Westministenders: Its the waiting that kills you

[RedToothBrush]

Just waiting.

Talks between Frost and Barnier still unresolved issues. There are rumours but 'all without evidence' (the new in phrase on BBC news tonight) that the UK is waivering.

Less that two months to go.

And there is the small matter of what happens in the US than might influence events.

Zooming the telescope out, it's not even been a week since the US results, and there's already been more shift in no. 10 than the past month.

(Remember. Never listen to what they say, just look at what they do).

I lost all respect for Nick Robinson when he, on the main BBC News, claimed that "I asked Alex Salmond the question and he refused to answer". Dh and I had watched the press conference in question and Salmond had unusually for a politician explicitly and directly answered the question at length: just not with the answer that Nick Robinson wanted.

The numerous complaints to the BBC were sort of upheld: it conceded that the report gave an inaccurate impression but concluded that it was not "intentional bias" and that Robinson's assertion was made on the basis of “professional judgement” which “did not in itself imply bias”.

Just saw this on the Trump thread and thought it might amuse some here
djtrumplibrary.com/

Or, has he been offered a sweetener to leave? We haven’t seen the last of the proverbial bad penny.

The FT suggesting he might end up as Head of a U.K. science body. As far as I know he has no science training, so I expect that thought will be anathema to real scientists.

One expectation among Whitehall mandarins is that Mr Cummings may leave Number 10 to become the first head of his pet project: a new high-risk, high-reward scientific research body based on the Darpa agency in the US

www.ft.com/content/de6cd591-37da-46c2-b67f-c44eea37e1aa

mobile.twitter.com/jameswilsdon/status/1327136822649114625

I lost all respect for Nick Robinson when he, on the main BBC News

I lost respect for the BBC and by extension anyone that "reports" for them a while back. It was John Humphries wot did it.

You want news ? Looking at the clouds go by is probably more balanced than the BBC.

I will miss them when they're gone.

One expectation among Whitehall mandarins is that Mr Cummings may leave Number 10 to become the first head of his pet project: a new high-risk, high-reward scientific research body based on the Darpa agency in the US

Vaguely reminds me of an ex-employer that decided they could dump a lot of strategy and "be like Google". Needless to say Google are still there. Unlike ex employer that isn't.

Little tip: Never let people who have a day job too close to strategy. You'll end up with day long discussions over vending machines.

You may have given up on the BBC, DGR but they are the state broadcaster still, so it's as well to keep an eye on how they report.

My comment about the purpose of interviewers applies to all types of program (even if they don't always get it right, pretty).

@DGRossetti

It is understood, however, that the UK has asked for a grace period to allow supermarkets time to adapt and that the EU is considering this, on the condition that there is full compliance with the Protocol over time.

It will interesting to see how this is affected by the IMB. It's not impossible to imagine a rather tart reply:

No we are sticking to what was agreed.

I'm assuming it would only be agreed to if the parts of the IMB that contravene international law are removed.

Rudy Giuliani & The Four Seasons - Oh, What a Site

It is understood, however, that the UK has asked for a grace period to allow supermarkets time to adapt and that the EU is considering this, on the condition that there is full compliance with the Protocol over time.

Isn't this what the transition period was for?

@ICouldHaveCheckedFirst

born I don't think Nick R is asking for himself. I've always assumed that the role of interviewers such as Nick R is to ask questions on behalf of members of the public, whise grasp of the details is significantly less than his own - or yours.

I know he's not asking for himself. What I have an issue with is the way he asks. Over the past few years he's been noticeably ruder and more unpleasant to people speaking for the EU than he has to certain people speaking for the UK - even when those speaking for the UK have been blatantly lying, evading the question or misdirecting.

Humphries is now writing wall to wall anti EU articles in the Mail.

Lord Grade is right that insting on balance in topics as unequal as climate change and Brexit
was incredibly damaging to the BBC

"With Cummings, my impression was a rat deserting a sinking ship."

I think he, and the others, should surrender their passports.

They should be made to live with the consequences of the "utopia" they have brought about - and they certainly shouldn't be going anywhere until they've been fully investigated.

Lord Grade is right that insting on balance in topics as unequal as climate change and Brexit was incredibly damaging to the BBC

Nothing wrong with balance. But balance has to be between two broadly equal sides. Not between astronomers and Barry who thinks the world is flat.

The same with Brexit. And something which was never acknowledged at the time.

Remain and Leave were not equally opposite choices. Doing nothing and doing something never are. A vote to leave was not a vote to "anti-remain" and should never have been allowed to be discussed as such and then after the result justified as such.

Cummings said, when he clung on in May, that he would go at the end of the year. And so he is. In good time to avoid any comeback for Brexit disaster. This is not the revolution it’s purported to be.

Except that people aren't going to forget how they didn't go to relatives funerals, or coped with lockdown without any family help, while he swanned off to his in-laws and then Barnard Castle.

True, but what will he care once he’s off working for Google in California?

True, but what will he care once he’s off working for Google in California?
You think a Biden government will give him a visa ?

Nothing wrong with balance. But balance has to be between two broadly equal sides. Not between astronomers and Barry who thinks the world is flat.

The Science around Covid is another area where the BBC has ended up tilting the playing field in the interests of "balance". They keep wheeling out "Oxford" Professor Heneghen who is connected to far right interests in America and signed the Barrington declaration to argue against lockdown. He has no peer reviewed papers on Covid and his science, beloved of conspiracy theorists, is promulgated on twitter and other social media and via the Daily Mail . Last time I saw him wheeled out it was with Sir Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Officer to the government with the full weight of Sage and the scientific consensus behind him. Yet Heneghen was given equal airtime and presented as an equal if opposite point of view.

Not just false balance but given that the conspiracy theories are taking hold and represent a threat to dealing with the pandemic effectively downright irresponsible.

He has no peer reviewed papers on Covid and his science, beloved of conspiracy theorists, is promulgated on twitter and other social media and via the Daily Mail .

Which is used as "proof" that they're all agin me ...

.

Emily
Not just false balance but given that the conspiracy theories are taking hold and represent a threat to dealing with the pandemic effectively downright irresponsible.
It was the same with Climate Change
until Prof Brian Cox, invited on to talk about science
called them out and demanded to talk about the Budget
because Nigel Lawson had been allowed to discuss atmospheric science

Its a permanent rant but when a TV interviewer walks up to a scientist at a schools event - in front of 1000 kids and says
I hated science at school, why should I listen to you
that scientist really should have employed a left hook.

Dara O'Briain is good at ripping "balance" apart ... one of his routines is about doing "Stargazing Live" and the BBC trying to insist on having an astrologer for balance.

You can't come on the show because you go to work in a cloak for gods sake !

But return to labour the point about Brexit. Voting to Leave was not in anyway as equally valid as voting to Remain. A fact which could have been easily underscored by insisting the referendum needed a true majority. Since anyone no voting was axiomatically voting to retain the status quo.

A former boss (company director) used to get very annoyed when costings were predicated on such a basis and people tried to sell a course of action by inventing a "do nothing" cost.

(My personal bugbear was decisions to "do nothing" were rarely documented. Meaning it was hard to see in a year or twos time if the underlying assumptions were still valid ...)

Ultimately, the 1975 referendum was a win for "do nothing".

www.politico.eu/article/uk-cabinet-split-puts-science-collaboration-with-eu-at-risk/amp

LONDON — The U.K. could fail to associate to the EU’s Horizon Europe research and development scheme after the Brexit transition period amid opposition from senior ministers.

Negotiations over the U.K.’s participation in the €80 billion program, due to run from 2021 to 2027, are stuck on how much Britain would be asked to pay for association versus how much it would receive.

In a letter to the Cabinet Office’s EU exit strategy committee this week, the U.K.’s chief Brexit negotiator David Frost asked Cabinet ministers whether Britain should push for a two-way correction mechanism in ongoing future relationship talks with the EU, according to government officials.

Such a mechanism was originally put forward by biomedical research charity the Wellcome Trust as a way of ensuring the U.K.’s Horizon Europe participation costs could not significantly exceed the value of the grants British researchers might win from the program. The Wellcome Trust hoped it could offer a fair solution to the U.K.’s cost concerns.

Frost’s letter invited the so-called XS committee — which is chaired by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and includes his five most senior secretaries of state plus the attorney general — to reply with their thoughts in writing by the end of last Friday, according to government officials familiar with its content.

But the request has highlighted deep divisions in the Cabinet over whether the U.K. should join Horizon Europe, with at least one prominent Brexiteer on the committee expressing strong reservations about the U.K.’s association to the EU scheme, the officials said.

(contd)

Which is used as "proof" that they're all agin me ... Oh yes, I have actually had that one thrown back at me. They are cunning these conspiracy cult members, like Christian Evangelicals they lure you in with perfectly reasonable sounding arguments and it is only when you poke the hornet's nest that you get to the darkness that lies beneath. I even got told that I had fallen for a conspiracy myself in highlighting the far right origins of all this tosh - this was from a left wing swivel eyed loon.

It is not that in terms of the scientific community outliers like Professor Heneghen are a bad thing. You need alternative questioning theories but they need to stand the test of research and peer review. Nobody in that community is against him (though Sir Patrick did look at the end of his threshold of patience). However he has explicitly said he has stepped ourside the peer review process and on social media his "Science" becomes a servant of politics and people seeking the certainty of the conspiracy cult transform him into prophet and martyr, as with that awful droning Irish fat Emperor.... I assume if they realised they were aiding the path to people believing in the need to be par of the "resistance" to the " “Great Reset” and “Agenda21” dystopian 5G driven surveillance nightmare". This is a quote from someone who seemed at first quite rational in a perfectly sensible debate on Covid infection control on a friend's facebook page!