You keep mentioning this scrutiny without every being able to supply any bread or butter about what this negative scrutiny will reveal. You never insert here, you just keep hand waving, its so you.

He still had a tory MP in the chair, if he cared about scrutiny down the line, he would have not gone nuclear on said MP and kicked him out the party. The withdrawal of the whip is absolutely punishment for agreeing to publish the report.

Dude, just stop lying, you can do it.

As I have said, that is not the issue, the issue is no one cares, how many votes will be change over Galileo.

Stuff will emerge everyday that is negative for any given government, this issue, that you are desperately backpedalling onto after Huwai got nuked, is basically irrelevant to the electorate. Boris is not going to go ham over this.

That's ridiculous

No we don't know what particular awkward and embarrassing questions will arise over how Boris handles these very serious and difficult issues as they unfold.

Yes we do know such questions will arise.

Yes we do know he wants to avoid scrutiny and would prefer a tame committee.

This is not tricky stuff

Even that link is from weeks ago, has it been mentioned since?

Sure. They wanted Grayling because he's an idiot and he's pliable. In the near term he would have read out Dom's briefs on whatever the heck it actually says in the report. But with Grayling in post the committee, in Cummings's view (and you have to remember that Cummings is not actually an effective machinator, he just imagines himself to be one), would be scotched as a check on government for the indefinite future. The report itself may be a damp squib, but today's developments indicate that No.10 (meaning Cummings, since Johnson is just the glove-puppet) is afraid of it all the same. Which possibly tells you something.

That's it.

They will try to spin the report because it's embarrassing and that's what they do with embarrassing news cycles, but fundamentally this was about having a puppet running this very important committee.

Fortunately Cummings isn't the political operator he might imagine himself to be. Although it's pretty sad that a good result these days is Lewis (member of Leave Means Leave and the ERG)

Committees throw out **** on the government all the time, most of it just dissapears in the news cycle becuase it is to technocratic for mass consumption.

This report is different and its why Boris made the extraordinary attempt to helicopter in Greening.

The ISC is normally left perfectly alone to elect its chair and its history of embarrassing the government is no more or less than other high profile committees.

Our policy at present is to refuse battle on that issue. Like Fabius.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintu...mus_Verrucosus

Johnson and Cummings want and need a culture war, and we shan't give them one.

This for example is from a local newspaper. Has it even made national news.

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/new...ZDkvkQ-o-1b13I

If Boris was going for long term control of the committee, Lewis would be on his way to a ministerial position right now, they would have gone carrot not stick.

Pretty sure you cant be a government minister when you head a committee

I think he will get the whip back but Lewis isn't one of the easily controlled types - that's why they wanted grayling in the first place.

His voting record seems absolutely inline with back bench Tory MP, that the Boris could not have come to some kind of alignment seems a huge reach.

I would understand that they would have concerns if he was some kind of "wet" progressive Tory but this is absolutely not the case.

He would be looking at security issues very much through the lens of hard core thatcher boy tory, so I dont think he would have been rushing to put **** on the door step of the government.

Taking a dump on him is just absurd anyway you look at it.

Something we can agree on wholeheartedly.

Not relevant to the previous conversation and not about Lewis in particular but the hard core group are potentially a bigger problem for boris who is likely to have to make compromises at some point.

So apparently its actually statute law via the 2013 Justice and Security act that the right of choosing the chair lays with the committee. It used to lay with the PM but was specifically and precisely taken away in said act.

Aw, what happened to Gessler's hat stand?

You're not being racist, are you, by any chance? Call it an inkling.

Yes, that's correct.

I have family in the Bristol area and I was there today and I should perhaps mention that the mayor of Bristol, who had that rather beautiful but unauthorised Marc Quinn statue immediately taken down, is himself black. So it's not 'one up for the Confederacy' as certain people might imagine.

A white communist put that statue of an antifa agitator up so you can kneel and pay homage. So yes, it's not a black/white issue, but rather a political one.

Pont 1, she has very much politicised her briefings. You seem to be taking her words at face value rather than her actions. Her briefings have, quite rightly, been called out for being nothing more than party political broadcasts. Yesterday she claimed she wouldn't be drawn into statements that didn't involve Covid at her briefings...and then criticised the UK government for a supposed 'power grab' of EU powers.

As for care homes, our death rate far exceeds England there and the various statements, and lies in some cases, and continuing errors are the reason it has been so costly up here. Scotland had an opportunity to learn from others as we tended to be behind most countries, including England, in terms of the impacts of the virus but some of the claims made by Sturgeon and the Health Minister to attempt to cover up their failings on this have been ridiculous. Why is our care home death rate so high in comparison to other countries?

Finally, in terms of the death and infection rates bringing us out of lockdown slower probably hasn't played much, if any, part in it. The two main factors that make things better up here are population density, which is very important when discussing a virus, and the time lockdown took place. Although lockdown happened on a UK level because it was more widespread in England than in Scotland at the time it meant we effectively closed down a couple of weeks earlier and this played the biggest part.

But Prof Kao is sceptical that Scotland's comparatively slower exit from lockdown is the cause.

"So much of what would have broken the back of the virus occurred at an early stage, when [the four nations] were doing effectively the same thing," he said.

"The longer term effects of releasing lockdown are going to have relatively marginal effects compared to that.

"Also, the virus took off in London long before anywhere in Scotland and that's going to make the biggest difference.

"If lockdown occurs at the same time but you're at an earlier stage in the epidemic, you're definitely going to have an advantage. We can't pat ourselves on the back too much."

Prof Bauld added that population demographics had also helped to stem the epidemic in Scotland.

"We have Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, but they are smaller urban centres than several of the larger English cities, plus we've got much more rural space.

"When you look at the published data on cases per 100,000, there are some regions of England that are very low - it's not like Scotland is the lowest. Northern Ireland is lower than us as well.

"So we're in a really good position but it's not as if we're top of the rankings so to speak."

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/...ginal-benefit/

Being more polished than Boris on the tv, which isn't difficult, doesn't somehow mean Sturgeon has been competent in anyway. It just basically sums up the SNP, they are a shiny PR organisation with no substance to back it up. And I see lately the cracks are starting to appear as they're even being called out for this among their own.

In terms of Scotland and care homes:

https://insight.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2020/flu-and-coronavirus/

Cliffs - there's an obvious negative correlation between previous severity of flu seasons and current covid deaths (while obviously there's huge issues with how you actually count that, as Hancock's flailing about now with PHE implying you can never recover from coronaplague). The UK, and as listed in said article, specifically Scotland, has had previously mild flu seasons. As such, there's an implication that around 30,000 people who are alive in the UK who previously would already be dead from flu if we had results we'd have expected to see, rather than mild ones. In other words, we're having so many deaths right now in care homes because they're running good in not being dead previously

Yea only people with a very strong selection bias are going to be unduly influenced by a working paper from a business school.

The author points out it's very early days in terms of the work he's done in that report and it's only looking at correlation in the meantime. It also doesn't specifically look at care homes although given the group it's looking at will mostly be elderly then there will be an overlap there.

However if we look at the figures involved in care home deaths they are so high, even in comparison to our nearest neighbour (England) that there has to be something drastic going on. Almost 50% of Scottish deaths have been in care homes, the number for England is around half that.
There was the controversial policy up here of sending patients from hospial to care homes without waiting to see if they had Covid19. In terms of the care home scandal up here we've had the following:

* Health Secretary (Jeanne Freeman) instructs hospitals in March to discharge patients to free up capacity

* Freeman claims around 300 people had been discharged from hospital to care homes prior to testing starting on 21st April. After further investigation from journalists and MSP's she is forced to apologise to Parliament and admit the true figure was far higher at over 900 in March alone and over 1300 in total.
Nicola Sturgeon claims Freeman got the figures wrong as she was 'a bit tired'. This is despite the Scottish Government also putting out a vague statement on the figures before having to admit the truth.

* Freeman claims that until 22nd April "“there was no value at all to testing individuals who do not have symptoms”. She then appears in front of the Health Committee a week later and denies saying the test was of no value.

* Freeman tells Parliament there had been "125 incidents" of Covid on non-Covid wards between 18/3/20 and 3/6/20. This was interpreted as meaning 125 patients but after further investigation by journalists the Scottish Government had to admit it involved 908 patients

* Freeman is asked about guidance released by the Scottish Government that week (in May) advising that patients could be discharged from hospital to care homes without waiting on the results of their test. She said she has 'not seen the final updated guidance'

* Sturgeon is asked about why the care home death rate is so high in comparison to England. She said it's not for her to explain England's figures but then immedialy suggests they are down to under reporting. This is at the time that figures were showing the Scottish figures appeared to be under reported.

It's just one lie or attempted cover up after another and it's taken numerous attempts by journalists and opposition MSP's to try to get the true figures out.

I should add one more thing before I head off. There's been a couple of decent articles lately asking about why Sturgeon is seen as competent lately by many in England despite so many failings and they've pointed out that almost anything to do with Scottish Politics is reported as regional news rather than national, so these stories don't make the national press.

Here's a good article though giving a long list of failings and cover ups by Sturgeon over the coronavirus.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...irus-hypocrisy

We have Boris though. He makes everyone look good.