I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Wild guess: North Korea
I stayed in one in Moscow. Terrible.
On the other hand, the royal hotel in Riyadh was quite something.
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
I suspect Theresa May would have done best at handling the pandemic but it's interesting to think how Thatcher would have dealt with as it as I suspect her natural instinct would have been to keep the economy open but with her science background she'd have followed the science so she'd have been very conflicted I think?
Completely disagree
May would have been in thrall to the lockdown lobby and we would all be tied up at the bottom of the dungeon. And she wouldn’t have had the mindset to do the vaccine thing.
Thatcher was a scientist. Which would have given her the confidence to engage with and challenge rather than just “follow” the science
Absolutely agreed on both points. May would not have been anywhere near as decisive on vaccine procurement. My guess is that she would have left it to the civil service who would have gone down the value for money route rather than the buy everything available one that Bingham went for.
I think Mrs Thatcher would have been extremely tough on the scientists and on the idea of locking down based on data models rather than hard evidence. Even now it's the same argument, the data models say X and X means we must lockdown to prevent Y deaths. None of it is based on anything more than guesswork, pretty poor guesswork at that.
On vaccines and selling the public on vaccines I think she would have been far and away the beat PM. As someone who had a strong scientific background and the ability to sell policies I believe our vaccination rates would be approaching almost 95% rather than the 85% that we're at now.
Boris and the rest of them have just taken their foot off the pedal and that may cost us dearly heading into winter if the politicians are unable to resist the lockdown fascists.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
Another one to bear in mind when thinking about NHS pressures from Covid - they now publish a breakdown between patients there for Covid, and those there for another reason who just happen to have a positive test but don't require hospitalisation for Covid, and it's currently running at just over a quarter. So of the 5.9k English covid patients in hospital on Tuesday, 4.4k were taking up beds due to Covid and the other 1.5k would have been there anyway.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Look at it this way. There's that famous bit in "The Downing Street Years" describing the events of November 1990. The bit where Maggie saw each of her Cabinet ministers in turn to discuss her prospects in round 2 of the leadership contest. And one by one, they tell her that they think she's great but she can't win etc... And gradually, she comes back down to Earth and accepts the reality.
Now ask yourself these questions; Would BoJo place his fate in the hands of his Cabinet like this? Is there anyone there who would tell him the truth in this situation? Would he listen if they did?
I’m puzzled by these figures. You’re showing deaths below 100 and falling for the last three days, but the ONS has deaths at 179, 223 and 45 for Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday.
Am I misreading the graph in some way?
You are reffering to 28 day reporting date deaths not ONS death certificate figures
So what is the difference?
Sorry to sound like Peston, but I want to understand this.
The figures you quoted were deaths on the day they're reported.
The chart you replied to is based on actual day of death. You can see both here -
Current actual deaths per day is running at c. 110 for UK of which England is 80-90. The reported figures are full of lumpiness almost entirely generated by day of the week reporting quirks. The latest figures for actual day of death are incomplete as reports still come in quite late (during the last peak in January there were deaths from the previous May turning up and getting reported).
Right thanks, that makes it clearer.
This came up at school today in a conversation on mask wearing and I realised I didn’t understand the difference.
Makes it quite annoying when you get a large number reported on Tuesday, somewhere around double the number of people actually dying per day at the moment, timed right when people want to start up the panic machine again.
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
I’m puzzled by these figures. You’re showing deaths below 100 and falling for the last three days, but the ONS has deaths at 179, 223 and 45 for Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday.
Am I misreading the graph in some way?
You are reffering to 28 day reporting date deaths not ONS death certificate figures
So what is the difference?
Sorry to sound like Peston, but I want to understand this.
The figures you quoted were deaths on the day they're reported.
The chart you replied to is based on actual day of death. You can see both here -
Current actual deaths per day is running at c. 110 for UK of which England is 80-90. The reported figures are full of lumpiness almost entirely generated by day of the week reporting quirks. The latest figures for actual day of death are incomplete as reports still come in quite late (during the last peak in January there were deaths from the previous May turning up and getting reported).
Right thanks, that makes it clearer.
This came up at school today in a conversation on mask wearing and I realised I didn’t understand the difference.
Makes it quite annoying when you get a large number reported on Tuesday, somewhere around double the number of people actually dying per day at the moment, timed right when people want to start up the panic machine again.
Well, yes, that’s roughly where the conversation began. ‘200 died yesterday! We must all lock down!’
Which was out of line with what I was seeing here.
Another one to bear in mind when thinking about NHS pressures from Covid - they now publish a breakdown between patients there for Covid, and those there for another reason who just happen to have a positive test but don't require hospitalisation for Covid, and it's currently running at just over a quarter. So of the 5.9k English covid patients in hospital on Tuesday, 4.4k were taking up beds due to Covid and the other 1.5k would have been there anyway.
Why the hell are they called Covid hospitalisations then, if they would have been there anyway? We really don’t help ourselves at times.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
He was Party Chairman from 1983 onwards and a member of the cabinet.
I’m puzzled by these figures. You’re showing deaths below 100 and falling for the last three days, but the ONS has deaths at 179, 223 and 45 for Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday.
Am I misreading the graph in some way?
You are reffering to 28 day reporting date deaths not ONS death certificate figures
So what is the difference?
Sorry to sound like Peston, but I want to understand this.
So there are two different orthogoan lissues here.
First there forms of "Covid Deaths"
1) Any Death within 28 Days of a Covid Diagnosis 2) Any death where Covid was mentioned on the Death certificate
1 is refferd to as the 28-day figure and 2 is the ONS figure. It is quick to get the 28 dayfigure as all you need is a covid diagnosis in the system and then if someone carks it with 28 days then they are trivially added to the deaths figure. The ONS figure is slow to produce as it involves manually reviewing every death certificate in the country.
The other axis is how the deaths are reported, and this appleis to Covid cases as well.
The two ways of being reported are 1) By date of event 2) By date of report
By date of even is the most accurate, true for of reporting. The easy way to think about it is with covid cases. Imagine a covid positive person goes for a test on Monday the 1st. Due to computer error no lab can process any tests for two days. Then of the 4th their test is processed and reports.
Using 1) By day of event they would appear in the Monday 1st stats (but they would inly show up there from the 4th) Using 4) By day of report they would appear in the Thursday 4th stats (and index the 2nd and 3rd would show zero Covid cases)
Producing an accurate figure for 1) is slow - which is why you often see Covid graphs with big downard slopes at the end. Producing figures for 2 is fast but not a true reflection of what has actually happened that day.
With regard to the ONS death figures they haven't even got up to the end of September yet - Sept 27th is the latest "complete" date and that still has scope to be revised higher.
Another one to bear in mind when thinking about NHS pressures from Covid - they now publish a breakdown between patients there for Covid, and those there for another reason who just happen to have a positive test but don't require hospitalisation for Covid, and it's currently running at just over a quarter. So of the 5.9k English covid patients in hospital on Tuesday, 4.4k were taking up beds due to Covid and the other 1.5k would have been there anyway.
Why the hell are they called Covid hospitalisations then, if they would have been there anyway? We really don’t help ourselves at times.
Because they have to be treated with infection control protocols even though they are there with a broken leg.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Look at it this way. There's that famous bit in "The Downing Street Years" describing the events of November 1990. The bit where Maggie saw each of her Cabinet ministers in turn to discuss her prospects in round 2 of the leadership contest. And one by one, they tell her that they think she's great but she can't win etc... And gradually, she comes back down to Earth and accepts the reality.
Now ask yourself these questions; Would BoJo place his fate in the hands of his Cabinet like this? Is there anyone there who would tell him the truth in this situation? Would he listen if they did?
For each of those questions then I would have to say:
I’m puzzled by these figures. You’re showing deaths below 100 and falling for the last three days, but the ONS has deaths at 179, 223 and 45 for Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday.
Am I misreading the graph in some way?
You are reffering to 28 day reporting date deaths not ONS death certificate figures
So what is the difference?
Sorry to sound like Peston, but I want to understand this.
So there are two different orthogoan lissues here.
First there forms of "Covid Deaths"
1) Any Death within 28 Days of a Covid Diagnosis 2) Any death where Covid was mentioned on the Death certificate
1 is refferd to as the 28-day figure and 2 is the ONS figure. It is quick to get the 28 dayfigure as all you need is a covid diagnosis in the system and then if someone carks it with 28 days then they are trivially added to the deaths figure. The ONS figure is slow to produce as it involves manually reviewing every death certificate in the country.
The other axis is how the deaths are reported, and this appleis to Covid cases as well.
The two ways of being reported are 1) By date of event 2) By date of report
By date of even is the most accurate, true for of reporting. The easy way to think about it is with covid cases. Imagine a covid positive person goes for a test on Monday the 1st. Due to computer error no lab can process any tests for two days. Then of the 4th their test is processed and reports.
Using 1) By day of event they would appear in the Monday 1st stats (but they would inly show up there from the 4th) Using 4) By day of report they would appear in the Thursday 4th stats (and index the 2nd and 3rd would show zero Covid cases)
Producing an accurate figure for 1) is slow - which is why you often see Covid graphs with big downard slopes at the end. Producing figures for 2 is fast but not a true reflection of what has actually happened that day.
With regard to the ONS death figures they haven't even got up to the end of September yet - Sept 27th is the latest "complete" date and that still has scope to be revised higher.
Thanks Alistair.
The way these are being reported is distinctly unhelpful. No wonder we’re panicking about being the worst in Europe if there’s all this complexity going unnoticed by the general public.
I think a big division here is between people who think the response to this pandemic hasn't been authoritarian enough - and people who think its been too authoritarian. I fall very much now under the latter category, so while I have a lot to criticise Boris over (and think he lifted lockdown-3 months too late), I think all other PM's apart from Thatcher would have handled the pandemic worse.
If I was to rate the PM's in order I'd say Thatcher first, then Boris. Then Cameron - he always took the NHS seriously given his own personal concerns and I'd be worried he'd go too far down the "protect the NHS" road, but I think Osborne would have been able to keep him in check. Without Osborne by his side I'd be much more worried about Cameron.
Major just middling.
Then my rogue's gallery would be Brown, then May and absolutely worst of all Blair.
Overall as a PM I'd have Blair ahead of Major, Brown and May. But Blair would have been horrendous in this. Even without a pandemic he was prepared to detain people for 90 days without charge. Even without a pandemic he wanted to introduce ID Cards. Under the cover of the pandemic he'd have introduced ID Cards and other restrictions that he tried to push through but failed and the Civil Service would have made them permanent.
The best person who should be trusted with authoritarian powers is someone who doesn't want to wield them. That's one of the things that makes Boris one of the best possible PMs for this pandemic - and it make Blair the worst possible choice. Even worse than May or Brown.
Interesting analysis, but I think it misses where Boris was weak: he was too slow to make decisions, and therefore when he did take them, they had to be more authoritarian.
If the UK had been quicker to close the borders at the beginning of the pandemic, or when it was incredibly obvious that there was a big problem in India with Delta, the number of cases seeded could have been dramatically lower.
Likewise, there was too much prevarication over vaccinating teenagers and over booster shots.
It's not that decisions were wrong - it was that they made too slowly. I think both Blair and Thatcher were more sure of themselves (and Cameron was too), and would have made faster decisions. And those faster decisions would have meant less authoritarian decisions were needed.
Oh I absolutely agree that Blair would have been more sure of himself my concern is where that surety would have led to. Look at Blair's record and it speaks for himself. He would have taken the excuse of the pandemic to implement measures under the cover of the pandemic even if they were not needed.
I expect by now if Blair was in charge we'd have a vaccine passport - and that passport would be designed to permanently transition into an ID Card.
On the subject of vaccine passports - everywhere that has them (from New York to Israel to Denmark and France) has done them the same way - a scannable bar code in a phone app. So while I understand your concern, I struggle to see how that can transition into an ID card.
The scannable QR code is an identifier already. In some ways, an ID card, just by itself.
I truly don't understand this shit about ID cards. I am weighed down with things which identify me as entitled to draw from my bank, buy stuff on credit, drive a car, occupy seat 3b on a specific plans or train. So is everybody. What people think they are objecting to is an allo allo Papers please sort of society where the Gestapo can arbitrarily insist that you identify yourself. But guess what: first if we get to that stage the having or not of a national ID card is the least of our problems. Secondly in any place where the Gestapo is likely to nail you there are already cameras which can nail you by face and gait recognition even if your phone wasn't broadcasting your identity anyway. From a civil liberties POV you're much better off with an ID card because at least you can tell where and when you've been ID ed. Even by whom, if the Gestapo wear number badges. Which is partly why no government is going to be arsed with them
It is nothing to do with having a means of identifying yourself. It is the right of the authorities to be able to demand you produce those papers at any time. A national identity card without such a right would not be an issue. But we all know that once one existed it would become a requirement in very short order.
Saying ah well they can use cameras and face recognition is no argument at all. We should be pushing back against such things not accepting them and making it even easier for them. The Government should not have the right to know where I am or who I am at all times of day and night.
Every country in the EEA has some form of national ID card. None of their citizens seem to have a problem with them.
(IIRC, EEA citizens used to be able to travel to the UK just carrying their ID card. While we needed passports...)
For those EEA countries, in how many are citizens required to carry ID cards?
Because that's the "thin end of the wedge" that people (rightly) worry about.
In the UK, we rightly believe that the State is subordinate to the Individual. And in particular, we don't think that agents of the State (police, etc.) should be allowed to demand at will that Individuals identify themselves.
Of course, there are specific instances where we require identification, specifically related to banking and finance, driving a car, or travelling on a plane. But those are - for the most part - voluntary. (Although the KYC stuff for banking is dangerously close to compulsory.)
In the US, there are no ID cards. But a driving license (even a non-driving driving license) is basically essential for everyday life. You simply can't get a bottle of wine in a store without it.
I don't think anywhere requires you to carry ID. Can't find anywhere on an internet search. I think this is all about watching too many ww2 films. I bet that in ww2 UK the police had the right to make you identify yourself to ensure you weren't afifth columnist every bit as much as the Gestapo did.
Well off the top of my head Belgium and Spain do. In Germany and Austria the police have the right to ask for ID and can detain you if you cannot provide it. This latter one I know from experience.
(joking) That's not a problem in the UK: there are no police on the street to demand your ID! (/joking)
Funny, but also rather telling. I can’t recall the last time I saw a beat policeman/officer. Only ever in cars. Are we unique in this around the world?
I can. It’s when three of them with sub machines dropped by my office last week to say hello
Another one to bear in mind when thinking about NHS pressures from Covid - they now publish a breakdown between patients there for Covid, and those there for another reason who just happen to have a positive test but don't require hospitalisation for Covid, and it's currently running at just over a quarter. So of the 5.9k English covid patients in hospital on Tuesday, 4.4k were taking up beds due to Covid and the other 1.5k would have been there anyway.
Why the hell are they called Covid hospitalisations then, if they would have been there anyway? We really don’t help ourselves at times.
These things are almost always default rather than conspiracy, but it's hard to imagine a health department civil servant choosing to state the lower figure even though it's clearly what people think they're being given.
The pernicious influence of China's brutal dictatorship is everywhere. I recently did an Audible lecture on the history of China and the way it skirted round the death toll of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution was shameful.
Another one to bear in mind when thinking about NHS pressures from Covid - they now publish a breakdown between patients there for Covid, and those there for another reason who just happen to have a positive test but don't require hospitalisation for Covid, and it's currently running at just over a quarter. So of the 5.9k English covid patients in hospital on Tuesday, 4.4k were taking up beds due to Covid and the other 1.5k would have been there anyway.
Why the hell are they called Covid hospitalisations then, if they would have been there anyway? We really don’t help ourselves at times.
Because they have to be treated with infection control protocols even though they are there with a broken leg.
The 1,500 won't be 30 year olds in with a broken leg; they'll be in their 80s and infirm - probably les likely to get out now they've got Covid on top of their chronic lung disease mind..
The pernicious influence of China's brutal dictatorship is everywhere. I recently did an Audible lecture on the history of China and the way it skirted round the death toll of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution was shameful.
Everyone defers to the coming power. China pay peanuts to the WHO but they don't lack influence.
Ok - to be honest I probably shouldn't have posted so much info on the web - but I was attemptting to warn, as a public service, my fellow PBers to be extremely wary of UK Police.
Yes - you can get arrested for breach of the peace. As I understand it, this essentially gives the police a power of arbitrary arrest, on the basis that you have either been involved, or are likely to be involved, in vaguely defined disorderly conduct. I suppose it exists so that the police can deal with troublemakers where there is no other basis of arrest; but of course the power is widely abused, as you will see in a google search on the subject. It is actually another area of life where people misunderstand how much freedom they actually have.
Handy to have Doncaster and Rotherham adjacent on that table as well as geographically.
Because Doncaster has a two week school half term holiday (this week and next) whereas Rotherham has only next week.
And Doncaster's infection numbers have fallen this week.
Similarly there are falls in Bassetlaw and Mansfield (two weeks) but not in Bolsover and Chesterfield (next week only).
How come it has a two week half term? I have never heard of that before.
The Essex primary school where Eldest Grandson teaches is having a two week half-term.
Why?
Loads of places are having two week half term this year.
I not even heard of such a thing until this year, apart from private schools which like plenty of time for the foreign trips.
I suspect it is a response to covid somehow or other.
It’s not by any means a silly idea though. This half term, at eight weeks, is only about three weeks shorter than the whole of the Easter term and much more work is crammed into it. The overload is one reason why teaching in state schools gets less productive as you get towards Christmas.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 43m FT UK: Rate rise debate ‘live’ as inflation heads to 5%, says BoE economist #TomorrowsPapersToday
===
Get the feck on with it!!
What’s amusing is that pre-COVID we were at 0.75%. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t already be back at that level and talking of getting it to 2% next year.
A BBC guy said the BoE are talking about getting to 1%. The BBC guy said that that would be levels we haven’t seen for 13 years, which is rubbish as it’s barely above where we’ve been for 13 years and nowhere near the 4.5% we were at pre-GFC.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 2m TELEGRAPH: Booster jab wait could be cut to five months
That was Max's suggestion wasn't it?
Its a good one. PB for the win again.
The only reason not to do it would be if there is evidence that six months is so much better than the effect at five months given that five months drags a ton more people into the booster before the winter peak shitstorm
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Has anyone stayed in a Paradore? They do seem to have some in spectacular sites (e.g. Alhambra, Ronda).
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 2m TELEGRAPH: Booster jab wait could be cut to five months
That was Max's suggestion wasn't it?
Its a good one. PB for the win again.
The only reason not to do it would be if there is evidence that six months is so much better than the effect at five months given that five months drags a ton more people into the booster before the winter peak shitstorm
If it were up to me I'd made a third dose available to everyone after 12 weeks, by December.
That would top-up everyone's immunity right when we need it the most. Even if its suboptimal, or unnecessary, better safe than sorry and people can always decline the invitation if they're not interested.
I can't remember when I got my second dose done, I think it may have been July, and I'm only 39, but I'd go for a third if it were offered.
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
It would have been far better if it had hit in the pre-internet era. Everything would have been the same, except with less panic and hysteria.
The best time probably would have been in about 1998, a year or so into Blair's premiership. He would have dealt with it scientifically, but without locking down the entire country.
Handy to have Doncaster and Rotherham adjacent on that table as well as geographically.
Because Doncaster has a two week school half term holiday (this week and next) whereas Rotherham has only next week.
And Doncaster's infection numbers have fallen this week.
Similarly there are falls in Bassetlaw and Mansfield (two weeks) but not in Bolsover and Chesterfield (next week only).
How come it has a two week half term? I have never heard of that before.
The Essex primary school where Eldest Grandson teaches is having a two week half-term.
Why?
Loads of places are having two week half term this year.
I not even heard of such a thing until this year, apart from private schools which like plenty of time for the foreign trips.
I suspect it is a response to covid somehow or other.
It’s not by any means a silly idea though. This half term, at eight weeks, is only about three weeks shorter than the whole of the Easter term and much more work is crammed into it. The overload is one reason why teaching in state schools gets less productive as you get towards Christmas.
And, dare I say it, given how disrupted kids' education has been for the last eighteen months, a two-week half term wouldn't be a big deal, especially if it helps to get infection rates down?
This is good, but I’m not sure it will make that much difference to the pressures on the NHS. 7 day average covid admissions are 868 per day. Latest average all cause admissions are from April- August 2021 & are 17,000 a day. So covid likely represents ~5% of daily admissions…
Did I miss the Red Arrows fly past to celebrate the amazing trade deal with New Zealand which adds the extraordinary sum of 0.01 to UK GDP ! Bizarrely this deal could also have the effect of reducing UK GDP by 0.01 according to the governments own figures . Meanwhile the latest no 10 lapdog at International Trade the clueless Trevelyan told farmers not to worry because their lambing season is different completely ignoring the fact that most New Zealand lamb imports are frozen .
I would have chosen Theresa May. She was conscientious and with a scientific background. Like most others I'd put Johnson last.
If she hadn't been so arrogant and If Corbyn had a chance of winning I'd have voted Tory for the first time in my life in 2017.
I thought she was the closest thing to Angela Merkel we've had and Merkel has to be the best European leader ever
Could you explain how Merkel making Germany reliant on Russian gas was a good idea?
Further she has presided over an East policy that has, essentially, convinced large chunks of Eastern Europe that given a choice between protecting them or conciliating Russia, Germany will always conciliate Russia. Which means (as they see it) that the EU will conciliate Russia.
This in turn has given a massive boost to least liberal and anti-"EU"ian elements in those countries.
I can't imagine Kohl running such a short sighted policy, for example.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
John Gummer isn't wet on every subject. For instance, he left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the former decided to allow women to be vicars, etc.
This is good, but I’m not sure it will make that much difference to the pressures on the NHS. 7 day average covid admissions are 868 per day. Latest average all cause admissions are from April- August 2021 & are 17,000 a day. So covid likely represents ~5% of daily admissions…
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Has anyone stayed in a Paradore? They do seem to have some in spectacular sites (e.g. Alhambra, Ronda).
Yes indeed, a strange mix of usually stunning buildings, generally good food, and typically indifferent service. The overall quality of the hotel generally doesn’t rise to the quality of the architecture but they are interesting places to stay, and all different, such that generalising (such as I have just done) is difficult.
Handy to have Doncaster and Rotherham adjacent on that table as well as geographically.
Because Doncaster has a two week school half term holiday (this week and next) whereas Rotherham has only next week.
And Doncaster's infection numbers have fallen this week.
Similarly there are falls in Bassetlaw and Mansfield (two weeks) but not in Bolsover and Chesterfield (next week only).
How come it has a two week half term? I have never heard of that before.
The Essex primary school where Eldest Grandson teaches is having a two week half-term.
Why?
Loads of places are having two week half term this year.
I not even heard of such a thing until this year, apart from private schools which like plenty of time for the foreign trips.
I suspect it is a response to covid somehow or other.
It’s not by any means a silly idea though. This half term, at eight weeks, is only about three weeks shorter than the whole of the Easter term and much more work is crammed into it. The overload is one reason why teaching in state schools gets less productive as you get towards Christmas.
And, dare I say it, given how disrupted kids' education has been for the last eighteen months, a two-week half term wouldn't be a big deal, especially if it helps to get infection rates down?
On topic, Christ no. She would have unleashed her full on authoritarian instincts. She would have been ordering the Police to kick down doors and so on.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
John Gummer isn't wet on every subject. For instance, he left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the former decided to allow women to be vicars, etc.
Is that a wet/dry issue though? And just how many Conservative politicians are Catholic converts? It seems to be about half of them.
I’m puzzled by these figures. You’re showing deaths below 100 and falling for the last three days, but the ONS has deaths at 179, 223 and 45 for Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday.
Am I misreading the graph in some way?
The data for the last few days is incomplete - always. Reporting lag.
EDIT - I thought that was well known by now! EDIT 2 - It's day of death data hence steadier.
The next big move would be to remove the age restrictions on booster doses and offer them to everyone 5 months after their second dose. We could conceivably get ~35m people triple jabbed before Xmas. Using my friend's suggestion of 18 weeks would make 41m people eligible by December 20th, getting 35m of those people vaccinated with three doses would be pretty easy IMO and would push us beyond the herd immunity threshold as a nation.
The next big move would be to remove the age restrictions on booster doses and offer them to everyone 5 months after their second dose. We could conceivably get ~35m people triple jabbed before Xmas. Using my friend's suggestion of 18 weeks would make 41m people eligible by December 20th, getting 35m of those people vaccinated with three doses would be pretty easy IMO and would push us beyond the herd immunity threshold as a nation.
The flaw is that young may push out the oldsters who really may need this to stop hospitalisation.
Evening all. I have been offline this week, and I shall be offline some more. Do not be alarmed. Feel free to party
I. for one, have sorely missed your Brexit-related tweets, Scott.
Yes its always best to read the unrealistic and the plain barmy comments from un-likeminded posters on the site. Its largely a question of stance.Lots of people think my defence aagainst some of the downright nasty comments about Boris as barmy...
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Has anyone stayed in a Paradore? They do seem to have some in spectacular sites (e.g. Alhambra, Ronda).
Granada is fantastic. Land of the “free” tapas. A walkable city, and of course the Alhambra. A fine place to spend a weekend or a month.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
John Gummer isn't wet on every subject. For instance, he left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the former decided to allow women to be vicars, etc.
Is that wet though? And just how many Conservative politicians are Catholic converts? It seems to be about half of them.
Blar and Widdecombe were Catholic converts, Boris, IDS and Rees-Mogg, the other top tier Tory Catholics, were not (or in Boris' case not really). Boris was baptised a Catholic, became C of E and is back being a Catholic again after marrying Carrie at Westminster Cathedral but as far as the Vatican is concerned if you are baptised a Catholic you are always a Catholic.
Raab is now the most high profile Anglican Tory as Foreign Secretary, although even he is half Jewish through his father. Sunak and Patel are both Hindu of course
The next big move would be to remove the age restrictions on booster doses and offer them to everyone 5 months after their second dose. We could conceivably get ~35m people triple jabbed before Xmas. Using my friend's suggestion of 18 weeks would make 41m people eligible by December 20th, getting 35m of those people vaccinated with three doses would be pretty easy IMO and would push us beyond the herd immunity threshold as a nation.
The flaw is that young may push out the oldsters who really may need this to stop hospitalisation.
Bingo, in terms of load reduction it's worth way more effort nagging pensioners than letting keen 30 somethings jump in - 2 doses already puts their risk of hospitalisation in near lightning strike territory if they're in decent shape.
The next big move would be to remove the age restrictions on booster doses and offer them to everyone 5 months after their second dose. We could conceivably get ~35m people triple jabbed before Xmas. Using my friend's suggestion of 18 weeks would make 41m people eligible by December 20th, getting 35m of those people vaccinated with three doses would be pretty easy IMO and would push us beyond the herd immunity threshold as a nation.
The flaw is that young may push out the oldsters who really may need this to stop hospitalisation.
Not really we've got something like 25m Moderna and Pfizer vaccine doses in the country and there's still another 30m Pfizer doses to be delivered this year.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
John Gummer isn't wet on every subject. For instance, he left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the former decided to allow women to be vicars, etc.
Is that a wet/dry issue though? And just how many Conservative politicians are Catholic converts? It seems to be about half of them.
Gummer getting his kid to eat a burger was a low. He now hides under his Lords title.
The next big move would be to remove the age restrictions on booster doses and offer them to everyone 5 months after their second dose. We could conceivably get ~35m people triple jabbed before Xmas. Using my friend's suggestion of 18 weeks would make 41m people eligible by December 20th, getting 35m of those people vaccinated with three doses would be pretty easy IMO and would push us beyond the herd immunity threshold as a nation.
The flaw is that young may push out the oldsters who really may need this to stop hospitalisation.
And the fact that we can't seemingly jab to keep pace with the number becoming eligible each week as it is.
I would have chosen Theresa May. She was conscientious and with a scientific background. Like most others I'd put Johnson last.
If she hadn't been so arrogant and If Corbyn had a chance of winning I'd have voted Tory for the first time in my life in 2017.
I thought she was the closest thing to Angela Merkel we've had and Merkel has to be the best European leader ever
Merkel remains the most popular politician in Germany, despite Scholz's sky-high ratings. May is probably her closest British counterpart in temperament.
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Has anyone stayed in a Paradore? They do seem to have some in spectacular sites (e.g. Alhambra, Ronda).
Granada is fantastic. Land of the “free” tapas. A walkable city, and of course the Alhambra. A fine place to spend a weekend or a month.
My favourite city in Europe. By some distance. Did a good deal on my rented telly when I was a student too.
The next big move would be to remove the age restrictions on booster doses and offer them to everyone 5 months after their second dose. We could conceivably get ~35m people triple jabbed before Xmas. Using my friend's suggestion of 18 weeks would make 41m people eligible by December 20th, getting 35m of those people vaccinated with three doses would be pretty easy IMO and would push us beyond the herd immunity threshold as a nation.
The flaw is that young may push out the oldsters who really may need this to stop hospitalisation.
And the fact that we can't seemingly jab to keep pace with the number becoming eligible each week as it is.
The issue isn't jab capacity, it's demand. Increasing the number of eligible people will solve the demand issue. We should once again be aiming to complete 4m doses per week at least for the next 7-9 weeks and success of the programme will get more people to book appointments. People queueing up for their third doses all over TV like they did in the summer will get people to book.
Once again vaccination is a simple numbers game, the more people that have it the better, regardless of age. Especially given the third dose is likely to proffer total immunity rather than high grade immunity from severe symptoms. Getting younger people fully immunised will bring it all to a final end.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
John Gummer isn't wet on every subject. For instance, he left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the former decided to allow women to be vicars, etc.
Is that wet though? And just how many Conservative politicians are Catholic converts? It seems to be about half of them.
Blar and Widdecombe were Catholic converts, Boris, IDS and Rees-Mogg, the other top tier Tory Catholics, were not (or in Boris' case not really). Boris was baptised a Catholic, became C of E and is back being a Catholic again after marrying Carrie at Westminster Cathedral but as far as the Vatican is concerned if you are baptised a Catholic you are always a Catholic.
Raab is now the most high profile Anglican Tory as Foreign Secretary, although even he is half Jewish through his father. Sunak and Patel are both Hindu of course
Jewish through your father is controversial to say the least...
A nice Covid story - my Dads best mate, who is 76 years old, has leukaemia, diagnosed in 2018. A couple of months ago he got Covid pretty bad and had to taken to hospital and put on oxygen. Today they went for a walk over the park together
The next big move would be to remove the age restrictions on booster doses and offer them to everyone 5 months after their second dose. We could conceivably get ~35m people triple jabbed before Xmas. Using my friend's suggestion of 18 weeks would make 41m people eligible by December 20th, getting 35m of those people vaccinated with three doses would be pretty easy IMO and would push us beyond the herd immunity threshold as a nation.
The flaw is that young may push out the oldsters who really may need this to stop hospitalisation.
Not really we've got something like 25m Moderna and Pfizer vaccine doses in the country and there's still another 30m Pfizer doses to be delivered this year.
I didn't mean the supply. More the pressure to get access - as in the website is flooded, the phone lines are swamped etc.
Speaking as a 55+ year old - I have a lot less patience for bloody call centres and so on than I once did.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
John Gummer isn't wet on every subject. For instance, he left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the former decided to allow women to be vicars, etc.
Is that a wet/dry issue though? And just how many Conservative politicians are Catholic converts? It seems to be about half of them.
Gummer getting his kid to eat a burger was a low. He now hides under his Lords title.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
John Gummer isn't wet on every subject. For instance, he left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the former decided to allow women to be vicars, etc.
Is that wet though? And just how many Conservative politicians are Catholic converts? It seems to be about half of them.
Blar and Widdecombe were Catholic converts, Boris, IDS and Rees-Mogg, the other top tier Tory Catholics, were not (or in Boris' case not really). Boris was baptised a Catholic, became C of E and is back being a Catholic again but as far as the Vatican is concerned if you are baptised a Catholic you are always a Catholic.
However interestingly given Patel and Sunak are both Hindu and Raab is Jewish there are no Anglicans in a great office of state for I think the first time ever (May and Hunt were both Church of England for example)
Your detailed knowledge of the religions of various politicians is in no way disturbing.
I am religious so obviously it interests me. Starmer is an atheist (though his wife is Jewish and he says he respects religion and has met with the Archbishop of Canterbury). If he becomes PM I believe he will be our first elected openly atheist PM, though Attlee and Eden were agnostic.
Kinnock, Ed Miliband and Corbyn were all atheist leaders of the Opposition but all lost the general elections they fought and failed to become PM
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Has anyone stayed in a Paradore? They do seem to have some in spectacular sites (e.g. Alhambra, Ronda).
Granada is fantastic. Land of the “free” tapas. A walkable city, and of course the Alhambra. A fine place to spend a weekend or a month.
My favourite city in Europe. By some distance. Did a good deal on my rented telly when I was a student too.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher not a man around to match her.
She'd have understood the science, questioned the scientists, regularly requestioned them, challenged herself with her cabinet and advisors and anchored all of her decisions in both fact and her strong political principles of individual freedom. Quite literally the perfect blend.
May would have gone into a dark room for days and days as she agonised over the evidence without speaking to anyone. Once she finally emerged, and announced her decision, she'd have expected everyone to jump to it and she'd have been very slow to change her mind - if at all. And she'd have been instinctively authoritarian.
May and Thatcher chalk and cheese.
Fatch.
One thing about Thatch that is over looked in these comparisons, certainly with Johnson, is that she would not have a Cabinet of non entities who were barely able to do their jobs on a good day with a following wind. She had good people around the table.
Would Hancock have got near a Thatch Cabinet? I think not and yet he ran Britain most of last year.
Remarkable.
Thatcher is underestimated in all sorts of ways.
She was totally comfortable with appointing people to her cabinet who were ideologically not on her wavelength.
Competence is what mattered to her.
Rubbish. Mrs Thatcher started with a balanced Cabinet but often publicly railed against her Cabinet, and purged the "wets" in her second term. As for competence, she appointed no women, and lost power because her campaign team was either a drunk nonce or stuck in Scotland rescuing a bank.
She appointed dripping wets like Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, John Gummer, and Ken Clarke to her cabinets.
Hurd was a loyalist and the other three came at the end of Mrs Thatcher's premiership when she was more-or-less forced into it.
John Gummer joined the cabinet in 1985, Ken Clarke shortly afterwards.
Gummer was briefly Paymaster General. Was he in the Cabinet though? Wikipedia suggests not, though P-G was one of those fringe positions that could have been in or out. It lists his first Cabinet role as MAFF in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
John Gummer isn't wet on every subject. For instance, he left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the former decided to allow women to be vicars, etc.
Is that wet though? And just how many Conservative politicians are Catholic converts? It seems to be about half of them.
Blar and Widdecombe were Catholic converts, Boris, IDS and Rees-Mogg, the other top tier Tory Catholics, were not (or in Boris' case not really). Boris was baptised a Catholic, became C of E and is back being a Catholic again but as far as the Vatican is concerned if you are baptised a Catholic you are always a Catholic.
However interestingly given Patel and Sunak are both Hindu and Raab is Jewish there are no Anglicans in a great office of state for I think the first time ever (May and Hunt were both Church of England for example)
Your detailed knowledge of the religions of various politicians is in no way disturbing.
Starmer is an atheist (though his wife is Jewish and he says he respects religion). If he becomes PM I believe he will be our first openly atheist PM
'If" is doing a hell of a lot of work there.
He only wins now if there is economic Armageddon I think. Could happen, but even though things are going to be bad they wont be that bad.
The next big move would be to remove the age restrictions on booster doses and offer them to everyone 5 months after their second dose. We could conceivably get ~35m people triple jabbed before Xmas. Using my friend's suggestion of 18 weeks would make 41m people eligible by December 20th, getting 35m of those people vaccinated with three doses would be pretty easy IMO and would push us beyond the herd immunity threshold as a nation.
The flaw is that young may push out the oldsters who really may need this to stop hospitalisation.
Not really we've got something like 25m Moderna and Pfizer vaccine doses in the country and there's still another 30m Pfizer doses to be delivered this year.
I didn't mean the supply. More the pressure to get access - as in the website is flooded, the phone lines are swamped etc.
Speaking as a 55+ year old - I have a lot less patience for bloody call centres and so on than I once did.
The online queue was really fast when I did it for mine. The system in place now is better than when the website would stop working because of demand. I think what we really need is to bring capacity utilisation up to 90-100% like it was in the spring when we had first and second doses going at the same time. Right now it's probably not even close to half. It's a numbers game and getting as many people their third jab asap is really more important than who gets it at what point in time. Also don't forget that younger people won't be eligible to book until later in November so that gives older people a lot of time to get on with it!
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Has anyone stayed in a Paradore? They do seem to have some in spectacular sites (e.g. Alhambra, Ronda).
Granada is fantastic. Land of the “free” tapas. A walkable city, and of course the Alhambra. A fine place to spend a weekend or a month.
My favourite city in Europe. By some distance. Did a good deal on my rented telly when I was a student too.
Yeah, why exactly was ITV Manc called Granada?
according to wiki because it was founded as a theatre company named after the spanish place.
Comments
On the other hand, the royal hotel in Riyadh was quite something.
I think Mrs Thatcher would have been extremely tough on the scientists and on the idea of locking down based on data models rather than hard evidence. Even now it's the same argument, the data models say X and X means we must lockdown to prevent Y deaths. None of it is based on anything more than guesswork, pretty poor guesswork at that.
On vaccines and selling the public on vaccines I think she would have been far and away the beat PM. As someone who had a strong scientific background and the ability to sell policies I believe our vaccination rates would be approaching almost 95% rather than the 85% that we're at now.
Boris and the rest of them have just taken their foot off the pedal and that may cost us dearly heading into winter if the politicians are unable to resist the lockdown fascists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gummer#In_government
Now ask yourself these questions;
Would BoJo place his fate in the hands of his Cabinet like this?
Is there anyone there who would tell him the truth in this situation?
Would he listen if they did?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossiya_Hotel
‘200 died yesterday! We must all lock down!’
Which was out of line with what I was seeing here.
First there forms of "Covid Deaths"
1) Any Death within 28 Days of a Covid Diagnosis
2) Any death where Covid was mentioned on the Death certificate
1 is refferd to as the 28-day figure and 2 is the ONS figure. It is quick to get the 28 dayfigure as all you need is a covid diagnosis in the system and then if someone carks it with 28 days then they are trivially added to the deaths figure. The ONS figure is slow to produce as it involves manually reviewing every death certificate in the country.
The other axis is how the deaths are reported, and this appleis to Covid cases as well.
The two ways of being reported are
1) By date of event
2) By date of report
By date of even is the most accurate, true for of reporting. The easy way to think about it is with covid cases. Imagine a covid positive person goes for a test on Monday the 1st. Due to computer error no lab can process any tests for two days. Then of the 4th their test is processed and reports.
Using 1) By day of event they would appear in the Monday 1st stats (but they would inly show up there from the 4th)
Using 4) By day of report they would appear in the Thursday 4th stats (and index the 2nd and 3rd would show zero Covid cases)
Producing an accurate figure for 1) is slow - which is why you often see Covid graphs with big downard slopes at the end. Producing figures for 2 is fast but not a true reflection of what has actually happened that day.
With regard to the ONS death figures they haven't even got up to the end of September yet - Sept 27th is the latest "complete" date and that still has scope to be revised higher.
In nine years time? Yes quite possibly.
The way these are being reported is distinctly unhelpful. No wonder we’re panicking about being the worst in Europe if there’s all this complexity going unnoticed by the general public.
But it’s a toss up between Palmerston and Talleyrand as foreign secretary
For me, I would offer William T. Cosgrave, Thomas Masaryk and Henri IV of France,
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58998423.amp
The pernicious influence of China's brutal dictatorship is everywhere. I recently did an Audible lecture on the history of China and the way it skirted round the death toll of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution was shameful.
Or
Shysters pilfering all (the) cash
I not even heard of such a thing until this year, apart from private schools which like plenty of time for the foreign trips.
I suspect it is a response to covid somehow or other.
@hendopolis
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FT UK: Rate rise debate ‘live’ as inflation heads to 5%, says BoE economist #TomorrowsPapersToday
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Get the feck on with it!!
Neil Henderson
@hendopolis
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TELEGRAPH: Booster jab wait could be cut to five months
Its a good one. PB for the win again.
A BBC guy said the BoE are talking about getting to 1%. The BBC guy said that that would be levels we haven’t seen for 13 years, which is rubbish as it’s barely above where we’ve been for 13 years and nowhere near the 4.5% we were at pre-GFC.
That would top-up everyone's immunity right when we need it the most. Even if its suboptimal, or unnecessary, better safe than sorry and people can always decline the invitation if they're not interested.
I can't remember when I got my second dose done, I think it may have been July, and I'm only 39, but I'd go for a third if it were offered.
The best time probably would have been in about 1998, a year or so into Blair's premiership. He would have dealt with it scientifically, but without locking down the entire country.
- Daily covid case numbers going up for much longer
- Daily covid case numbers ever reaching 100k
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1451288702454583300?s=20
This is good, but I’m not sure it will make that much difference to the pressures on the NHS. 7 day average covid admissions are 868 per day. Latest average all cause admissions are from April- August 2021 & are 17,000 a day. So covid likely represents ~5% of daily admissions…
https://twitter.com/skepticalzebra/status/1451291277929103367?s=20
This in turn has given a massive boost to least liberal and anti-"EU"ian elements in those countries.
I can't imagine Kohl running such a short sighted policy, for example.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1356195611561889797
https://www.bmu.de/en/pressrelease/ten-years-after-fukushima-germanys-commitment-to-phasing-out-nuclear-power-continues
Not two weeks, but a full ten days.
EDIT - I thought that was well known by now!
EDIT 2 - It's day of death data hence steadier.
Raab is now the most high profile Anglican Tory as Foreign Secretary, although even he is half Jewish through his father. Sunak and Patel are both Hindu of course
Did a good deal on my rented telly when I was a student too.
Once again vaccination is a simple numbers game, the more people that have it the better, regardless of age. Especially given the third dose is likely to proffer total immunity rather than high grade immunity from severe symptoms. Getting younger people fully immunised will bring it all to a final end.
I would go with Chris Mason.
If he wants it.
Emma Vardy as the outsider run.
Speaking as a 55+ year old - I have a lot less patience for bloody call centres and so on than I once did.
https://twitter.com/BBCJonSopel/status/1450454132930883588?s=20
So not totally off.
Kinnock, Ed Miliband and Corbyn were all atheist leaders of the Opposition but all lost the general elections they fought and failed to become PM
https://twitter.com/AnnieGrayerCNN/status/1451263342727806984
He only wins now if there is economic Armageddon I think. Could happen, but even though things are going to be bad they wont be that bad.
Vicki Young is excellent.