suppose, I wouldn't know whether that was accurate or not.
Wages have been driven down to the point that people earn less in real terms than they did 20 years ago. From some quick Googling the average graduate starting salary is worth about £3k less than it was in 1999. Meanwhile the cost of living has gone up.
I know that's averages but that does intrigue me. 20yrs ago a grad starting salary in my industry was £14k. That's almost your entire tax free allowance these days and grads in our sector now start on north of £30k! More senior positions haven't risen anything like the same amount so the wage bands have compressed hugely
Grad starting salaries have gone up a lot in my industry too. None of the grads I've been working with are struggling to enjoy life living and renting in London.

Edit - I know you were talking about buying a place Zed, but I couldn't afford to buy as a grad in London either, I think these grads I know could save up and buy outside of London if they wished to, the same as I did in the end.
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ZedLeg
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

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After another round of crushing defeats for fringe parties fronted by attention seeking bellends, what’s the chances of the likes of Salmond and Lozza fucking off? :lol:
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Broccers
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by Broccers »

I can see why people vote snp. Not much other choice as labour are so useless.
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by ZedLeg »

Aye, another SNP/Greens coalition. I’m alright with that tbh, nice to see the greens pick up another couple of list seats.
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by Broccers »

ZedLeg wrote: Sat May 08, 2021 8:46 pm Aye, another SNP/Greens coalition. I’m alright with that tbh, nice to see the greens pick up another couple of list seats.
It may shock you I vote green (not black obvs).
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by Broccers »

This is very sad news

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Zonda_
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by Zonda_ »

Cummings is doing his best!
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ZedLeg
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by ZedLeg »

Everyone's lack of surprise that he was whispering in Laura Kuenssberg's ear.
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by dinny_g »

While I'm sure he has some interesting views, part of me wonders why he's getting airtime at all.

Last year he was an unelected private individual who's influence on the PM was seen as, at the best, worrying but now it seems like everyone's interested in what he has to say,

It's coming across a bit sour grapes and therefore hard to separate opinion from fact and to determine what's relevant and what's just him trying to stick the knife into Boris. to be fair though, I'm only reading the summaries on the new sites.
JLv3.0 wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 4:26 pm I say this rarely Dave, but listen to Dinny because he's right.
Rich B wrote: Thu Jun 02, 2022 1:57 pm but Dinny was right…
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ZedLeg
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by ZedLeg »

If even half the stuff he's saying is true it's pretty damning for the government.
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by dinny_g »

True...

From the BBC's summary:

He says Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been sacked "15 or 20 times", including for lying

OK - Prove it, otherwise sour grapes

He also says Mr Hancock said people would be tested before being discharged into care homes - but weren't
Damning

Mr Cummings says "senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me, fell disastrously short"
Opinion of unelected private individual

"Tens of thousands of people died, who didn't need to die," says Mr Cummings
Sensationalist Sky News Grandstanding - you're not a doctor. Piss off

He accuses PM Boris Johnson of being like an out-of-control shopping trolley, and being "a thousand times" too obsessed with the media
True but many were back in February (Saint Ahearn aside)

He says in February 2020, the PM regarded Covid as a “scare story” and wanted Prof Chris Whitty to inject him with it on TV
Again, he was not alone in this. There were a lot of Chicken Licken leaders back then at that point, it wasn't based on any facts. In hindsight it seems that way. The injection thing does sound 100% classic Borris :lol:

Mr Cummings says he heard PM say in October that he would rather see "bodies pile high" than have another lockdown
Damning - very damning... if Boris actually said it. Has anyone corroborated this?

Mr Cummings also says he is "extremely sorry" for breaking lockdown rules to visit Barnard Castle with his family last year
Like fuck he is - he's sorry he got caught and pissed off he was trotted out to the cameras to explain.
JLv3.0 wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 4:26 pm I say this rarely Dave, but listen to Dinny because he's right.
Rich B wrote: Thu Jun 02, 2022 1:57 pm but Dinny was right…
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Ascender
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by Ascender »

ZedLeg wrote: Wed May 26, 2021 3:40 pm If even half the stuff he's saying is true it's pretty damning for the government.
And it won't make any difference. That's the depressing bit in all of this... what's the point of these enquiries when they really don't change anything. After some of the behaviour of our government and its advisers/cronies over the last year or so, they should be in jail, let alone still being allowed to govern our country.
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ZedLeg
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by ZedLeg »

Ascender wrote: Wed May 26, 2021 4:01 pm
ZedLeg wrote: Wed May 26, 2021 3:40 pm If even half the stuff he's saying is true it's pretty damning for the government.
And it won't make any difference. That's the depressing bit in all of this... what's the point of these enquiries when they really don't change anything. After some of the behaviour of our government and its advisers/cronies over the last year or so, they should be in jail, let alone still being allowed to govern our country.
True, doing things that are shady/criminal seems to be fine as long as you're in government when you do it.
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duncs500
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by duncs500 »

Cummings has been front and centre on many of the worst things this government has done. I don't think he should be getting a soapbox now just because he finds himself on the outside.
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Mito Man
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by Mito Man »

I liked the brief excerpt I saw about a key Covid meeting being interrupted as Trump wanted help bombing the middle east and Carrie then comes in and keeps bringing up something about her dog :lol:

Also I remember being under the illusion that the government supposedly had a previously devised plan for epidemics however the 13 year old whiteboard sketches show otherwise. The only thing that I can 100% agree on as it is factual is the fact that Boris and Hancock did keep going on about herd immunity at the start of all this but then swept it under the rug once they realised the seriousness of it all.
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duncs500
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by duncs500 »

All the news stories at the time were saying that it was DC who favoured the herd immunity approach IIRC.
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GG.
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by GG. »

Mito Man wrote: Wed May 26, 2021 5:31 pm The only thing that I can 100% agree on as it is factual is the fact that Boris and Hancock did keep going on about herd immunity at the start of all this but then swept it under the rug once they realised the seriousness of it all.
Even then you can't necessarily equate an initial herd immunity strategy with callousness towards loss of life which is what Cummings is hoping you conclude. A strategy of pursuing herd immunity by letting the virus run its course in younger people whilst isolating the elderly wouldn't have been unreasonable. I expect it probably quickly became apparent, however, that that would be unworkable as (a) it would be very difficult to get the old'uns to isolate effectively and (b) lots of fat diabetic 50 and 60 somethings would probably die as well.
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Beany
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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by Beany »

That, and too many 'edge cases' of otherwise healthy 20-40 year olds dropping dead from it, and the hospitalisations crippling the NHS would have rather put a downer on things.

The problem seems to be that, despite the evidence to the contrary coming out of china and italy, UK Govt Bods were thinking it was just another swine flu - nasty, but not broad-scale, population level fucking dangerous - and they took far, far too long to actually start taking that seriously.

Thread for most of it from Ian Dunt if you want to give yourself the mental image of a liberal pressers jaw hitting the floor at multiple points :lol:

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Re: Bye Bye Boris!

Post by Nefarious »

I can guarantee one thing - this is *not* the end-game for Cummings.

Dominic Cummings is far too strategic to mouth off to a select committee purely out of spite. Any bombs he drops will have very carefully chosen targets, and the damage they do will only be to create leverage for something else.

If Cummings wanted to sink the government, he would have made specific, provable allegations of actual criminal activity. At the very least, he was front and centre of the decision-making team that awarded billions in what we now know to be inappropriate contracts to connected parties - he absolutely knows where the bodies are buried. So, either he can't say too much without directly implicating himself (or those he wants to protect), or he's not really trying to take down Boris/Hancock in this round.

Also, Cummings clearly has plenty of dirt on anyone who's ever been near that cabinet room. A spiteful revenge attack would've taken down every last one of them. It was very notable that strategic allies like Gove were left out. Those viewing this as a loose-cannon attack might say that he's just protecting his mates, but it appears that he is also choosing to protect figures like Sunak who is clearly popular and has a long term future at the top of the Tory party, but doesn't have the same long-term personal connections to Cummings.

Where is the strategic advantage in pushing the nuclear button in the opening salvo? Far better to assassinate a minor general to show intent, show the strength of your armoury to demonstrate capability, and negotiate the most advantageous surrender terms behind closed doors.
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