The lockdown is being eased from July 4th but the virus has not gone away

The lockdown is being eased from July 4th but the virus has not gone away

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Is this going to change the political trends? As expected the man who desperately needs a haircut, PM Johnson, has announced a range of measures that will ease the lockdown from a week on Saturday which will be exactly three months to the day since Keir Starmer became opposition leader. In that time the Tories lead has been slashed from 26% in two polls in April to the blue team being just four or five points ahead. Johnson’s personal ratings…

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Johnson’s big gamble – setting a time table for the lockdown regulations to be eased

Johnson’s big gamble – setting a time table for the lockdown regulations to be eased

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Lockdown bandit Cummings and his team have certainly been hard at work briefing the media on the changes in the lockdown regulations that are due to be announced by the Prime Minister in House of Commons today The papers, as can be seen above, are pretty positive and are giving the changes the big treatment because, clearly, any easing of the strict controls that people have been living under since March is massive news. This, of course, represents a big…

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Safe as houses?

Safe as houses?

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Housing has long had a special place in the Tory party’s heart. A “property owning democracy” in Mrs Thatcher’s vision. It has also proved a nightmare as the rises in interest rates, negative equity and repossessions in the 1990’s showed. Now the problem is different: people desperate to own a home (the young) are shut out by sky high prices (at least in some places), the difficulties of saving for a deposit while renting and the lack of sufficient affordable…

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Trump drops even further in the WH2020 betting following his less than successful Tulsa rally

Trump drops even further in the WH2020 betting following his less than successful Tulsa rally

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This last weekend was going to be the moment when Trump would seriously bounce back in his re-election effort with a mass rally in Tulsa Oklahoma. Unfortunately for him and his team the event proved to be something of a disaster with just over 6k in the 19k seat venue. A second location nearby to deal with the overflow was abandoned when it became clear the numbers weren’t there. This was in spite of all the boasts and predictions Trump…

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The reality is that life won’t get back to normal until a vaccine or palliative is widely available

The reality is that life won’t get back to normal until a vaccine or palliative is widely available

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During the day I had a call from an old friend who told me she had recently come out of hospital after getting COVID19. Her story was, no doubt, very similar to what many of the hundreds of thousands who have been struck down with the disease have experienced. The sheer awfulness of gasping for breath and then the incredible joy after arriving in hospital and getting oxygen. The totality of the pain, the physical discomfort when our organs aren’t…

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Perhaps pollsters should start weighting for those who have had Covid-19 or know someone who has had from Covid-19

Perhaps pollsters should start weighting for those who have had Covid-19 or know someone who has had from Covid-19

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This morning The Sunday Times have done some excellent analysis based on figures from the gold standard Office of National Statistics that shows While the virus threat is receding in London and other urban centres, our research shows many of the 44 parliamentary seats in the north and the Midlands that switched from Labour to Conservative last year are suffering an above-average mortality rate. The red wall has become a blue dilemma for a prime minister determined to make last year’s…

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What sort of future do we want?

What sort of future do we want?

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The events of the last three weeks aren’t ones many of us are likely to forget. It started with footage of a senseless murder taking place in real-time: a man pleading for his life and crying for his mother as the life is gradually squeezed out of him by a police officer whilst the pleas of by-standers are ignored. The fact the Minneapolis police initially put out a statement that glossed over this, whilst the union president stood-up for the…

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Washington DC – the capital city where in democratic terms its residents are second class citizens

Washington DC – the capital city where in democratic terms its residents are second class citizens

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Just imagine what would happen if those people who resided in the City of Westminster were not allowed to have an MP. It would be decidedly odd and very hard to justify on democratic terms and no doubt the residents there would rightly feel angry. Well that is the situation that exists for the 0.75m people whose home is in Washington DC. Clearly it is understandable that those who live in the US capitol feel aggrieved by this and why…

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