IntenseDebate

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Nick Hoile: Beware of ... · 1 reply · +1 points

"In fact, the number of people suffering from flu fell by more than 95 per cent compared to the previous year. "

All this tells me is that the usual flu deaths have occurred as normal, they've just all been rolled up with COVID. Given the normal figure in an British winter is 30,000 flu deaths, I would say knock 30,000 off the supposed total of 110,000 COVID deaths: here are people who have died *with* COVID but have in fact died *of* flu as per a normal winter.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Iain Dale: Why would a... · 6 replies · +1 points

"I’ve had letters from the NHS telling me to shield and I’ve obeyed the instructions to the tee."

This isn't something to boast about, you know. "Sod my liberties as a free-born Englishman, I slavishly do whatever the government tells me!"

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Ben Roback: Biden's ne... · 4 replies · +1 points

Bipartisanship, outreach, unity? By implementing impeachment against a President who has already left office, by having liars like Ocasio-Cortez sniffle and sob about how they were nearly killed (despite being nowhere near the scene of a pathetic squib of a riot), by demonising the half of the country that voted Trump? By implementing a string of executive orders, bypassing Congress, implementing wicked and wrong policies? Unity only on terms that involve the right prostrate in the dust begging the left for forgiveness. Stuff that sort of unity.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Amanda Milling: Covid ... · 1 reply · +1 points

Instances of fraud are minimal and localised. In return you disfranchise those who can't get out of the house, those on holiday, those called away from their home town at short notice, etc.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Amanda Milling: Covid ... · 0 replies · +1 points

Why? Why cost the Tory Party millions of postal votes because of some perverse belief that casting a vote at a polling station fulfils a civic duty but casting one by post is not?

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Amanda Milling: Covid ... · 0 replies · +1 points

The instances of postal vote fraud are minimal and localised, whereas take-up of postal votes runs into millions, and they lean disproportionately Tory. Banning postal votes because of a few rotten boroughs would cost the Tories millions of votes.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Amanda Milling: Covid ... · 0 replies · +1 points

"the general finding is that postal vote takeup is higher on the left than the right"

I don't know where you get that from, as it is quite wrong. PV take-up is far higher among Tory-leaning groups: the elderly, homeowners, those going off on foreign holidays, the wealthy. This site carries regular pieces tying postal vote fraud to the left, but that is because all electoral fraud is higher on the left than the right. I suppose those you mention get hot under the collar because they assume increased postal vote = increased fraud, but were we to react by banning postal voting you would lose millions of Tory votes by it.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Oborne condemns Johnso... · 0 replies · +1 points

I suppose like most lefties Oborne would point out, in contradiction to Boris Johnson the "liar", the saint-like truthful figure of Jeremy Corbyn. Here is a man who has never changed his principles; who has said the same things consistently for forty years. Yes, and here is an anti-semite and a man who has spent 40 years cheerleading for terrorists from Ireland to the Middle East. If that is truth in politics, give me a liar every time.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Oborne condemns Johnso... · 6 replies · +1 points

The answer is: who decides what is a lie, when people nowadays think their subjective opinions are objective facts, and when people think their opponents can't just have different views but must be liars?

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Oborne condemns Johnso... · 1 reply · +1 points

The problem with politics in the 21st Century - and it is a problem mainly on the left, though elements of the right are falling into it also - is the belief that one's own opinions are in fact objective facts. It therefore follows anyone who disagrees with you cannot simply be mistaken, or have a different view: they must be liars.

Hence the rise of so many "fact-checking" websites, or "fact-checking" pieces in newspapers, which never used to exist. Newspapers now do not write editorials disagreeing with their political opponents, they "fact-check" them, i.e. they check their opponents' sincere opinions against the newspaper's ideological preference, and find them wanting.

I for one do not listen to those who call their political opponents liars unless there is some actual factual statement at issue. And, much as I don't like Boris Johnson, I certainly won't listen to a critique of him from Peter Oborne whose attitude towards Islamism and Islamic terrorism is suspect to say the least.

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