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The pandemic showed just how few people understand data/statistics.

My brother fell into the rabbit hole, and started posting rubbish about how 60% of the hospitalised with covid had already had the vaccine and it was therefore proof that the vaccine was ineffective (and indeed, made covid worse).

In his head, it was 50:50, so if the stat was > 50%, it must be bad.
I explained that with 95% of the UK population now vaccinated, far from proving that the vaccine didn't work, it proved it did.

I set out his stats in real numbers (100 people in hospital out of 1000 population meant 60 out of 950 against 40 out of 50). He called me names, blocked me and continued his rant until Facebook banned him (they wouldn't now I suppose).

The pandemic showed just how few people understand data/statistics.

My brother fell into the rabbit hole, and started posting rubbish about how 60% of the hospitalised with covid had already had the vaccine and it was therefore proof that the vaccine was ineffective (and indeed, made covid worse).

In his head, it was 50:50, so if the stat was > 50%, it must be bad.
I explained that with 95% of the UK population now vaccinated, far from proving that the vaccine didn't work, it proved it did.

I set out his stats in real numbers (100 people in hospital out of 1000 population meant 60 out of 950 against 40 out of 50). He called me names, blocked me and continued his rant until Facebook banned him (they wouldn't now I suppose).

I had a friend who did similar: he posted a link on Facebook to WHO death rates by country, and pointed out that there was no increase in death rates for 2020 and that proved Covid didn't really happen. "The evidence is always out there if you look", he stated.

I pointed out that he'd shared the 2019 WHO report, which contained forecasts for 2020, and that we shouldn't be surprised it didn't include Covid (indeed, we should probably be relieved that it didn't include it!). I then passed him the correct report, which showed meaningful upticks in death rates, and asked him to share it and/or correct his earlier post.

He blocked me.

This was a guy I'd know for 15 years, and -while not a super close friend- I personally liked very much.

It's scary how "the rabbit hole" fucks you up.

No great Tory enthusiasm for Runcorn.

https://conservativehome.com/2025/01/31/james-ford-the-conservatives-smartest-move-in-any-runcorn-by-election-leave-it-to-reform/

The Conservatives are never going to beat Reform when half the party seems happy for Reform to win. They have to fight them!

No most Conservatives want to get rid of Starmer's useless government above all.

They don't disagree with Reform anywhere near as much as they do with Labour on most issues, other than Tories are a bit more soft Brexit and Reform a bit more hard Brexit

I suspect you are channelling almost exclusively your own thoughts there. I know traditional Tory voters who utterly despise Farage and Reform, and far more than they do Starmer Labour. The Trump/ Musk connection has supercharged this view. One Nation Tories know extremist traitors when they see them.

*waves*

This is not a good idea. At all.

EU officials back plan to restart Russian gas flows as part of Ukraine peace deal - FT

Germany and Hungary lead push to resume Russian gas flows despite opposition from eastern EU states
https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1884919573536760311

They were being quite rude about that one on Ukraine the Latest, presumably yesterday.

Along the lines of "the mind boggles".

If this happens then Putin will have plucked an unlikely victory from the jaws of geopolitical defeat.

A war of aggression should not be rewarded with territorial concessions, but it’s understandable that if people really want it to stop, they may have to accept the status quo for a while. But the status quo also includes Russia being locked out of Western energy markets.

Utterly brain dead to suggest doing something that will simply fund military rebuilding and hasten the next Russian invasion in Eastern Europe.

A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.

On DEI programs. And idiots.

A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....

My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.

My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.

Doesn't really sound like a DEI program, in fact sound the antithesis as I think you are implying. There are many elements of DEI that make for better companies, but it requires people who know what they are doing. Diversity is proven to create more creativity and improve broader understanding of a company's customer base as well as creating a larger talent pool. Where it goes wrong is if there is a "quota" system and (as in parts of the US) "affirmative action" is applied.

It sounds like you want the D without the EI, but that’s not how the laws that underpin DEI work.

Nope, try looking it up with an open mind. Equity is about trying to understand that not everyone starts from the same place, so it is perfectly acceptable to make an adjustment for this to ensure one ends up with a diverse workforce.

Where it goes wrong is when (as in so many things in life) the pendulum swings too far and people are discriminated against, causing someone who is brilliant to not be hired because they haven't ticked enough boxes.

The problem with the simplistic mentality of the populist is that they think it is better to axe things that are not working well and retreat to their own comfort zones of the past rather than look for amendment or improvement.

Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.


Karl Williams
@MalvernianKarl
·
17h
Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.

They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.

What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?

I'd love to see the source for this, because I very much doubt the numbers are as presented.

He posts the link in the twitter thread. It is on a dataset on a govt website. I cannot link to it at work. Perhaps someone else can ?

My guess is the dependents are mostly linked to workers who came earlier, presumably in greater numbers. It's not credible that these 1000 workers all had 10 dependents, as is claimed here. Or perhaps the dependents are related to a bigger group, eg all visa holders from Zimbabwe. AIUI it's generally quite hard to bringin dependents other than spouses and children, and it seems unlikely that these workers had 9 children on average. But I stand ready to be corrected.

Right, I have looked at the data. It's pretty obvious the dependents are arriving with a delay of a few months or quarters, as you might expect. The number of workers arriving has fallen from 6,494 in Q1 2023 to 451 in Q3 2024. The number of dependents only peaked in Q1 2024 at 8,475 and since then has fallen to 1,772. Over the 2023 to 2024 period as a whole there were 20,238 workers and 37,341 dependents, a ratio of less than 2:1 and a much more plausible looking number.
Don't believe everything you read on X.

So each mimunim wage worker brings an average of 1.7 dependents with them?

The old folk can wipe their own bums I guess.

More than 80% of the "bum wipers" are of UK origin.

Precisely. That's why the UK has made the collective decision to pay the costs associated with the 20% who aren't rather than paying all of them more to attract more UK workers to the sector. You can say it's a rather cynical strategy, even short sighted perhaps, but we all know the accute fiscal pressures associated with an ageing society.
The one thing we shouldn't do is act like these people are some kind of hostile invasion force. We have asked them to come here, to do jobs we won't pay much for, and we are lucky they said yes.