Castle Aching

[runs as required]

What were Porton Down’s earlier years ?

Were they active before WW II - transporting dead animals for anthrax filled shells ?

[Nearholmer]

Given its remit, that seems within the realms of the possible https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porton_Down

 

Note that after WW1 it was reduced to “a skeleton staff”, as if it wasn’t macabre enough already.

[Donw]

6 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

The reason I mentioned the common cold was because it, unlike the flu, is also a coronavirus. There is no vaccine for the common cold (anyone remember the Common Cold Research Unit on Salisbury Plain - or, even better, did anyone spend a free two-week holiday there?) and my empirical/anecdotal opinion, entirely unsupported by evidence (see above)  is that there won't be one for COVID-19 either.

 

I think I said that some time ago pre page 1000 feels like pre-history now. Do you think we will be getting post graduate theses on the ebb and flow of Castle Aching the thread?

 

Don

 

 

[Donw]

6 hours ago, Regularity said:

You are lucky.

The Tories are our present government, and it wouldn’t be difficult to do a better job.

And they aren’t silent.

 

While it probably wouldn't be difficult to do a better job than the current government, I doubt any of the other parties would be able to manage any better.  

 

Don

[Edwardian]

10 minutes ago, Donw said:

 

While it probably wouldn't be difficult to do a better job than the current government, I doubt any of the other parties would be able to manage any better.  

 

Don

 

I wonder how much of this is down to the elected politicians (I think it's known that I regard Bozza as a mere braggart, leading out the Second Eleven to inevitable defeat) or the administrative civil service?

 

Whose inadequate planning? Is it incompetent politicians over-promising or hidebound mandarins failing to deliver? Or both?

 

Not that I want to make a point in favour of Dom-the-Lockdown-Dodger, but isn't a central plank of his programme the need for a radical overhaul of the higher civil service precisely because of the vices that may be exhibited in the present crisis?  There's irony for you.

 

And what of the scientific advisers?  SAGE hardly seems to have covered itself in glory, mind you, neither has WHO.  Is the fault the advice, or the way it's been applied?  Or both?

 

I feel it's quite important to understand the whys and wherefores, because we have to get better at this as a country.

 

On the other hand, never mind the why and wherefore .....

 

 

[Florence Locomotive Works]

7 hours ago, Annie said:

Here in NZ we've had two cases of citizens returning from overseas 'going over the wall' to escape from quarantine.  They have both been charged and could face either 6 months in jail or a $4000 fine.  One of them was virus positive so I guess down at the courthouse they'll be getting some key throwing practice in so they can throw away the cell door key when they lock him up.

Our Defence Force is now supervising quarantine and they are being totally unsmiling towards anybody who tries to break the rules.  This new lot of returning citizens we've had lately seem to be finding it difficult to get the concept that now they're home they have to obey the rules.

 

In other news two senior members of our Tory party, - one of them an MP, - have just been sacked for passing on private information to the media about those who are presently infected with COVID-19.  After braying for weeks about how they could do a better job than our present government the Tories have suddenly gone silent.

I though the virus was on its way out of The Land of the Long White Cloud, or have my relatives been a exaggerating a bit. I suspect the latter, but my suspicions are almost never correct.

[Joseph_Pestell]

I don't think that anyone, even BoJo and Matt Hancock, would deny that mistakes have been made with Covid-19. And that is true for most other countries as well. Look at Melbourne. It is an unprecedented situation with no easy answers.

 

I don't even agree with many of today's measures announced by the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, although they offer some great opportunities to my business. But, and this is akin to me congratulating Liverpool on their Premier League success, I do totally applaud the spirit of this Government in being willing to throw the dogma out of the window and do what they think is right to get the economy back to rights. Good on you Mr Sunak and to your colleagues for supporting it. My local Tory MP, Bill Wiggin, has also been very supportive.

 

Full marks to all.

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Donw said:

I doubt any of the other parties would be able to manage any better.  

And that might be the very point: that when the SHTF what is actually needed is managerial competence from both civil service and elected politicians, and proper leadership from the most senior of the latter.

 

Its a sort of ‘beyond politics’ thing, by which I mean that the leanings of the politicians are irrelevant when faced with something like this ....... it can only be dealt with by genuine competence, not a load of dogmatic rhetoric of one kind or another, and we seem to have too much of the latter and not enough of the former. Not as bad as one or two other countries, where the bonkers views of the leaders trump all, but certainly not as good as some boringly competent countries.

 

It all reminds me of the way things sometimes go in local council politics: too many political egos of one stripe or another  leading to utter neglect of basics like emptying dustbins and making sure council housing blocks are fire-safe.

 

Grumble, grumble, grump ....... exit stage left still grumbling.

 

 

Edited July 8, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Annie]

26 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

I though the virus was on its way out of The Land of the Long White Cloud, or have my relatives been a exaggerating a bit. I suspect the latter, but my suspicions are almost never correct.

The only persons allowed to cross the border are NZ citizens and many are now coming back after having lived overseas for a time.  I think most of the returnees we've had lately have come from the Uk and the US.  We are almost completely virus free, but most of those who are coming back are travelling from countries where the virus is rampant so the government is taking quarantine very seriously.  Unfortunately some of the returnees have lax attitudes towards our rules and social isolating and think it's all a joke which has led to a couple of them now either facing prison or a significant fine.

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

And that might be the very point: that when the SHTF what is actually needed is managerial competence from both civil service and elected politicians, and proper leadership from the most senior of the latter.

 

Its a sort of ‘beyond politics’ thing, by which I mean that the leanings of the politicians are irrelevant when faced with something like this ....... it can only be dealt with by genuine competence, not a load of dogmatic rhetoric of one kind or another, and we seem to have too much of the latter and not enough of the former. Not as bad as one or two other countries, where the bonkers views of the leaders trump all, but certainly not as good as some boringly competent countries.

 

It all reminds me of the way things sometimes go in local council politics: too many political egos of one stripe or another  leading to utter neglect of basics like emptying dustbins and making sure council housing blocks are fire-safe.

 

Grumble, grumble, grump ....... exit stage left still grumbling.

 

 

 

Yes, indeed.  And I wasn't trying to make a party political point.  I think the identity of government ministers is relevant not because of their party in this instance, but because of their relative lack of experience. Whether anyone else would be better is moot given that Momentum in the case of Labour and BREXIT in the case of the Conservatives meant that all the Grown Ups in their respective parties had been rounded up and thrown out of the window before this started.  Starmer and Sunak look like the only Grown Ups left in the room right now. 

 

There has been some slowness of reaction by Government but more, I think, slowness in delivery.  I think the Chancellor has been fairly imaginative. I've no idea if all or some measures will work as intended or at all; I simply have no point of reference, it's so unprecedented.  You have to applaud the bloke for trying.

 

My concern focuses on the ability to deliver what is proposed and whether it will be enough. 

[Nearholmer]

5 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Starmer and Sunak look like the only Grown Ups left in the room right now. 

 

 Tend to agree with that. Assuming that the Chancellor is his own man and not somebody else's, he's  impressively practical and non-doctrinaire, unless he is a doctrinaire Keynesian, in which case "cometh the hour".

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

all the Grown Ups in their respective parties had been rounded up and thrown out of the window before this started. 

 

Part of the problem is surely that the leading politicians are now around our age or younger - the chancellor a mere schoolboy* - so we are no longer under the illusion that because they are older than us they must be wiser.

 

*Notwithstanding @Nearholmer's observation above.

Edited July 8, 2020 by Compound2632

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Part of the problem is surely that the leading politicians are now around our age or younger - the chancellor a mere schoolboy* - so we are no longer under the illusion that because they are older than us they must be wiser.

 

*Notwithstanding @Nearholmer's observation above.

 

Agree.  And believe me, it really doesn't help when you remember some of them as undergraduates!

[monkeysarefun]

Mustn't grumble, could be worse...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 8, 2020 by monkeysarefun

[Hroth]

17 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Starmer and Sunak look like the only Grown Ups left in the room right now. 

 

Perhaps we ought to be thinking of Governments of National Unity.

 

Then again, where would we find the sensible ones to fill the rest of the posts....

 

[Nearholmer]

37 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Mustn't grumble, could be worse...

 

 

I honestly can never tell which Trump Tweets are real, and which are deliberately outrageous mickey-takes.

[Nearholmer]

51 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

the chancellor a mere schoolboy*

 

Which I think is part of why I'm impressed by him .......... he seems like a really clever schoolboy.

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

a really clever schoolboy.

 

W.E. Gladstone was President of the Board of Trade at the age of 33 - being responsible for the 1844 Regulation of Railways Act - but was not chancellor until the age of 43. I'm afraid Lord Randolph Churchill appears to have been the youngest Chancellor, at the age of 37.

[rocor]

15 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Perhaps we ought to be thinking of Governments of National Unity.

 

Then again, where would we find the sensible ones to fill the rest of the posts....

 

 

From what I can gather, the need to have separate political parties (regardless of the impression that some M.P.'s of one party would seem a better fit for the other), is that if all M.P.'s were "independents", it would result in total chaos. 

[Hroth]

54 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

From what I can gather, the need to have separate political parties (regardless of the impression that some M.P.'s of one party would seem a better fit for the other), is that if all M.P.'s were "independents", it would result in total chaos. 

 

A National Government is a coalition of some or all of the major political parties. In a historical sense, it refers primarily to the governments of Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain which held office from 1931 until 1940. The wartime government that followed was of a similar nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Government_(United_Kingdom)

 

They are not so much a device to gain a majority, as in the Con/Lib coalition of 2010, but as a means of expressing national unity and getting the "right person in the right job" in the government.

 

 

[Regularity]

I felt that the electorate in 2017 wanted a coalition government to devise the best possible terms for Brexit, but given the nature of the (then) dominant factions of the two major parties, plus the sheer bloody mindedness of their leaders, this was never going to happen.

[Donw]

It is part of human nature to band into groups so a party system would naturally develop. The other thing is if MPs votes were secret the parties hold on them would be less but so unfortunately would be thei constituents. We need to know how our MP is voting which unfortunately enables a party leadership to whip MPs into the party line. Only the brave consciencious ones dare to defy the party whip on key issues.

 

It would be nicer to have more of a say about actual policies rather than one evey 5 years choosing which idiot/rogue/career chasing/ eye to future directorships etc. etc. delete as necessary whom you are giving your sanction to for the next five years. Bearing in mind around 50% didn't choose the MP they get.

[jcredfer]

3 hours ago, Donw said:

<snip>

It would be nicer to have more of a say about actual policies rather than one evey 5 years choosing which idiot/rogue/career chasing/ eye to future directorships etc. etc. delete as necessary whom you are giving your sanction to for the next five years. Bearing in mind around 50% didn't choose the MP they get.

 

I seem to remember that last time the voters were allowed to have a say it caused the most outrageously spoilt child like behaviour in those in the "Lower" House for  many decades and lasting well over 2 years.  Have a care for what you wish for.....

 

Julian

 

[brianusa]

22 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

I honestly can never tell which Trump Tweets are real, and which are deliberately outrageous mickey-takes.

I rather think you can take Trump and his tweets as real.  It would appear that his words are considered honest, factual and truthful as uttered by his henchpeople who are only too happy to make fools of themselves also.  Another term for this aging president would be a gift to his followers and a disaster for the rest but the answer is not necessarily Joe Biden, as he is even older!.  The sad part about this whole episode is that there are no younger qualified contestants for the job coming along!  God help America!

     Brian

[monkeysarefun]

20 minutes ago, brianusa said:

I rather think you can take Trump and his tweets as real.  It would appear that his words are considered honest, factual and truthful as uttered by his henchpeople who are only too happy to make fools of themselves also.  Another term for this aging president would be a gift to his followers and a disaster for the rest but the answer is not necessarily Joe Biden, as he is even older!.  The sad part about this whole episode is that there are no younger qualified contestants for the job coming along!  God help America!

     Brian

 

Personally I'm a huge fan of Kayleigh Mcenany because of the way she can make black mean white.

 

(That wasn't a racial reference there -  just a popular saying!)