KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
I've been out all day today, what did I miss?
Not? sure about Manchester, but the government is funding a cycle path in Bradford.
What is your Party offering "A serious plan for cyclists"?
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
Maybe not intentionally but the fact is Congress can elect the president under the Electoral Count Act 1887 if both chambers object to states' EC results and the constitution does not prohibit that.
Indeed as I said in Italy, Germany, India and South Africa their legislature and parliament already elects their President not the voters directly. In the US too it is the EC which technically elects the President, not the popular vote directly as in France and the elected Congress confirms the validity of the EC results and who becomes President therefore.
If I was genuinely a fascist I would be advocating a military coup to make Trump President as still does occur in some Middle Eastern or African nations from time to time
Well, changing the way the President is elected after the election has happened is not a military coup, but it's also not exactly cricket. It would call the validity of American democracy into serious question, and with respect I think that would be worse than any possible election result.
It wouldn't, it would just mean the President effectively served at the pleasure of the elected Congress and would shift power in the US away from the Presidency to Congress. Just as a GOP Congress could make Trump President in 2024 even if he lost the EC, a Democratic Congress elected in the 2026 midterms could prevent the GOP candidate in 2028 becoming President even if they won the EC.
I am not advocating it but but nor would it be a coup either
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
I predict Wednesday's budget will be barnstorming and talk of lockdown will recede, as we then move onto COP26 which is going to be another big event but is likely to cause enormous controversy across the globe
Maybe not intentionally but the fact is Congress can elect the president under the Electoral Count Act 1887 if both chambers object to states' EC results and the constitution does not prohibit that.
Indeed as I said in Italy, Germany, India and South Africa their legislature and parliament already elects their President not the voters directly. In the US too it is the EC which technically elects the President, not the popular vote directly as in France and the elected Congress confirms the validity of the EC results and who becomes President therefore.
If I was genuinely a fascist I would be advocating a military coup to make Trump President as still does occur in some Middle Eastern or African nations from time to time
Well, changing the way the President is elected after the election has happened is not a military coup, but it's also not exactly cricket. It would call the validity of American democracy into serious question, and with respect I think that would be worse than any possible election result.
It wouldn't, it would just mean the President effectively served at the pleasure of the elected Congress and would shift power in the US away from the Presidency to Congress. Just as a GOP Congress could make Trump President in 2024 even if he lost the EC, a Democratic Congress elected in the 2026 midterms could prevent the GOP candidate in 2028 becoming President even if they won the EC.
I am not advocating it but but nor would it be a coup either
It's perfectly defensible (and not unlike the British system) if it's made clear in advance, which would I think require a constitutional amendment to be clear. It's not acceptable if Congress decides they don't like the result and rummage around in the toolbox for a way to change it.
I see Austria's tiering plan includes a lockdown of the unvaccinated. An interesting crossing of the Rubicon that others will be looking at no doubt.
Absolutely more acceptable than locking down everyone.
Let the unvaccinated pay for their own choices. Screw them.
I understand and sympathise with the sentiment, although giving the refusers a good shoeing comes with its own problems: vaxports for everyone, making businesses check them, and - if they're going to be really effective - Italian-style sanctions preventing the refusers from going to work. The refusers are also disproportionately non-white, so howling about racism would likely be both immediate and deafening were it to be tried.
The Government will doubtless be hoping that the more panicky scientists are wrong this time - the modelling of the effects of the great unlock in the Summer was wildly inaccurate, after all - but if ministers feel forced to reimpose restrictions in Winter then they may well decide that punishing refusers in any meaningful way is more trouble than it's worth. We shall see.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
Second World War tweets from 1943 @RealTimeWWII · 15m Female Soviet tank driver Mariya Oktyabrskaya goes into battle against the Germans near Smolensk; after her husband was killed by Nazis two years ago, Mariya sold all her possessions to donate a tank to the the Red Army, on condition she be allowed to drive it.
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
Andy Burnham has tonight
Beat me to it BigG
CHB can't give a single example of anything SKS is offering.
And I have always been able to praise politicians when they do the right thing.
So far I have therefore never praised the useless nonentity in charge of Labour
I see Austria's tiering plan includes a lockdown of the unvaccinated. An interesting crossing of the Rubicon that others will be looking at no doubt.
Absolutely more acceptable than locking down everyone.
Let the unvaccinated pay for their own choices. Screw them.
I understand and sympathise with the sentiment, although giving the refusers a good shoeing comes with its own problems: vaxports for everyone, making businesses check them, and - if they're going to be really effective - Italian-style sanctions preventing the refusers from going to work. The refusers are also disproportionately non-white, so howling about racism would likely be both immediate and deafening were it to be tried.
The Government will doubtless be hoping that the more panicky scientists are wrong this time - the modelling of the effects of the great unlock in the Summer was wildly inaccurate, after all - but if ministers feel forced to reimpose restrictions in Winter then they may well decide that punishing refusers in any meaningful way is more trouble than it's worth. We shall see.
Interestingly the latest SAGE modelling suggests a far better prognosis than previously. That is the context for me saying there won’t be a lockdown. We are not revisiting furlough, and closed businesses. At worst I can see masks being mandated again and wfh strongly pushed if possible.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
Feels like collective punishment for the unvaccinated arseholes.
To me, it seems... accurate. The Saudi government and associated corporations and institutions are not nice people. They are clearly guilty of everything on that list.
I have no intentions of respecting any further lockdowns or restrictions. They can go jump.
Life is for living. Let the antivaxxers own their choices.
The scientists said at the start the public wouldn't remain locked down for long, they got that wrong but I've long ran out of patience with this bollocks. I'd rather 'let the bodies pile high' than have any more legal restrictions, this bullshit has to end.
Ok, Spartacus. But thankfully you're nowhere near the decision.
I absolutely am near the decision.
You see, the Prime Minister can issue whatever mandates he damned well likes.
If the public don't respect them, then what can you do about that?
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
Factional crap.
Try offering an alternative to the Tories.
So hold on you think Labour is simultaneously not doing enough to differentiate itself from the Tories but you also think it's right that Burnham is praising the Tories?
Let's be honest, you came into Labour during Corbyn and you've left because Labour is no longer a home for revolutionaries.
I was there long before Corbyn, I will be there long after. I support Labour because I believe in centre-left social democracy. If you don't then Labour is not the party for you.
Keir Starmer has a very good chance of being PM, current polling agrees with me and you just can't accept that. Boris Johnson will disappoint you as he has the people of London.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
The solution to dealing with a small bunch of refuseniks, is not to make everyone else jump through hoops but to target the refuseniks themselves.
To me, it seems... accurate. The Saudi government and associated corporations and institutions are not nice people. They are clearly guilty of everything on that list.
A Labour Government should immediately cut all ties with them. Disgusting country
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
Feels like collective punishment for the unvaccinated arseholes.
Why is being asked to prove you have been vaccinated a punishment?
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
The solution to dealing with a small bunch of refuseniks, is not to make everyone else jump through hoops but to target the refuseniks themselves.
And how exactly do you do that? Without vaccine passports?
To me, it seems... accurate. The Saudi government and associated corporations and institutions are not nice people. They are clearly guilty of everything on that list.
Meanwhile amongst the home fans... The fans could be seen mixing with Saudi nationals and waving the country’s green and white flag while bragging about their long-neglected club's newfound wealth. “We're Saudis. We can afford anything,” fans chanted
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
So, it seems that Andy Burnham led a bid, as Mayor of Manchester, to get £1Bn to fund improved public transport in Manchester. And got £1B in funding from the Treasury for that plan.
But it appeared his heavy lobbying at the Conservative party conference in Manchester earlier this month, where he held meetings with the new levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, and the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, had paid off.
To me, it seems... accurate. The Saudi government and associated corporations and institutions are not nice people. They are clearly guilty of everything on that list.
A Labour Government should immediately cut all ties with them. Disgusting country
Then we should cut ties with a long list of countries.
From a Local Government Committee briefing - 4 things to scrutinise in spending announcements:
Firstly, always check how much of an announcement is new money. HMT worked out long ago to turn their own return on investment logic to public communications – why only get one good news story out of some money when you can re-announce it again and again? The problem is, of course, if it’s not new it won’t actually make anything better on the ground – which might be important to you if you live anywhere outside SW1.
The next trick HMT like to play is with profiles of money – i.e. how much of it is in the first year of the spending review period, how much in the second, etc. Big chunks of money early on look great, but if they don’t last, the money may not be baked into future spending settlements. And that’s really important, because £10m every year stretching for decades to come is a lot better than £50m just once. And redrawing the geographical balance of economic power in the UK is not something that will be fixed in a year, clearly.
Another favourite of the Treasury is ‘tucking under’ – which despite sounding like a dodgy type of plastic surgery is actually a way of hiding cuts to public expenditure. Broad, un-ringfenced funding pots such as the local government settlement can be spent on a myriad of things – so what HMT like to do is say they’re rolling other grants into these bigger funding pots, but then not actually top the bigger funding pots up by the same amount. This is a key one to watch for in the levelling up agenda given the pressure local government funding is already under.
Finally, note carefully what HMT say about real terms rises – i.e. will funding increase over time to match inflation? Because with rises in the cost of living, the real value of government investment may erode dramatically year-on-year. And if HMT says it is matching inflation, what measure are they using? Because I’ve never heard someone complain that their cost of living is going up by reference to the GDP deflator, which is the (frankly, fictional) inflation index HMT love to use.
Second World War tweets from 1943 @RealTimeWWII · 15m Female Soviet tank driver Mariya Oktyabrskaya goes into battle against the Germans near Smolensk; after her husband was killed by Nazis two years ago, Mariya sold all her possessions to donate a tank to the the Red Army, on condition she be allowed to drive it.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
None of the options are good ones.
In Los Angeles, if you want your kid to go to a public school (or indeed, my daughter's private one), they need to be vaccinated.
In New York or Paris or Jerusalem, if you want to a bar or restaurant, you need to have a VaxPort of some kind.
These are all infringements on liberty. (As are mask requirements in stores and on public transport)
But if there's one thing we've learned, it's that if you don't act decisively and early, then you end up having to impose more draconian measures later.
Now, the UK wave can be brought - one would have thought - fairly decisively to an end. How? Well, let's make sure that people who were double jabbed more than four or five months ago, get a booster (especially as there seems to be a 12-15x increase in antibodies from AZ + Pfizer from AZ alone). And let's make sure that kids are encouraged to be vaccinated too. I wouldn't go the US route of requiring it to attend public school, but let's encourage it.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
Feels like collective punishment for the unvaccinated arseholes.
Why is being asked to prove you have been vaccinated a punishment?
I have no intentions of respecting any further lockdowns or restrictions. They can go jump.
Life is for living. Let the antivaxxers own their choices.
The scientists said at the start the public wouldn't remain locked down for long, they got that wrong but I've long ran out of patience with this bollocks. I'd rather 'let the bodies pile high' than have any more legal restrictions, this bullshit has to end.
To me, it seems... accurate. The Saudi government and associated corporations and institutions are not nice people. They are clearly guilty of everything on that list.
Meanwhile amongst the home fans... The fans could be seen mixing with Saudi nationals and waving the country’s green and white flag while bragging about their long-neglected club's newfound wealth. “We're Saudis. We can afford anything,” fans chanted
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
None of the options are good ones.
In Los Angeles, if you want your kid to go to a public school (or indeed, my daughter's private one), they need to be vaccinated.
In New York or Paris or Jerusalem, if you want to a bar or restaurant, you need to have a VaxPort of some kind.
These are all infringements on liberty. (As are mask requirements in stores and on public transport)
But if there's one thing we've learned, it's that if you don't act decisively and early, then you end up having to impose more draconian measures later.
Now, the UK wave can be brought - one would have thought - fairly decisively to an end. How? Well, let's make sure that people who were double jabbed more than four or five months ago, get a booster (especially as there seems to be a 12-15x increase in antibodies from AZ + Pfizer from AZ alone). And let's make sure that kids are encouraged to be vaccinated too. I wouldn't go the US route of requiring it to attend public school, but let's encourage it.
That's a bit like saying: "Hunger can be brought - one would have thought - fairly decisively to an end. How? Well, let's make sure that people have enough to eat."
Your solution is fine if delivered but it's the delivery that's proving seemingly unachievable.
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
Factional crap.
Try offering an alternative to the Tories.
So hold on you think Labour is simultaneously not doing enough to differentiate itself from the Tories but you also think it's right that Burnham is praising the Tories?
Let's be honest, you came into Labour during Corbyn and you've left because Labour is no longer a home for revolutionaries.
I was there long before Corbyn, I will be there long after. I support Labour because I believe in centre-left social democracy. If you don't then Labour is not the party for you.
Keir Starmer has a very good chance of being PM, current polling agrees with me and you just can't accept that. Boris Johnson will disappoint you as he has the people of London.
One of us will be wrong about SKS time will tell who.
BTW I have been a member of the Labour Party from 1975 to 2002 and from 2010 to 2021 and I voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020
I am a Democratic Socialist like the back of your card says the Labour Party is. SKS and Evans are neither Democratic or Socialists hence I will for only the 2nd time in my life vote for a Party other than Labour.
Maybe not intentionally but the fact is Congress can elect the president under the Electoral Count Act 1887 if both chambers object to states' EC results and the constitution does not prohibit that.
Indeed as I said in Italy, Germany, India and South Africa their legislature and parliament already elects their President not the voters directly. In the US too it is the EC which technically elects the President, not the popular vote directly as in France and the elected Congress confirms the validity of the EC results and who becomes President therefore.
If I was genuinely a fascist I would be advocating a military coup to make Trump President as still does occur in some Middle Eastern or African nations from time to time
Well, changing the way the President is elected after the election has happened is not a military coup, but it's also not exactly cricket. It would call the validity of American democracy into serious question, and with respect I think that would be worse than any possible election result.
It wouldn't, it would just mean the President effectively served at the pleasure of the elected Congress and would shift power in the US away from the Presidency to Congress. Just as a GOP Congress could make Trump President in 2024 even if he lost the EC, a Democratic Congress elected in the 2026 midterms could prevent the GOP candidate in 2028 becoming President even if they won the EC.
I am not advocating it but but nor would it be a coup either
It's perfectly defensible (and not unlike the British system) if it's made clear in advance, which would I think require a constitutional amendment to be clear. It's not acceptable if Congress decides they don't like the result and rummage around in the toolbox for a way to change it.
It’s not acceptable or defensible for Congress to set aside a national vote for President - which is what HYUFD is defending. Not if you put any importance in democracy. There is going to be no constitutional amendment on the electoral system in the foreseeable future. The extreme difficulty of putting through any amendment is why archaic procedures designed for the pre-telegraph era are still in place.
To me, it seems... accurate. The Saudi government and associated corporations and institutions are not nice people. They are clearly guilty of everything on that list.
A Labour Government should immediately cut all ties with them. Disgusting country
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
Feels like collective punishment for the unvaccinated arseholes.
Why is being asked to prove you have been vaccinated a punishment?
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
Factional crap.
Try offering an alternative to the Tories.
So hold on you think Labour is simultaneously not doing enough to differentiate itself from the Tories but you also think it's right that Burnham is praising the Tories?
Let's be honest, you came into Labour during Corbyn and you've left because Labour is no longer a home for revolutionaries.
I was there long before Corbyn, I will be there long after. I support Labour because I believe in centre-left social democracy. If you don't then Labour is not the party for you.
Keir Starmer has a very good chance of being PM, current polling agrees with me and you just can't accept that. Boris Johnson will disappoint you as he has the people of London.
One of us will be wrong about SKS time will tell who.
BTW I have been a member of the Labour Party from 1975 to 2002 and from 2010 to 2021 and I voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020
I am a Democratic Socialist like the back of your card says the Labour Party is. SKS and Evans are neither Democratic or Socialists hence I will for only the 2nd time in my life vote for a Party other than Labour.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
There won't be another lockdown.
Probably. It would shred what's left of the reputation of the Government, and the country can't afford to bear the cost of it. I also think that the panic over more Covid waves is being seriously overdone (and yes, I know the scientists doing the panicking know a vast amount more about the subject than I do, but that hasn't done anything to prevent numerous august institutions from issuing doomsday scenario models in the recent past which turned out to have the predictive accuracy of a horoscope.) The cases are now largely concentrated in almost invulnerable teenagers, something like a fifth to a quarter of all existing Covid hospitalisations were actually admitted for something else IIRC, and the greatly reduced Covid death toll is mostly concentrated amongst anti-vaxxers and a modest number of very old people with multiple pre-existing health problems, i.e. those who are getting what's coming to them or were already living on borrowed time. There's no real basis for re-imposing NPIs on the basis of Covid alone.
The fly in the ointment is flu. If the flu season this year is terrible - and nobody has the faintest idea how bad it is going to get, so it could plausibly be terrible - then the desperate screaming from the hospitals may yet be enough for the Government to reach for its plan B, or worse.
The public - or enough of it, at any rate, to exert unbearable pressure, particularly amongst the Tories' elderly core vote - has got used to this notion of shutting everything down if the hospitals can't cope and mitigating the damage with borrowed money. If it's done again it will wreck the recovery and cause catastrophic damage - much of the hospitality sector will turn up its toes if there's a second lost Christmas, especially if further massive support isn't advanced by the Treasury - and ministers will therefore be desperate to avoid lockdown. However, the idea of yet another one isn't wholly fanciful given the correct circumstances.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
There won't be a lockdown. The treasury won't pay for furlough or any business support packages again. That's the bottom line. The most we'll get is mandatory masks and possibly mandatory domestic vaccine passports for large indoor venues.
Also keep in mind that week on week case growth has dropped from about 20-25% to 0-5% and it's still dropping I think I called R under 1 three or four days too early.
In a couple of weeks we could actually be beyond the herd immunity threshold, especially when you consider that another 5m people will have had third doses by then too.
Ultimately the politicians need to grow a pair and tell the NHS whiners to shut up and deal with it, tell the scientists to shut the fuck up and just tough it out. The people who are dying are very old and of ill health or they are unvaccinated by choice.
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
Factional crap.
Try offering an alternative to the Tories.
So hold on you think Labour is simultaneously not doing enough to differentiate itself from the Tories but you also think it's right that Burnham is praising the Tories?
Let's be honest, you came into Labour during Corbyn and you've left because Labour is no longer a home for revolutionaries.
I was there long before Corbyn, I will be there long after. I support Labour because I believe in centre-left social democracy. If you don't then Labour is not the party for you.
Keir Starmer has a very good chance of being PM, current polling agrees with me and you just can't accept that. Boris Johnson will disappoint you as he has the people of London.
One of us will be wrong about SKS time will tell who.
BTW I have been a member of the Labour Party from 1975 to 2002 and from 2010 to 2021 and I voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020
I am a Democratic Socialist like the back of your card says the Labour Party is. SKS and Evans are neither Democratic or Socialists hence I will for only the 2nd time in my life vote for a Party other than Labour.
Labour has only ever won by offering centre-left social democratic policies. You support losers and policies that will only lose elections.
I was wrong to support Corbyn and I was wrong to have voted for him to be leader, something which I will regret for the rest of my life. But lesson learned, you have learned nothing.
I see Austria's tiering plan includes a lockdown of the unvaccinated. An interesting crossing of the Rubicon that others will be looking at no doubt.
Absolutely more acceptable than locking down everyone.
Let the unvaccinated pay for their own choices. Screw them.
I have a friend in Austria who has explained their approach in some detail. Essentially they require that to enter a crowded space you should either be double-vaccinated or have a recent test showing that you are virus-free. Subject to that, everyone can go everywhere. So it is a sort of vaxport system, but with an alternative of frequent testing.
Anyway...we need: - an immediate return to mandatory masks in all enclosed spaces Inc shops pubs and transport - an acceleration of the boosters to cover every one within 5 months of the second dose - vaccine passports for any indoor venue with big crowds over 500 or nightclubs
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
It will be an absolute disgrace if Boris Johnson and his Government Ministers reintroduce any Covid restrictions whatsoever, however minor. And let's be clear, if they do so, it will be the fault of: a) iSage b) Starmer. Is that about right?
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
There won't be another lockdown.
Probably. It would shred what's left of the reputation of the Government, and the country can't afford to bear the cost of it. I also think that the panic over more Covid waves is being seriously overdone (and yes, I know the scientists doing the panicking know a vast amount more about the subject than I do, but that hasn't done anything to prevent numerous august institutions from issuing doomsday scenario models in the recent past which turned out to have the predictive accuracy of a horoscope.) The cases are now largely concentrated in almost invulnerable teenagers, something like a fifth to a quarter of all existing Covid hospitalisations were actually admitted for something else IIRC, and the greatly reduced Covid death toll is mostly concentrated amongst anti-vaxxers and a modest number of very old people with multiple pre-existing health problems, i.e. those who are getting what's coming to them or were already living on borrowed time. There's no real basis for re-imposing NPIs on the basis of Covid alone.
The fly in the ointment is flu. If the flu season this year is terrible - and nobody has the faintest idea how bad it is going to get, so it could plausibly be terrible - then the desperate screaming from the hospitals may yet be enough for the Government to reach for its plan B, or worse.
The public - or enough of it, at any rate, to exert unbearable pressure, particularly amongst the Tories' elderly core vote - has got used to this notion of shutting everything down if the hospitals can't cope and mitigating the damage with borrowed money. If it's done again it will wreck the recovery and cause catastrophic damage - much of the hospitality sector will turn up its toes if there's a second lost Christmas, especially if further massive support isn't advanced by the Treasury - and ministers will therefore be desperate to avoid lockdown. However, the idea of yet another one isn't wholly fanciful given the correct circumstances.
No need for a lockdown with vaccine passports; major error on the part of HMG not to implement them so far.
I don't think there will be a lockdown but I do think vaxccine passports are (belatedly) coming.
Anyway...we need: - an immediate return to mandatory masks in all enclosed spaces Inc shops pubs and transport - an acceleration of the boosters to cover every one within 5 months of the second dose - vaccine passports for any indoor venue with big crowds over 500 or nightclubs
I don't think masks should be mandatory in "sociable" spaces such as a pub. They're not somewhere someone has to go, such as a supermarket.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
Act and do what? The overwhelming majority of cases are school children.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
It did happen, you just haven't realised it yet. The Italian study showed pretty conclusively it happened exactly as we thought it would. Deaths are now concentrated among the very old with severe health conditions and the unvaccinated by choice. The former group, while sad that they may die a few months earlier than they would otherwise have, are not going to warrant locking down a nation. The latter group made their choice and we can't impose a lockdown to protect people from their own stupidity.
This is how we live with COVID. It is endemic now. There is no getting rid of it and a lockdown is just displacement activity. You still haven't answered what a lockdown would even achieve. You're just having a knee jerk reaction to what you perceive as high case numbers.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
That’s a little unfair. The world would have been well through this, and the rosier predictions would have come true, but then we all got Delta. Which was a horrible game changer
Delta means you need 85-90% immune (through vax or prior infection) to escape more lockdowns, masks, wfh, etc
A very high threshold and only achievable if you really enforce vaccination, probably via vaxports, as most countries are now doing (I see Canada has just joined the list)
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
But it did happen, and we are free.
We're also making good progress on boosters, and with every day that passes, more young people are getting antibodies the natural way.
Whether it’s vaccination liberation or covid fatigue, the balance of public opinion is moving against new restrictions. Our @Kantar_UKI@MiC_Global polling featured in @POLITICOEurope London playbook today finds majorities across all age groups concerned about another lockdown."
It will be an absolute disgrace if Boris Johnson and his Government Ministers reintroduce any Covid restrictions whatsoever, however minor. And let's be clear, if they do so, it will be the fault of: a) iSage b) Starmer. Is that about right?
It will be Labour's fault for opposing too much and not opposing enough, as it always is.
But the reality is that on the current trajectory Starmer despite being apparently total shite, is on his way to being PM just by not being Boris Johnson. The Joe Biden approach.
It’s not acceptable or defensible for Congress to set aside a national vote for President - which is what HYUFD is defending. Not if you put any importance in democracy. There is going to be no constitutional amendment on the electoral system in the foreseeable future. The extreme difficulty of putting through any amendment is why archaic procedures designed for the pre-telegraph era are still in place.
Yes, that's what I was trying to say. I know that the change wouldn't have any chance of getting through, but was offering HYUFD a possible retreat from the really untenable position that he seemed to be adopting.
I see Austria's tiering plan includes a lockdown of the unvaccinated. An interesting crossing of the Rubicon that others will be looking at no doubt.
Absolutely more acceptable than locking down everyone.
Let the unvaccinated pay for their own choices. Screw them.
I have a friend in Austria who has explained their approach in some detail. Essentially they require that to enter a crowded space you should either be double-vaccinated or have a recent test showing that you are virus-free. Subject to that, everyone can go everywhere. So it is a sort of vaxport system, but with an alternative of frequent testing.
Testing is a cop-out, and the system is too easily abused.
One can very well imagine that if the Government provided a get-out clause for vaxports it would probably consist of mailing out tests to the refusers, which are done entirely on trust and can readily be falsified. You only get around that problem by making them turn up to testing centres and have the tests supervised, and that's obviously impractical. If the numbers of refusers were tiny enough to make that idea viable then vaccine coverage would be in excess of 99% and action to deal with the refuser problem wouldn't need to be contemplated to begin with.
Resorting to vaccine passports is something to be done only if the problem of hospitalised refusers becomes serious enough to imperil everybody else's freedom, and in that case you may as well do the job properly. If you won't have the jab without being specifically medically exempt then you rot at home. No pubs, no restaurants, no shopping, no work, no get out clauses.
12 to 15 21.08% 16 to 17 63.89% 18 to 24 75.83% 25 to 29 77.66% 30 to 34 84.32% 35 to 39 86.85% 40 to 44 91.64% 45 to 49 90.79% 50 to 54 94.70% 55 to 59 96.54% 60 to 64 97.91% 65 to 69 95.92% 70 to 74 96.19% 75 to 79 98.06% 80 to 84 93.52% 85 to 89 91.38% 90 upwards 83.05% Program 90.95%
UK 18+ vaccinations
SCOTLAND 96.92% NORTHERN IRELAND 90.76% WALES 95.35% ENGLAND 93.49%
One of us will be wrong about SKS time will tell who.
BTW I have been a member of the Labour Party from 1975 to 2002 and from 2010 to 2021 and I voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020
I am a Democratic Socialist like the back of your card says the Labour Party is. SKS and Evans are neither Democratic or Socialists hence I will for only the 2nd time in my life vote for a Party other than Labour.
Isn't it a bit soon to be deciding how you'll vote in 2-3 years' time, big john? The three of us cross over, in that I did vote for Corbyn, partly from personal affection for him and partly as I want a meaningful Labour Party rather than a poolitely neutered one, but I'm willing to give Starmer a chance to pursue his strategy, which is to show now that he's responsible and bring out interesting policies nearer the actual election.Why not suspend judgment for now?
It will be an absolute disgrace if Boris Johnson and his Government Ministers reintroduce any Covid restrictions whatsoever, however minor. And let's be clear, if they do so, it will be the fault of: a) iSage b) Starmer. Is that about right?
It will be Labour's fault for opposing too much and not opposing enough, as it always is.
But the reality is that on the current trajectory Starmer despite being apparently total shite, is on his way to being PM just by not being Boris Johnson. The Joe Biden approach.
I don't think is a fair comparison. Biden has been a senator for like 30 or 40 years. Then veep. Candidate several times. Biden didn't win just by being not trump. He was respected. A decent bloke who had been around for eons and was seen as safe and a healer. The bloke on the Wilmington train who bothered to speak to everyone.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
But it did happen, and we are free.
We're also making good progress on boosters, and with every day that passes, more young people are getting antibodies the natural way.
Exactly right. People want to lockdown to protect freedom. It's weird. Let's not throw away our progress against COVID by throwing it all away.
Normally smart people are panicking for nothing. Everyone can get a vaccine. 90% of adults have done so, 1 in 9 adults have now had third doses and we're definitely ramping that up. I saw a lot of advertising for it out in London last night that wasn't there last week.
Final point around half of all cases are in under 18s which I'd why the hospitalisation rate to case rate has been steadily dropping. I think we've got a severe case of fear of large numbers wrt cases. That's where this all stems from.
12 to 15 21.08% 16 to 17 63.89% 18 to 24 75.83% 25 to 29 77.66% 30 to 34 84.32% 35 to 39 86.85% 40 to 44 91.64% 45 to 49 90.79% 50 to 54 94.70% 55 to 59 96.54% 60 to 64 97.91% 65 to 69 95.92% 70 to 74 96.19% 75 to 79 98.06% 80 to 84 93.52% 85 to 89 91.38% 90 upwards 83.05% Program 90.95%
UK 18+ vaccinations
SCOTLAND 96.92% NORTHERN IRELAND 90.76% WALES 95.35% ENGLAND 93.49%
EDIT: Both using ONS Mid-2021 population data
85 to 89 91.38% 90 upwards 83.05%
I expect the 90+ group has done its level best on vaccination but it's difficult to come forward for a jab when you're dead.
Waning immunity must also be a concern, we must get boosters into arms as well and as quickly as we did the initial vaccines. So what has gone wrong
The studies don't support the first point on severe disease. Waning immunity makes people more susceptible to infection and mild symptoms but the protection against severe symptoms and death are still very strong and basically undiminished.
12 to 15 21.08% 16 to 17 63.89% 18 to 24 75.83% 25 to 29 77.66% 30 to 34 84.32% 35 to 39 86.85% 40 to 44 91.64% 45 to 49 90.79% 50 to 54 94.70% 55 to 59 96.54% 60 to 64 97.91% 65 to 69 95.92% 70 to 74 96.19% 75 to 79 98.06% 80 to 84 93.52% 85 to 89 91.38% 90 upwards 83.05% Program 90.95%
UK 18+ vaccinations
SCOTLAND 96.92% NORTHERN IRELAND 90.76% WALES 95.35% ENGLAND 93.49%
EDIT: Both using ONS Mid-2021 population data
85 to 89 91.38% 90 upwards 83.05%
I expect the 90+ group has done its level best on vaccination but it's difficult to come forward for a jab when you're dead.
There are also a large number in that group, so I understand, who haven't been vaccinated on medical ground. See Captain Sir Tom Moore etc.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
But it did happen, and we are free.
We're also making good progress on boosters, and with every day that passes, more young people are getting antibodies the natural way.
Exactly right. People want to lockdown to protect freedom. It's weird. Let's not throw away our progress against COVID by throwing it all away.
Normally smart people are panicking for nothing. Everyone can get a vaccine. 90% of adults have done so, 1 in 9 adults have now had third doses and we're definitely ramping that up. I saw a lot of advertising for it out in London last night that wasn't there last week.
Final point around half of all cases are in under 18s which I'd why the hospitalisation rate to case rate has been steadily dropping. I think we've got a severe case of fear of large numbers wrt cases. That's where this all stems from.
I think it is understandable fear and even paranoia. Because of recent history. The lockdowns got increasingly worse even as they kept saying ‘this will never happen again’
I know a lot of people - eg me - who were properly fucked up by lockdown 3. Psychologically. There are others like me on here
We’re scared. Because we have been here before and the optimists were wrong
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
But it did happen, and we are free.
We're also making good progress on boosters, and with every day that passes, more young people are getting antibodies the natural way.
We may be making good progress on boosters now, but it's been a bit of a shambles hasn't it?
The authorities have had plenty of time to construct a plan to make sure that everybody gets a booster spot on six months after dose two. But they failed; I think I read that so far 4 million out of 7 million eligible had had their boosters. If they'd got this right, we may not be seeing the number of hospitalisations / deaths that we have recently. It's been pretty slack, though I accept that it looks like they're picking up the pace now.
Just come back from watching No Time to Die. Didn’t think the plot was as woke as some of the critics were saying. I thought though the villain was sh1t as was the ending.
Anyway, on topic, no great surprise re Trump as favourite when you look at what is going on with Biden both personally and politically. To be fair, I don’t think inflation is actually his fault but this is politics.
I think it’s going to be a few grim weeks for the Democrats. It feels like increasingly they will lose the VA Governorship (check out what is happening with the Loudoun School System Board and the alleged rape of a student by.a transgender person, which is rapidly becoming the story of the last few weeks). The polling from NJ also suggests there is a chance of a shock there. And when the ‘#1/2 downloaded tune on Apple Music is “Let’s go Brandon” (have. A look), you know the mood music is moving against you
Waning immunity must also be a concern, we must get boosters into arms as well and as quickly as we did the initial vaccines. So what has gone wrong
The studies don't support the first point on severe disease. Waning immunity makes people more susceptible to infection and mild symptoms but the protection against severe symptoms and death are still very strong and basically undiminished.
That's not quite true: the charts in the FT show the efficacy of AZ against hospitalization fading faster than we'd like
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
There won't be another lockdown.
Probably. It would shred what's left of the reputation of the Government, and the country can't afford to bear the cost of it. I also think that the panic over more Covid waves is being seriously overdone (and yes, I know the scientists doing the panicking know a vast amount more about the subject than I do, but that hasn't done anything to prevent numerous august institutions from issuing doomsday scenario models in the recent past which turned out to have the predictive accuracy of a horoscope.) The cases are now largely concentrated in almost invulnerable teenagers, something like a fifth to a quarter of all existing Covid hospitalisations were actually admitted for something else IIRC, and the greatly reduced Covid death toll is mostly concentrated amongst anti-vaxxers and a modest number of very old people with multiple pre-existing health problems, i.e. those who are getting what's coming to them or were already living on borrowed time. There's no real basis for re-imposing NPIs on the basis of Covid alone.
The fly in the ointment is flu. If the flu season this year is terrible - and nobody has the faintest idea how bad it is going to get, so it could plausibly be terrible - then the desperate screaming from the hospitals may yet be enough for the Government to reach for its plan B, or worse.
The public - or enough of it, at any rate, to exert unbearable pressure, particularly amongst the Tories' elderly core vote - has got used to this notion of shutting everything down if the hospitals can't cope and mitigating the damage with borrowed money. If it's done again it will wreck the recovery and cause catastrophic damage - much of the hospitality sector will turn up its toes if there's a second lost Christmas, especially if further massive support isn't advanced by the Treasury - and ministers will therefore be desperate to avoid lockdown. However, the idea of yet another one isn't wholly fanciful given the correct circumstances.
No need for a lockdown with vaccine passports; major error on the part of HMG not to implement them so far.
I don't think there will be a lockdown but I do think vaxccine passports are (belatedly) coming.
Whether or not we're forced down the road of vaxports very much depends on how bad things get, but if it does come down to the re-imposition of masks and fresh WFH advice then one would expect vaxports to arrive along with them. After all, if restrictions have to come back primarily because refusers are clogging up hospital beds, then moving against them is arguably logical and would likely be very popular as well.
Then it's just a matter of whether the Government has the willpower to be really Draconian in their use. Certification will be almost useless if all they do is stop unjabbed youngsters from going into nightclubs. They are going to have to make the lives of the refusers really difficult if they're to have any effect in forcing them to drop their opposition, which is, after all, the whole point of vaxports in the first place.
KotN says today is a day to celebrate and not a day for negativity as an important step in leveling up is proposed. The Government has listened.
SKS negative bollocks about the Government not having a serious plan.
Useless nonentity should look in the mirror.
Looks like Burnham has fucked off to the Tories with me!!
He is head and shoulders above SKS get him a seat quick and Labour still has a chance.
As I said Andy was very effusive about Rishi and many in labour may have been quite upset how far he went in complementing the investment in Greater Manchester
Would be churlish not to.£6 bn on transport in the North is not to be sniffed at Starmers reaction makes him look pathetic.
Muppets like CHB who think SKS will offer working people anything worthwhile are in for a massive shock when vast swathes of the retained red wall says no thanks to the useless nonentity.
Roll on GE 2024 Working class hero Boris vs the useless nonentity.
If people like you are leaving Labour than thank God because it can get back to being a moderate. centre left party once again. Nobody sane goes from supporting Corbyn to lavishing praise on BoJo.
Factional crap.
Try offering an alternative to the Tories.
So hold on you think Labour is simultaneously not doing enough to differentiate itself from the Tories but you also think it's right that Burnham is praising the Tories?
Let's be honest, you came into Labour during Corbyn and you've left because Labour is no longer a home for revolutionaries.
I was there long before Corbyn, I will be there long after. I support Labour because I believe in centre-left social democracy. If you don't then Labour is not the party for you.
Keir Starmer has a very good chance of being PM, current polling agrees with me and you just can't accept that. Boris Johnson will disappoint you as he has the people of London.
One of us will be wrong about SKS time will tell who.
BTW I have been a member of the Labour Party from 1975 to 2002 and from 2010 to 2021 and I voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020
I am a Democratic Socialist like the back of your card says the Labour Party is. SKS and Evans are neither Democratic or Socialists hence I will for only the 2nd time in my life vote for a Party other than Labour.
Labour has only ever won by offering centre-left social democratic policies. You support losers and policies that will only lose elections.
I was wrong to support Corbyn and I was wrong to have voted for him to be leader, something which I will regret for the rest of my life. But lesson learned, you have learned nothing.
I have learned that Labour under the current leader offers me and working people nothing.
Why has SKS done worse than Corbyn in every single electoral test he has faced so far?
Do you think there is even the remotest possibility that other people may have reached the same conclusion as me and switched their vote.
You think SKS will be an electoral success I disagree.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
Vaccines were the way out. Deaths did go through the floor. It did happen.
Most us did get vaccinated. Deaths disappeared even more and we can live with Covid forever. Did happen.
What exactly in that has not happened? We are living with Covid. Some people are just whiny bitches. Diseases, illnesses and death exist in the real world, this is what "learning to live with it" means. Stop whinging and get on with it.
A previous government already gave Fujitsu billions to digitise the NHS. IIRC the project ended up in court...
Such a typical negative comment
What's the betting it was the NHS and the civil servants who messed up the contract rather than the company?
Fujitsu and BT should share the blame - no one comes out of that scheme well.
It should be easier now though as technology has moved on and lessons should have been learnt
If the requirements hadn't been a moving target it might have gone better...
There were a few too many cooks on both the implementation and the NHS side.
One of the problems was that it was an attempt at a vast, waterfall project. Which could only work if the requirements were utterly frozen.
In the real world things change. This is why other project management methodologies embrace change, rather than treating it as evil.
Think small steps, lots of them. A eco system of small pieces, evolving forwards from basic functionality....
The original contractuality was certainly of a waterfall era. I think the ultimate tally was that NPfIT delivered around 25% of the functionality for around 50% of the cost - I think around 6-7 bn of the planned 12 bn was ultimately spent over the 10 years or so of its core life (though the final delivery, the hospital patient admin system for Hull iirc, actually was delivered as late as around 2018-9, over 5 years after Hunt declared it over). So, the cost was around 6-700m per year over the period.
And some things went better than others:
- The central Spine databases delivered a base functionality from very early, but didn't get as much richness as was planned. Still, it exists in successor contracts to this day and underpins a hell of a lot from the 'what the hell data are we looking at here and can we trust it?' that became mid-Staffs and many others (and under another politician might have remained suppressed for far longer, Burnham ultimately a good number of the right things) to e-prescribing and much more. - GP and ambulance systems never got off the ground and were mostly dumped early. - The specced out requirements for separate, very expensive, networking seemed over the top and clunky even for a health systems requirement, and a lot more use could have been made of off the shelf network provider interconnection for many of the needs.
- Hospital systems got bogged down in a lot of customisation requirements, often of dubious necessity, plus data ingestion variability. The dual approach that eventually came about was fascinating (a) adapt existing commercial US system predicated on charging the asses off of people to the NHS (South) vs (b) Develop a new NHS friendly PAS from scratch (North)
It was hare and tortoise stuff. (a) rolled out faster and went fairly well in a decent number of hospitals but was badly, badly fraught in others. The underpinning product was clunky, with dated menu based systems, and I understand a carer trying to maintain good connection with a patient whilst navigate the menus was hard work (one should note in the post 2010 political world the software vendor was able to supply hospital systems independently and had a similar record of triumph and disaster) (b) ran in pilot on one maternity ward for bloody years. When a maternity scandal broke in that trust, it probably wasn't a surprise, that must've been the most analysed NHS data in the history by a nation by a light year. But eventually progress was made and a whole wodge of the systems were ordered by hospitals in the dying days of the program, to be delivered years later in some cases.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
Vaccines were the way out. Deaths did go through the floor. It did happen.
Most us did get vaccinated. Deaths disappeared even more and we can live with Covid forever. Did happen.
What exactly in that has not happened? We are living with Covid. Some people are just whiny bitches. Diseases, illnesses and death exist in the real world, this is what "learning to live with it" means. Stop whinging and get on with it.
Chill, Philip
CHB has admitted, on here, that lockdowns have taken a toll on his mental health. That’s a brave admission and I empathise with him. I share some of his anxiety
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
But it did happen, and we are free.
We're also making good progress on boosters, and with every day that passes, more young people are getting antibodies the natural way.
We may be making good progress on boosters now, but it's been a bit of a shambles hasn't it?
The authorities have had plenty of time to construct a plan to make sure that everybody gets a booster spot on six months after dose two. But they failed; I think I read that so far 4 million out of 7 million eligible had had their boosters. If they'd got this right, we may not be seeing the number of hospitalisations / deaths that we have recently. It's been pretty slack, though I accept that it looks like they're picking up the pace now.
The booster programme is running about 4-6 weeks too late because the JCVI dragged its feet for months waiting in study data while ignoring real world evidence from Israel. We should have started it at the beginning of September or even in the middle of August. We're supposedly sitting on a 25m stockpile of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. It's such a massive waste that we've got arbitrary restrictions on eligibility because the JCVI has got a case if exceptionalism.
Totally agree on the government's complacency with getting the word out though. We should be doing 4-5m doses per week to get all eligible people covered by the end of November and then throwing open the doors for a booster to all under 50s as well.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
Vaccines were the way out. Deaths did go through the floor. It did happen.
Most us did get vaccinated. Deaths disappeared even more and we can live with Covid forever. Did happen.
What exactly in that has not happened? We are living with Covid. Some people are just whiny bitches. Diseases, illnesses and death exist in the real world, this is what "learning to live with it" means. Stop whinging and get on with it.
Chill, Philip
CHB has admitted, on here, that lockdowns have taken a toll on his mental health. That’s a brave admission and I empathise with him. I share some of his anxiety
We’re all nervy, one way or another
You're right, I'm being short-tempered by his repeated insistence that we reimpose restrictions. Its affected mine and others too.
I apologise for being short-tempered. But we can not go back into lockdown.
Waning immunity must also be a concern, we must get boosters into arms as well and as quickly as we did the initial vaccines. So what has gone wrong
Hello @CorrectHorseBattery hope all is ok and kudos to you for what you have said. I may not agree with everything but that doesn’t matter, I hope everything goes well.
Ps very late to the party but congrats to @isam !!
Just come back from watching No Time to Die. Didn’t think the plot was as woke as some of the critics were saying. I thought though the villain was sh1t as was the ending.
Anyway, on topic, no great surprise re Trump as favourite when you look at what is going on with Biden both personally and politically. To be fair, I don’t think inflation is actually his fault but this is politics.
I think it’s going to be a few grim weeks for the Democrats. It feels like increasingly they will lose the VA Governorship (check out what is happening with the Loudoun School System Board and the alleged rape of a student by.a transgender person, which is rapidly becoming the story of the last few weeks). The polling from NJ also suggests there is a chance of a shock there. And when the ‘#1/2 downloaded tune on Apple Music is “Let’s go Brandon” (have. A look), you know the mood music is moving against you
Your first paragraph has given me an idea.
Maybe PB should have a shared in-house 'wokeometer' by which we can judge the wokeness of various cultural/media artefacts, films, TV etc., even politicians - anything that moves, really.
So we could have a scale of 1-10, where 1 = fast asleep/totally reactionary, and 10 = woke beyond belief. Then we could see the extent to which, for example, readers view stuff as woke. Sounds like you'd give No Time to Die about 5, for example?
Well, it might make the constant stuff about wokeness a bit more interesting, and we could see if there's any consensus about levels of wokeness.
A previous government already gave Fujitsu billions to digitise the NHS. IIRC the project ended up in court...
Such a typical negative comment
What's the betting it was the NHS and the civil servants who messed up the contract rather than the company?
Fujitsu and BT should share the blame - no one comes out of that scheme well.
It should be easier now though as technology has moved on and lessons should have been learnt
If the requirements hadn't been a moving target it might have gone better...
There were a few too many cooks on both the implementation and the NHS side.
One of the problems was that it was an attempt at a vast, waterfall project. Which could only work if the requirements were utterly frozen.
In the real world things change. This is why other project management methodologies embrace change, rather than treating it as evil.
Think small steps, lots of them. A eco system of small pieces, evolving forwards from basic functionality....
The original contractuality was certainly of a waterfall era. I think the ultimate tally was that NPfIT delivered around 25% of the functionality for around 50% of the cost - I think around 6-7 bn of the planned 12 bn was ultimately spent over the 10 years or so of its core life (though the final delivery, the hospital patient admin system for Hull iirc, actually was delivered as late as around 2018-9, over 5 years after Hunt declared it over). So, the cost was around 6-700m per year over the period.
And some things went better than others:
- The central Spine databases delivered a base functionality from very early, but didn't get as much richness as was planned. Still, it exists in successor contracts to this day and underpins a hell of a lot from the 'what the hell data are we looking at here and can we trust it?' that became mid-Staffs and many others (and under another politician might have remained suppressed for far longer, Burnham ultimately a good number of the right things) to e-prescribing and much more. - GP and ambulance systems never got off the ground and were mostly dumped early. - The specced out requirements for separate, very expensive, networking seemed over the top and clunky even for a health systems requirement, and a lot more use could have been made of off the shelf network provider interconnection for many of the needs.
- Hospital systems got bogged down in a lot of customisation requirements, often of dubious necessity, plus data ingestion variability. The dual approach that eventually came about was fascinating (a) adapt existing commercial US system predicated on charging the asses off of people to the NHS (South) vs (b) Develop a new NHS friendly PAS from scratch (North)
It was hare and tortoise stuff. (a) rolled out faster and went fairly well in a decent number of hospitals but was badly, badly fraught in others. The underpinning product was clunky, with dated menu based systems, and I understand a carer trying to maintain good connection with a patient whilst navigate the menus was hard work (one should note in the post 2010 political world the software vendor was able to supply hospital systems independently and had a similar record of triumph and disaster) (b) ran in pilot on one maternity ward for bloody years. When a maternity scandal broke in that trust, it probably wasn't a surprise, that must've been the most analysed NHS data in the history by a nation by a light year. But eventually progress was made and a whole wodge of the systems were ordered by hospitals in the dying days of the program, to be delivered years later in some cases.
The use of waterfall was laughable - even from the start.
A very eminent Canadian project management expert asked me at a conference to explain why it was being run like that - as the Brit in the room. Since, as he said, no project of even vaguely like that size had ever succeeded.
My answer was to relate the conversation I'd had with a high-flying Civil Servant. Who had explained to me that Waterfall was the Approved Method, and anything else was Heresy. His reaction when I explained other concepts was almost comical.....
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
Vaccines were the way out. Deaths did go through the floor. It did happen.
Most us did get vaccinated. Deaths disappeared even more and we can live with Covid forever. Did happen.
What exactly in that has not happened? We are living with Covid. Some people are just whiny bitches. Diseases, illnesses and death exist in the real world, this is what "learning to live with it" means. Stop whinging and get on with it.
Chill, Philip
CHB has admitted, on here, that lockdowns have taken a toll on his mental health. That’s a brave admission and I empathise with him. I share some of his anxiety
We’re all nervy, one way or another
You're right, I'm being short-tempered by his repeated insistence that we reimpose restrictions. Its affected mine and others too.
I apologise for being short-tempered. But we can not go back into lockdown.
I entirely agree. There must never be another lockdown, not unless the wolves are eating the dead on Old Bond Street
That does mean we might have to consider many unpleasant things short of lockdown, if the stats worsen. Vaxports, obviously, are one such. As I may have said
And now I shall watch more Narcos then go to sleep. Gnight PB
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
Vaccines were the way out. Deaths did go through the floor. It did happen.
Most us did get vaccinated. Deaths disappeared even more and we can live with Covid forever. Did happen.
What exactly in that has not happened? We are living with Covid. Some people are just whiny bitches. Diseases, illnesses and death exist in the real world, this is what "learning to live with it" means. Stop whinging and get on with it.
Chill, Philip
CHB has admitted, on here, that lockdowns have taken a toll on his mental health. That’s a brave admission and I empathise with him. I share some of his anxiety
We’re all nervy, one way or another
But he's saying that and simultaneously calling for another one, to what end I don't know. I don't think he does either.
On your earlier point, yes I agree people are nervous. I am too, I'm nervous that the politicians will bottle it and destroy our freedoms again.
The difference between this time and that time is that ~90% of people have been vaccinated and those vaccines provide a very, very high degree of protection from severe symptoms and death to all but the oldest and sickest.
That Italian study should be made mandatory reading for all of our politicians. Vaccinated deaths are average age of 85 and have an average of 5(!) underlying health conditions.
"Why can't SKS attack the Tories more? Andy Burnham does, he's King of the North"
* SKS attacks the Tories, Andy Burnham praises them *
"Why can't SKS support the Tories more? Andy Burnham does, he's King of the North".
Bad faith nonsense, on current polling and current trajectory Starmer will be PM of a minority Government
I disagree with every word of that post.
Burnham attacks Tories when they do stupid things like the ridiculous decisions during COVID re lockdowns and on policing bill etc he also supports them when they finally put real money into levelling up.
SKS has gone along with every Disastrous turn and today decides to criticise them when they do something good for working people in the North.
He gets nothing right and will continue to be an electoral disaster.
How has the government so comprehensively fucked this up. They should have introduced vaxports ten weeks ago. And now we’d be free. Fucking cretins
No. No. No.
Whether you like it or not, I’m right. We need 85% of the country vaxxed. That hasn’t happened because we’ve let refuseniks like Dura Ace live normally.
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
We’re really not approaching another lockdown. Chill.
The news - everywhere - suggests otherwise. This looks very much like another belated panicky handbrake turn by Boris
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
You're forgetting that @Cookie was on here yesterday 'proving' that we passed the peak earlier this week.
The goalposts have been shifted again and again by these people.
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
But it did happen, and we are free.
We're also making good progress on boosters, and with every day that passes, more young people are getting antibodies the natural way.
We may be making good progress on boosters now, but it's been a bit of a shambles hasn't it?
The authorities have had plenty of time to construct a plan to make sure that everybody gets a booster spot on six months after dose two. But they failed; I think I read that so far 4 million out of 7 million eligible had had their boosters. If they'd got this right, we may not be seeing the number of hospitalisations / deaths that we have recently. It's been pretty slack, though I accept that it looks like they're picking up the pace now.
The booster programme is running about 4-6 weeks too late because the JCVI dragged its feet for months waiting in study data while ignoring real world evidence from Israel. We should have started it at the beginning of September or even in the middle of August. We're supposedly sitting on a 25m stockpile of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. It's such a massive waste that we've got arbitrary restrictions on eligibility because the JCVI has got a case if exceptionalism.
Totally agree on the government's complacency with getting the word out though. We should be doing 4-5m doses per week to get all eligible people covered by the end of November and then throwing open the doors for a booster to all under 50s as well.
It would be nice if they would hurry the Hell up but we are dealing with a (quite literally lethal, in many unfortunate cases) combination of the Government and the NHS here. My better half is actually entitled to a third primary dose, but will probably find it easier to access a standard booster because the incompetent health service has failed to put him on the right list on whichever Commodore 64 holds all the relevant data, and no amount of nagging does anything to improve the situation. Despite the fact that I live with the aforementioned immunocompromised person, on the basis on my second dose date, and as things currently stand, I'll be waiting until January for my booster. It's not very good.
Just come back from watching No Time to Die. Didn’t think the plot was as woke as some of the critics were saying. I thought though the villain was sh1t as was the ending.
Anyway, on topic, no great surprise re Trump as favourite when you look at what is going on with Biden both personally and politically. To be fair, I don’t think inflation is actually his fault but this is politics.
I think it’s going to be a few grim weeks for the Democrats. It feels like increasingly they will lose the VA Governorship (check out what is happening with the Loudoun School System Board and the alleged rape of a student by.a transgender person, which is rapidly becoming the story of the last few weeks). The polling from NJ also suggests there is a chance of a shock there. And when the ‘#1/2 downloaded tune on Apple Music is “Let’s go Brandon” (have. A look), you know the mood music is moving against you
Your first paragraph has given me an idea.
Maybe PB should have a shared in-house 'wokeometer' by which we can judge the wokeness of various cultural/media artefacts, films, TV etc., even politicians - anything that moves, really.
So we could have a scale of 1-10, where 1 = fast asleep/totally reactionary, and 10 = woke beyond belief. Then we could see the extent to which, for example, readers view stuff as woke. Sounds like you'd give No Time to Die about 5, for example?
Well, it might make the constant stuff about wokeness a bit more interesting, and we could see if there's any consensus about levels of wokeness.
A previous government already gave Fujitsu billions to digitise the NHS. IIRC the project ended up in court...
Such a typical negative comment
What's the betting it was the NHS and the civil servants who messed up the contract rather than the company?
Fujitsu and BT should share the blame - no one comes out of that scheme well.
It should be easier now though as technology has moved on and lessons should have been learnt
If the requirements hadn't been a moving target it might have gone better...
There were a few too many cooks on both the implementation and the NHS side.
One of the problems was that it was an attempt at a vast, waterfall project. Which could only work if the requirements were utterly frozen.
In the real world things change. This is why other project management methodologies embrace change, rather than treating it as evil.
Think small steps, lots of them. A eco system of small pieces, evolving forwards from basic functionality....
The original contractuality was certainly of a waterfall era. I think the ultimate tally was that NPfIT delivered around 25% of the functionality for around 50% of the cost - I think around 6-7 bn of the planned 12 bn was ultimately spent over the 10 years or so of its core life (though the final delivery, the hospital patient admin system for Hull iirc, actually was delivered as late as around 2018-9, over 5 years after Hunt declared it over). So, the cost was around 6-700m per year over the period.
And some things went better than others:
- The central Spine databases delivered a base functionality from very early, but didn't get as much richness as was planned. Still, it exists in successor contracts to this day and underpins a hell of a lot from the 'what the hell data are we looking at here and can we trust it?' that became mid-Staffs and many others (and under another politician might have remained suppressed for far longer, Burnham ultimately a good number of the right things) to e-prescribing and much more. - GP and ambulance systems never got off the ground and were mostly dumped early. - The specced out requirements for separate, very expensive, networking seemed over the top and clunky even for a health systems requirement, and a lot more use could have been made of off the shelf network provider interconnection for many of the needs.
- Hospital systems got bogged down in a lot of customisation requirements, often of dubious necessity, plus data ingestion variability. The dual approach that eventually came about was fascinating (a) adapt existing commercial US system predicated on charging the asses off of people to the NHS (South) vs (b) Develop a new NHS friendly PAS from scratch (North)
It was hare and tortoise stuff. (a) rolled out faster and went fairly well in a decent number of hospitals but was badly, badly fraught in others. The underpinning product was clunky, with dated menu based systems, and I understand a carer trying to maintain good connection with a patient whilst navigate the menus was hard work (one should note in the post 2010 political world the software vendor was able to supply hospital systems independently and had a similar record of triumph and disaster) (b) ran in pilot on one maternity ward for bloody years. When a maternity scandal broke in that trust, it probably wasn't a surprise, that must've been the most analysed NHS data in the history by a nation by a light year. But eventually progress was made and a whole wodge of the systems were ordered by hospitals in the dying days of the program, to be delivered years later in some cases.
Interesting post. Many thanks. You sound like you know a great deal about this?
Just come back from watching No Time to Die. Didn’t think the plot was as woke as some of the critics were saying. I thought though the villain was sh1t as was the ending.
Anyway, on topic, no great surprise re Trump as favourite when you look at what is going on with Biden both personally and politically. To be fair, I don’t think inflation is actually his fault but this is politics.
I think it’s going to be a few grim weeks for the Democrats. It feels like increasingly they will lose the VA Governorship (check out what is happening with the Loudoun School System Board and the alleged rape of a student by.a transgender person, which is rapidly becoming the story of the last few weeks). The polling from NJ also suggests there is a chance of a shock there. And when the ‘#1/2 downloaded tune on Apple Music is “Let’s go Brandon” (have. A look), you know the mood music is moving against you
Your first paragraph has given me an idea.
Maybe PB should have a shared in-house 'wokeometer' by which we can judge the wokeness of various cultural/media artefacts, films, TV etc., even politicians - anything that moves, really.
So we could have a scale of 1-10, where 1 = fast asleep/totally reactionary, and 10 = woke beyond belief. Then we could see the extent to which, for example, readers view stuff as woke. Sounds like you'd give No Time to Die about 5, for example?
Well, it might make the constant stuff about wokeness a bit more interesting, and we could see if there's any consensus about levels of wokeness.
Next Doctor Who is an 11?
Doh. You've already broken the rules. 10 is the maximum (though I may make an exception for a female, lesbian, black James Jane Bond).
Comments
You imagined it.
Obsessed...
I am not advocating it but but nor would it be a coup either
Now we approach another lockdown, a much greater imposition on our liberty - and economy - and mental health - than a bloody online certificate of vaccination
Interesting days
The Government will doubtless be hoping that the more panicky scientists are wrong this time - the modelling of the effects of the great unlock in the Summer was wildly inaccurate, after all - but if ministers feel forced to reimpose restrictions in Winter then they may well decide that punishing refusers in any meaningful way is more trouble than it's worth. We shall see.
Second World War tweets from 1943 @RealTimeWWII
·
15m
Female Soviet tank driver Mariya Oktyabrskaya goes into battle against the Germans near Smolensk; after her husband was killed by Nazis two years ago, Mariya sold all her possessions to donate a tank to the the Red Army, on condition she be allowed to drive it.
https://twitter.com/RealTimeWWII/status/1452026203309756417
CHB can't give a single example of anything SKS is offering.
And I have always been able to praise politicians when they do the right thing.
So far I have therefore never praised the useless nonentity in charge of Labour
Last night the Prince's Foundation said it had launched an internal review of donor policy
Ahead of COP26 it has taken hundreds of thousands of pounds from Saudi Aramco
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1452020120956678148
I hope half term slows the growth and I’m proven wrong.
They should bring in vaxports anyway. Everywhere else is doing it, so it will be the only way of ever travelling
Try offering an alternative to the Tories.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/23/new-trade-deals-are-unfair-on-farmers-and-wont-help-emissions
You see, the Prime Minister can issue whatever mandates he damned well likes.
If the public don't respect them, then what can you do about that?
Let's be honest, you came into Labour during Corbyn and you've left because Labour is no longer a home for revolutionaries.
I was there long before Corbyn, I will be there long after. I support Labour because I believe in centre-left social democracy. If you don't then Labour is not the party for you.
Keir Starmer has a very good chance of being PM, current polling agrees with me and you just can't accept that. Boris Johnson will disappoint you as he has the people of London.
I'm 100% with @Leon on this one.
They've made their choice. They can die with it.
The fans could be seen mixing with Saudi nationals and waving the country’s green and white flag while bragging about their long-neglected club's newfound wealth.
“We're Saudis. We can afford anything,” fans chanted
So, it seems that Andy Burnham led a bid, as Mayor of Manchester, to get £1Bn to fund improved public transport in Manchester. And got £1B in funding from the Treasury for that plan.
But it appeared his heavy lobbying at the Conservative party conference in Manchester earlier this month, where he held meetings with the new levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, and the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, had paid off.
Interesting.
Firstly, always check how much of an announcement is new money. HMT worked out long ago to turn their own return on investment logic to public communications – why only get one good news story out of some money when you can re-announce it again and again? The problem is, of course, if it’s not new it won’t actually make anything better on the ground – which might be important to you if you live anywhere outside SW1.
The next trick HMT like to play is with profiles of money – i.e. how much of it is in the first year of the spending review period, how much in the second, etc. Big chunks of money early on look great, but if they don’t last, the money may not be baked into future spending settlements. And that’s really important, because £10m every year stretching for decades to come is a lot better than £50m just once. And redrawing the geographical balance of economic power in the UK is not something that will be fixed in a year, clearly.
Another favourite of the Treasury is ‘tucking under’ – which despite sounding like a dodgy type of plastic surgery is actually a way of hiding cuts to public expenditure. Broad, un-ringfenced funding pots such as the local government settlement can be spent on a myriad of things – so what HMT like to do is say they’re rolling other grants into these bigger funding pots, but then not actually top the bigger funding pots up by the same amount. This is a key one to watch for in the levelling up agenda given the pressure local government funding is already under.
Finally, note carefully what HMT say about real terms rises – i.e. will funding increase over time to match inflation? Because with rises in the cost of living, the real value of government investment may erode dramatically year-on-year. And if HMT says it is matching inflation, what measure are they using? Because I’ve never heard someone complain that their cost of living is going up by reference to the GDP deflator, which is the (frankly, fictional) inflation index HMT love to use.
But it's a picture of Aleksandra Samusenko...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandra_Samusenko
In Los Angeles, if you want your kid to go to a public school (or indeed, my daughter's private one), they need to be vaccinated.
In New York or Paris or Jerusalem, if you want to a bar or restaurant, you need to have a VaxPort of some kind.
These are all infringements on liberty. (As are mask requirements in stores and on public transport)
But if there's one thing we've learned, it's that if you don't act decisively and early, then you end up having to impose more draconian measures later.
Now, the UK wave can be brought - one would have thought - fairly decisively to an end. How? Well, let's make sure that people who were double jabbed more than four or five months ago, get a booster (especially as there seems to be a 12-15x increase in antibodies from AZ + Pfizer from AZ alone). And let's make sure that kids are encouraged to be vaccinated too. I wouldn't go the US route of requiring it to attend public school, but let's encourage it.
Posts: 62,671 (& counting).
Your solution is fine if delivered but it's the delivery that's proving seemingly unachievable.
BTW I have been a member of the Labour Party from 1975 to 2002 and from 2010 to 2021 and I voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020
I am a Democratic Socialist like the back of your card says the Labour Party is. SKS and Evans are neither Democratic or Socialists hence I will for only the 2nd time in my life vote for a Party other than Labour.
There is going to be no constitutional amendment on the electoral system in the foreseeable future. The extreme difficulty of putting through any amendment is why archaic procedures designed for the pre-telegraph era are still in place.
Still, I'd like to repeat: I agree 100% with @Leon. (It may never happen again!)
The fly in the ointment is flu. If the flu season this year is terrible - and nobody has the faintest idea how bad it is going to get, so it could plausibly be terrible - then the desperate screaming from the hospitals may yet be enough for the Government to reach for its plan B, or worse.
The public - or enough of it, at any rate, to exert unbearable pressure, particularly amongst the Tories' elderly core vote - has got used to this notion of shutting everything down if the hospitals can't cope and mitigating the damage with borrowed money. If it's done again it will wreck the recovery and cause catastrophic damage - much of the hospitality sector will turn up its toes if there's a second lost Christmas, especially if further massive support isn't advanced by the Treasury - and ministers will therefore be desperate to avoid lockdown. However, the idea of yet another one isn't wholly fanciful given the correct circumstances.
Also keep in mind that week on week case growth has dropped from about 20-25% to 0-5% and it's still dropping I think I called R under 1 three or four days too early.
In a couple of weeks we could actually be beyond the herd immunity threshold, especially when you consider that another 5m people will have had third doses by then too.
Ultimately the politicians need to grow a pair and tell the NHS whiners to shut up and deal with it, tell the scientists to shut the fuck up and just tough it out. The people who are dying are very old and of ill health or they are unvaccinated by choice.
I was wrong to support Corbyn and I was wrong to have voted for him to be leader, something which I will regret for the rest of my life. But lesson learned, you have learned nothing.
- an immediate return to mandatory masks in all enclosed spaces Inc shops pubs and transport
- an acceleration of the boosters to cover every one within 5 months of the second dose
- vaccine passports for any indoor venue with big crowds over 500 or nightclubs
First it was that vaccines would be the way out, if we got the elderly done we'd be free and cases would fall through the floor and so would deaths. Didn't happen.
Then it was get most of us vaccinated. Deaths and cases would disappear and we could live with COVID forever. Didn't happen.
Every time we have not acted early, we have been worse off. So let's for once act early and do something.
And let's be clear, if they do so, it will be the fault of:
a) iSage
b) Starmer.
Is that about right?
I don't think there will be a lockdown but I do think vaxccine passports are (belatedly) coming.
This is how we live with COVID. It is endemic now. There is no getting rid of it and a lockdown is just displacement activity. You still haven't answered what a lockdown would even achieve. You're just having a knee jerk reaction to what you perceive as high case numbers.
Delta means you need 85-90% immune (through vax or prior infection) to escape more lockdowns, masks, wfh, etc
A very high threshold and only achievable if you really enforce vaccination, probably via vaxports, as most countries are now doing (I see Canada has just joined the list)
https://twitter.com/heyintuition/status/1452025487614746624?s=21
‘Canada Is Planning To Launch A Standardized Vaccine Passport’
We're also making good progress on boosters, and with every day that passes, more young people are getting antibodies the natural way.
Whether it’s vaccination liberation or covid fatigue, the balance of public opinion is moving against new restrictions. Our @Kantar_UKI @MiC_Global polling featured in @POLITICOEurope London playbook today finds majorities across all age groups concerned about another lockdown."
https://twitter.com/LukeTryl/status/1451165703453675528
But the reality is that on the current trajectory Starmer despite being apparently total shite, is on his way to being PM just by not being Boris Johnson. The Joe Biden approach.
One can very well imagine that if the Government provided a get-out clause for vaxports it would probably consist of mailing out tests to the refusers, which are done entirely on trust and can readily be falsified. You only get around that problem by making them turn up to testing centres and have the tests supervised, and that's obviously impractical. If the numbers of refusers were tiny enough to make that idea viable then vaccine coverage would be in excess of 99% and action to deal with the refuser problem wouldn't need to be contemplated to begin with.
Resorting to vaccine passports is something to be done only if the problem of hospitalised refusers becomes serious enough to imperil everybody else's freedom, and in that case you may as well do the job properly. If you won't have the jab without being specifically medically exempt then you rot at home. No pubs, no restaurants, no shopping, no work, no get out clauses.
England only data
12 to 15 21.08%
16 to 17 63.89%
18 to 24 75.83%
25 to 29 77.66%
30 to 34 84.32%
35 to 39 86.85%
40 to 44 91.64%
45 to 49 90.79%
50 to 54 94.70%
55 to 59 96.54%
60 to 64 97.91%
65 to 69 95.92%
70 to 74 96.19%
75 to 79 98.06%
80 to 84 93.52%
85 to 89 91.38%
90 upwards 83.05%
Program 90.95%
UK 18+ vaccinations
SCOTLAND 96.92%
NORTHERN IRELAND 90.76%
WALES 95.35%
ENGLAND 93.49%
EDIT: Both using ONS Mid-2021 population data
Is that Starmer?
Normally smart people are panicking for nothing. Everyone can get a vaccine. 90% of adults have done so, 1 in 9 adults have now had third doses and we're definitely ramping that up. I saw a lot of advertising for it out in London last night that wasn't there last week.
Final point around half of all cases are in under 18s which I'd why the hospitalisation rate to case rate has been steadily dropping. I think we've got a severe case of fear of large numbers wrt cases. That's where this all stems from.
90 upwards 83.05%
I expect the 90+ group has done its level best on vaccination but it's difficult to come forward for a jab when you're dead.
I know a lot of people - eg me - who were properly fucked up by lockdown 3. Psychologically. There are others like me on here
We’re scared. Because we have been here before and the optimists were wrong
The authorities have had plenty of time to construct a plan to make sure that everybody gets a booster spot on six months after dose two. But they failed; I think I read that so far 4 million out of 7 million eligible had had their boosters. If they'd got this right, we may not be seeing the number of hospitalisations / deaths that we have recently. It's been pretty slack, though I accept that it looks like they're picking up the pace now.
Anyway, on topic, no great surprise re Trump as favourite when you look at what is going on with Biden both personally and politically. To be fair, I don’t think inflation is actually his fault but this is politics.
I think it’s going to be a few grim weeks for the Democrats. It feels like increasingly they will lose the VA Governorship (check out what is happening with the Loudoun School System Board and the alleged rape of a student by.a transgender person, which is rapidly becoming the story of the last few weeks). The polling from NJ also suggests there is a chance of a shock there. And when the ‘#1/2 downloaded tune on Apple Music is “Let’s go Brandon” (have. A look), you know the mood music is moving against you
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1438100728623546373/photo/1
Then it's just a matter of whether the Government has the willpower to be really Draconian in their use. Certification will be almost useless if all they do is stop unjabbed youngsters from going into nightclubs. They are going to have to make the lives of the refusers really difficult if they're to have any effect in forcing them to drop their opposition, which is, after all, the whole point of vaxports in the first place.
Why has SKS done worse than Corbyn in every single electoral test he has faced so far?
Do you think there is even the remotest possibility that other people may have reached the same conclusion as me and switched their vote.
You think SKS will be an electoral success I disagree.
Most us did get vaccinated. Deaths disappeared even more and we can live with Covid forever. Did happen.
What exactly in that has not happened? We are living with Covid. Some people are just whiny bitches. Diseases, illnesses and death exist in the real world, this is what "learning to live with it" means. Stop whinging and get on with it.
And some things went better than others:
- The central Spine databases delivered a base functionality from very early, but didn't get as much richness as was planned. Still, it exists in successor contracts to this day and underpins a hell of a lot from the 'what the hell data are we looking at here and can we trust it?' that became mid-Staffs and many others (and under another politician might have remained suppressed for far longer, Burnham ultimately a good number of the right things) to e-prescribing and much more.
- GP and ambulance systems never got off the ground and were mostly dumped early.
- The specced out requirements for separate, very expensive, networking seemed over the top and clunky even for a health systems requirement, and a lot more use could have been made of off the shelf network provider interconnection for many of the needs.
- Hospital systems got bogged down in a lot of customisation requirements, often of dubious necessity, plus data ingestion variability. The dual approach that eventually came about was fascinating (a) adapt existing commercial US system predicated on charging the asses off of people to the NHS (South) vs (b) Develop a new NHS friendly PAS from scratch (North)
It was hare and tortoise stuff. (a) rolled out faster and went fairly well in a decent number of hospitals but was badly, badly fraught in others. The underpinning product was clunky, with dated menu based systems, and I understand a carer trying to maintain good connection with a patient whilst navigate the menus was hard work (one should note in the post 2010 political world the software vendor was able to supply hospital systems independently and had a similar record of triumph and disaster) (b) ran in pilot on one maternity ward for bloody years. When a maternity scandal broke in that trust, it probably wasn't a surprise, that must've been the most analysed NHS data in the history by a nation by a light year. But eventually progress was made and a whole wodge of the systems were ordered by hospitals in the dying days of the program, to be delivered years later in some cases.
CHB has admitted, on here, that lockdowns have taken a toll on his mental health. That’s a brave admission and I empathise with him. I share some of his anxiety
We’re all nervy, one way or another
Totally agree on the government's complacency with getting the word out though. We should be doing 4-5m doses per week to get all eligible people covered by the end of November and then throwing open the doors for a booster to all under 50s as well.
I apologise for being short-tempered. But we can not go back into lockdown.
Ps very late to the party but congrats to @isam !!
Maybe PB should have a shared in-house 'wokeometer' by which we can judge the wokeness of various cultural/media artefacts, films, TV etc., even politicians - anything that moves, really.
So we could have a scale of 1-10, where 1 = fast asleep/totally reactionary, and 10 = woke beyond belief. Then we could see the extent to which, for example, readers view stuff as woke. Sounds like you'd give No Time to Die about 5, for example?
Well, it might make the constant stuff about wokeness a bit more interesting, and we could see if there's any consensus about levels of wokeness.
A very eminent Canadian project management expert asked me at a conference to explain why it was being run like that - as the Brit in the room. Since, as he said, no project of even vaguely like that size had ever succeeded.
My answer was to relate the conversation I'd had with a high-flying Civil Servant. Who had explained to me that Waterfall was the Approved Method, and anything else was Heresy. His reaction when I explained other concepts was almost comical.....
That does mean we might have to consider many unpleasant things short of lockdown, if the stats worsen. Vaxports, obviously, are one such. As I may have said
And now I shall watch more Narcos then go to sleep. Gnight PB
On your earlier point, yes I agree people are nervous. I am too, I'm nervous that the politicians will bottle it and destroy our freedoms again.
The difference between this time and that time is that ~90% of people have been vaccinated and those vaccines provide a very, very high degree of protection from severe symptoms and death to all but the oldest and sickest.
That Italian study should be made mandatory reading for all of our politicians. Vaccinated deaths are average age of 85 and have an average of 5(!) underlying health conditions.
Burnham attacks Tories when they do stupid things like the ridiculous decisions during COVID re lockdowns and on policing bill etc he also supports them when they finally put real money into levelling up.
SKS has gone along with every Disastrous turn and today decides to criticise them when they do something good for working people in the North.
He gets nothing right and will continue to be an electoral disaster.
JamesJane Bond).