IntenseDebate - diadumenian

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Frost's appointment ch... · 0 replies · +1 points

I see Frost's appointment is going down badly in all the right places.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Our survey. If there i... · 0 replies · +1 points

Yes, but I was merely using that example to query the article's apparent assumption that Tories who think that maintaining the Union is important could not also be English nationalists.

I see that CH has now substituted 'separatism' for 'nationalism', which I think works a lot better.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Our survey. If there i... · 9 replies · +1 points

Is it not possible to be an English nationalist (say in the sense of wanting an English Parliament), while also believing in the maintenance of the Union?

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Daniel Hannan: Ignore ... · 0 replies · +1 points

I don't see any 'ludicrous conclusions' in Hannan's remarks re the roll-over treaties. He is merely making the point that the agreed adjustments demonstrate that both parties regard these EU hand-me-downs as open to amendment, and in a more liberal direction.

Which, if not earth-shattering in itself, bodes well for the future and is a good thing.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Chris Skidmore: Britan... · 0 replies · +1 points

You seem to have equally little understanding of how Britain-in-EU worked.

Yes, we were technically free to pursue our own vaccine procurement programme. So were all the other EU members, and some of them started to do so, but in the end 'EU solidarity' won out. We would have been under intense pressure not to break ranks, not least from home-grown Europhiles in the civil service and media, and governments which took such people seriously (ie, all of them between Maggie and Boris) would have been only too ready to conform. That would have been the safe option, the consensual option, the 'obviously right' option. That we might be able to do better by ourselves would have been an unthinkable thought.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Cherry's dismissal sho... · 1 reply · +2 points

As a Brexiteer, I don't have any difficulty understanding why so many Scots want their independence. What I can't see is any obvious connection between this cast of mind and enthusiasm for the woke agenda, and I suspect that rather a lot of Nats have no such enthusiasm (to put it mildly).

I don't know why Sturgeon is pushing it so hard, even making it the ostensible (obviously not the real) reason for dumping Cherry. I think she will find she is making a bad strategic error.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Cherry's dismissal sho... · 0 replies · +1 points

Nine lives probably. However in politics they almost invariably run out in the end.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Labour's vaccine know-... · 1 reply · +1 points

The great advantages of prioritising older age groups, plus their carers, plus younger people who are also clinically vulnerable are: 1) the roll-out is easy to understand and not obviously inequitable, 2) the rationale behind it is clear and relatively uncontroversial, and 3) it is not complicated to administer via existing NHS records.

As soon as you start favouring occupational or other social groups, you give a green light to every special pleader, virtue signaller and backseat driver in the business, all of whom will seize the opportunity with alacrity and create a cacophony of competing claims. That could become very divisive, very quickly.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - WATCH: Was Labour wron... · 0 replies · +1 points

Well to be fair, no one especially enjoys being proved wrong.

Of course they have a bigger problem than most as they're always so adamant about how incontestably right they are, and how stupid everyone else is. Even so, probably best not to crow too much.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - WATCH: International T... · 0 replies · +1 points

I think the fact you are overlooking, CS, is that the UK (like many other wealthy countries) has contracted for far more vaccine than it can actually use. Supply is not yet secure because manufacturing plants take time to get up to speed, which is currently the EU's problem. Once it is secure, and the vaccine roll-out in the UK is guaranteed, there is every reason to start diverting contracted supply we don't need to other countries which do.

No one (at least no one in the UK) is suggesting that this should be at the expense of the British population.

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