FlyTheNest

Morning all.

Good morning.

Just in case you thought it was a good morning:

BREAKING: Moody’s has said it expects to see UK GDP contract 10.1% this year and a sharper peak-to-trough contraction than any other G20 economy, Reuters reports.

But, but......Dishy Rishi!

Spineless creep.

Cost of rolling out universal credit rises by £1.4bn, say auditors

Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “The DWP needs to improve its understanding of vulnerable claimants and how best to support them to ensure that no one is slipping through the net. This is only going to become more important as the economic upheaval caused by Covid-19 continues.”

Morning all.

I notice that Chris Cook, probably with a heavy sigh, has had to say yet again that Blair didn't have a 50% target for students to go to university.

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Chris Cook
@xtophercook
There was never a target for 50% university attendance. It was any sort of HE, which includes lots of higher technical training. And - #sigh - it was never a real "target" in that they didn't aim for it with any policy levers. But who cares, huh.

The lockdown affects different people in very different ways...

Tom Harwood
@tomhfh
It's actually crazy that we're not investing more into making humanity a multiplanetary species.
10:01 PM · Jul 9, 2020·Twitter Web App

I may be being super cynical but it seems to me that the government introduced quarantine measures a couple of weeks ago purely so they could have a "lifting restrictions" 'good news' story now at the beginning of holiday season.
It's virtually the only logical explanation for an otherwise inexplicable policy.

Another brainless Tory Minister VIDEO -- " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Charlie Stayt - How long is coronavirus, in the air, a risk in an indoor environment?

Caroline Dinenage - I'm not the scientist.

CS - You're responsible for reopening swimming pools... people would expect you to know what the risks are.

Good to see that the OMS is SLOWLY beginng to listen to other scientists, this week ...

RogerOThornhill wrote:The lockdown affects different people in very different ways...

Tom Harwood
@tomhfh
It's actually crazy that we're not investing more into making humanity a multiplanetary species.
10:01 PM · Jul 9, 2020·Twitter Web App

Sending off Paul Staines and his various hangers on (like Tom) to Mars sounds good to me, tbh.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -committee" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Johnson's attempt to appoint Grayling "has been disrupted by months of wrangling as the Tories searched for colleagues willing to vote for him."

gilsey wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -committee
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Johnson's attempt to appoint Grayling "has been disrupted by months of wrangling as the Tories searched for colleagues willing to vote for him."

I saw Steve Bell do a talk last year and one person asked him how he got on with politicians - he said that on the whole they didn't want anything to do with him but he did say that one who was, as an individual, a nice, friendly and interesting person was ... Chris Grayling.

I was shocked when I found out this ally was - shocked I tell ya!

Revealed: Key Cummings and Gove ally given COVID-19 contract without open tender

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-m ... mpetition/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Cabinet Office has awarded an £840,000 contract for researching public opinion about government policies to a company owned by two long-term associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings, without putting the work out for tender.

Public First, a small policy and research company in London’s Tufton Street, is run by James Frayne - whose work alongside Cummings dates back to a Eurosceptic campaign 20 years ago - and Rachel Wolf, a former advisor to Gove who co-wrote the Conservative Party’s 2019 election manifesto.

Wolf of course was the first CEO of the New Schools Network...the contract for the work from the DfE was always awarded without competition.

Had I read further it actually says that...

Wolf, a former special adviser to Gove, ran the New Schools Network in 2010 to promote free schools, which was awarded a £500,000 contract by the department in 2010 without a tender. It was justified on the basis that hers was the only organisation able to provide expert support quickly enough.

The NSN was created before the 2010 election so that it could be ready for work once Gove was in office.

Registration history
14 October 2009 Registered

adam wrote:

gilsey wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -committee
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Johnson's attempt to appoint Grayling "has been disrupted by months of wrangling as the Tories searched for colleagues willing to vote for him."

I saw Steve Bell do a talk last year and one person asked him how he got on with politicians - he said that on the whole they didn't want anything to do with him but he did say that one who was, as an individual, a nice, friendly and interesting person was ... Chris Grayling.

Another place I frequent online has a regular who was a contemporary of his at their local hospital radio station when they were young.

Says that in those days he always wore a little SDP badge

No 10 going for more direct control of something? Who'd have thunk it...

Boris Johnson plans radical shake-up of NHS in bid to regain more direct control

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... ct-control" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The prime minister has set up a taskforce to devise plans for how ministers can regain much of the direct control over the NHS they lost in 2012 under a controversial shake-up masterminded by Andrew Lansley, the then coalition government health secretary.

The Prime Minister’s Health and Social Care Taskforce – made up of senior civil servants and advisers from Downing Street, the Treasury and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) – is drawing up proposals that would restrict NHS England’s operational independence and the freedom Stevens has to run the service.

Eight years on and Lansley's reforms would seem to be unravelling...still I'm sure they can blame labour somehow.

Rather than the LibDems, who nodded through Lansley's rubbish at the time. Some of us haven't forgotten

Another of these...

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Chris Cook's view on the NHS reform...

Chris Cook
@xtophercook
·
31m
For all the airport social science paperback nonsense, it's always about disliking rival sources of power or constraints on the executive.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Rather than the LibDems, who nodded through Lansley's rubbish at the time. Some of us haven't forgotten

Nick Clegg admitted that he didn't even bother reading it.

"What's this big thing on my desk?"

"It's the Health and Social Care act Mr Clegg, they need you to sign it."

"Is it important?"

"It will completely re-structure the NHS creating an internal market."

"Is that good?"

"That's not for me to say, perhaps you should read it?"

"I don't have time for that, I have important Deputy Prime Minsterial duties to attend to. It's an important position you know, they told me so."

"I'm sure they did Mr Clegg."

Scary news for Monsieur Barnier ( and Kent traffic police) , the Cummings Government is preparing for a situation where the continent is partially cut off, wholly due to its own intransigeance on the WA's pretend 'level playing field' .

Vast Brexit customs clearance centre to be built in Kent

Exclusive: council given only hours’ notice of emergency purchase of 1.2m sq ft ‘Mojo’ site

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... lt-in-kent" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Profiting from EU trade agreements those forriners are already eating organic kiwis from Kiwiland and microwaving food in NZ made and developed Sistema dishes .
https://www.zespri.com/en-UK/product" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://sistemaplastics.com/about/the-sistema-story" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But we of the ERG will do BETTER than that ! (Somehow)

NN !

So we saw Johnson for the first time in a mask today and he blurted out some waffle about 'making sure' people wear face coverings in shops.

It's been government advice for weeks that face coverings should be worn in shops yet they've done fuck all about it. We're a complete outrider here, even Republican states in the U.S are making it mandatory and yet visit a supermarket in Merrie Olde England and you'd think all was well, that we don't have infection rates still higher than those which sent other countries into lockdown.

And why is that? We have a certain strand of English exceptionalism which seems to think that making an Englishman cover his face is some kind of final straw when it comes to liberty. To them, as an outsider of sorts, I would say making Englishmen cover their faces would be no bad thing for many of them. In fact it could go some way to combating their declining ability to procreate. I say Englishman because it never seems to be women complaining about wearing a mask and from my own experience it's mostly women wearing them. Plus the English have a uniquely patriarchal national narrative compared to those of us from the fringes.

I think the Sage behavioural scientists had it right today when they said the next round of public information needs to come from anyone other than this government because nobody is listening to them anymore. Someone's hand in a sock could now give more trustworthy public health advice than our own Prime Minister.

SKY -- presentationalism of public information will NEVER work so long as this excuse for a government has nothing to PRESENT .

TRULY empty vessels ! NNNNNNN !

[youtube]LG-jn81K3-A[/youtube]

frog222 wrote:SKY -- presentationalism of public information will NEVER work so long as this excuse for a government has nothing to PRESENT .

TRULY empty vessels ! NNNNNNN !

This has evidently sunk in as far as their pitiful excuse for public health advice is concerned but there's nothing anyone can do about it.

They have an 80 seat majority with a psuedo-intellectual fuckwit advising a fat lazy clown.

We're fucked.

They've spent the last 4 months dishing out billions of pounds of public money to their mates in untendered government contracts and unless you were looking you'd never know. Our 'impartial' state broadcaster doesn't dare bring it up. This is banana republic stuff. From the ill fated app to the latest government polling contract Dominic Cummings' associates have made millions. The Zimbabwean health minister has been sacked for less.

Our institutions have been either hollowed out or scared into submission, the only truly independent institution we have left is our legal system which is why it came as no surprise when the Mail deemed judges enemies of the people.

These are interesting times.

6 music has got me liking this and it's uplifting in these shitty times.

[youtube]V3Ru61teqxg[/youtube]

[youtube]pMAtL7n_-rc[/youtube]

[youtube]yQKrSru_Vxw[/youtube]

Night night.