These polls are totally pointless for UK. 45% support for Tories may mean 60% of the seats while 6% for Liberals may mean bloody zero.
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Not really. It gives an idea as to direction of travel - I.e over time we can see whether support is building or declining for a particular party.
Secondly, a party with approximately 45% of the votes is pretty much going to be forming the government.
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Well, I keep asking how many dead bodies would it take for people to question their blind devotion to the Tory party. I asked it at 40,000. At 70,000. At 100,000. Weâre now at nearly 130,000 at that faith is not shaking.
We probably need to acknowledge that there is a deep problem is the British electorate. The Prime Minister has, by his own admission, made mistakes that has led to tens of thousands of needless deaths. He took full responsibility for every mistake that the government made that got us to this point. And his poll ratings have gone up.
Weâre a nation of absolute sub-servient, forelock tugging, serfs. We want these privileged cunts to rule over us and keep us in our place. Even if they are literally killing us and our loved ones.
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Itâs a very macabre thought but when it comes to numbers, what is âperfectâ and what is the government being judged against?
125,000 deaths is obviously too many, but what could reasonably have been expected from handling of average competence? If you apply Germanyâs deaths per million (and theyâve dealt with it as best as any other large nation) the UKâs figure would have been just under 60,000. Is that a reasonable quantification of fatalities arising from government incompetence? Half the total number of people who have died?
How much has the impact of the UK variant distorted that assessment? Could the government, in some respects, be partially blamed for the UK variant coming about in the first place due to creating the circumstances in which it was able to arise?
In contrast, will other governments then be judged against the UK when it comes to their vaccine roll-outs? How many more lives will have been lost by bungled vaccine procurement and inefficient vaccine roll-outs?
Horrible to be talking in such terms but regrettably these are the outcomes upon which governments will be judged.
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Very much like blaming the ref when the problem is that your own team is playing dreadfully.
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I think you have to look at in terms of the mistakes and lack of decision making.
I could forgive a high death count if I saw a government acting in good faith and doing the best they can. I donât need to go through the catalogue of failures, but we have to be clear that all those failures have cost lives.
Just from the most recent examples, the faffing around over Christmas. Telling people they could meet with family. Then telling them they can but they shouldnât. Then telling them couldnât. And then telling them the can but only a bit.
How many lives did that cost? 20k? 30k?
What about the drive to restart the economy in summer? The eat out to help out scheme? How many lives were lost because the government were pushing everyone into restaurants?
Iâm fine to set it again a weighted Germany figure and say 60,000 deaths would be reasonable under the circumstance. At the start of the pandemic the government were saying they would have done well to keep it to around 20,000, but that was probably optimistic in the extreme.
Given we are an island, and we had a two week head start on Europe, a 60,000 target seems more than generous. That still leaves 65-70,000 deaths as a direct result of Tory incompetence and indifference.
My point is that seeing the Prime Minister - who has taken public personal responsibility for all the mistakes that led to that terrible death toll - actually increasing his personal rating shows something deeply broken in our national psyche.
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Yes. 125,000 dead people and counting is very much like a football match.
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Firstly, by Germanyâs standards I am not sure they would class it as a success. If you want to compare against a large nation that has so far successfully handled it, why not Japan? South Korea? Thailand? The first two also are (practically) island nations who donât share a land border with 9 other nations like Germany.
Secondly, we are 3 days away from sending 7 million children in to infect one another. The actual rollout of vaccine has been fantastic but I wouldnât be calling anything on whether vaccination is the silver bullet just yet when weâve spent several months in lockdown conditions and things are about to significantly change.
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Because, among many other factors, they were nowhere near the epicentre of the spread, that was Europe. Hereâs a useful page that includes a visual animation that brings home this aspect:
You missed the point. Youâre blaming the electorate for the fault which is entirely that of the Labour party. The job of the opposition is to hold the government to rigorous scrutiny. Theyâve been utterly anaemic under two leaders.
The fact that Labour have lost so many voters is because theyâre pretty much like Liverpool right now, shit.
In wasnât referencing the dead, I was referencing where the problem is. Blaming anybody but your own party is the same be it in politics or football. The refâs fault, the voterâs fault. Canât be our fault.
That is not entirely the fault of the Labour party.
People not voting for them is, thatâs the point. Nothing to do with the Covid deaths. If people donât vote for a party, itâs not the voterâs fault.
If I donât buy a Ford car, is that my fault? If I buy a Hyundai that blows up every Tuesday and randomly kills pedestrians, what does that say about Ford???
This is the point I was referring to.
Not entirely. Other factors such as the media play a significant role.
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That you would choose a brand with a proven track record of degrading everything and randomly killing people over a car that does none of those things? Yes. That would demonstrate there is something fundamentally wrong with you.
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As a one off yes. As a population? Ford must be re-writing the concept of awful.
You may not know it but you are making my point for me. The epicentres are going to be those regions that handled the virus poorly. No coincidence that variants popped up in the countries that the virus was rampant in.
South Korea and Japan were the two countries after China that were under the pump from the virus early doors. They managed to control it.
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Youâre missing mine.
The prime minister went on TV and took personal responsibility for every decision that has led to us having nigh on the worst death toll in the world. That should have consequences.
Has a Prime Minister ever had to take personal responsibility for something quite so devastatingly horrific. Why has he not resigned?
This shouldnât be about opposition.
You think Labour are a bit shit? Thatâs OK. I accept your opinion.
But you think they are so shit thatâs it preferable to continue with a government that has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people? Are you really sure about that.
If there was an election tomorrow would you vote for Starmer or Johnson? Remember one of those is directly responsible for somewhere between 60 and 100k deaths. The one who killed thousands of his own citizens or the one who looked a bit uncomfortable championing British Patriotism. Yeah, tough choice.
How bad do you want the Government to be, before an âanaemicâ Labour Party becomes preferable? 200,000 dead? 300,000? 500,000? Donât you think anaemic is slightly more preferable than fatally (literally) incompetent or indifferent.
Starmer should not have to be the second coming of Winston Churchill. He should even have to be the second coming of Ed Milliband.
And donât think Iâm letting Starmer and The party of the hook. The word I used up thread was risible. They need to up their game (but weâre a long way from a GE). But Labour should be able to be twice as bad as they currently are and still be well ahead in the polls, because - and this cant be stated enough - the incumbents have literally caused thousands and thousands of people to die.
My point is that we sit here with 125,000 people dead, at least half - possibly more - a direct result of the decisions and action (or lack of) of this Government, and still people would vote them back in. I donât think thatâs a judgement on Labour. Itâs a judgement on the country, and a comment on how entrenched in our politics we have become.
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