Just back from Waitrose and for the first time noticed a serious shortage problem. Many gaps on shelves with apologetic notices in lieu of products. Snacks section particularly denuded. No hula hoops, no crisps apart from poncy rip off brands, not much by way of nuts. Any impact on me? Yes, a very tangible one. Pringles aren't my idea of a taste sensation but I was left with little choice other than to buy some of those. Blow cushioned just slightly by them being on special offer, £1 off.
Is there a particular problem with crisps?
They are garbage and not even food but are easily the best accelerant if you want to burn a car with no suspicious forensics left behind.
You've always been one of my favourite posters on this site, but I'm not sure I can trust someone who doesn't like crisps.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
No, anyone who wants to send us back into lockdown restrictions needs to get fucked.
This needs to be a country with an NHS, not an NHS with a country. If the NHS gets swamped from here, it gets swamped from here. It needs to do the best it can, with the resources it has, and that's that.
What a heartless, selfish prick you are.
No, you're being unreasonable, there's no scenario where people avoid getting COVID. Before delta it may have been possible, after delta it's just a matter of time so those people who are filling up hospitals are going to do it either way. Better that we had that happen over the summer and autumn rather than in the winter.
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
I would be interested to see some reports of this, if you can share?
5 live covered this this morning and it is a serious issue across the country with Scotland and Wales suffering as well and in Scotland's case resorting to using the army and fire service
There was an opinion that this needs urgent attention from within the NHS organisation as training new paramedics is not a quick fix as it takes 4 years
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
No, anyone who wants to send us back into lockdown restrictions needs to get fucked.
This needs to be a country with an NHS, not an NHS with a country. If the NHS gets swamped from here, it gets swamped from here. It needs to do the best it can, with the resources it has, and that's that.
You do accept though that your "fuck the NHS" approach isn't widely shared?
I couldn't care less.
We have bent over backwards to "save the NHS", we've sacrificed years that nobody is ever going to get back. We've got the vaccines, we've put up taxes, we've given the NHS billions extra.
My eldest daughter is in Year 3, her last uninterrupted year of education was when she was in Reception.
There comes a point where we need to say enough is enough, and I am well past that point now.
Chatted to various MPs and political journalists at COP. The general view is that sleaze isn't especially cutting through - people can see there's a problem and they do think the Tories are significantly worse, but their expectations were low anyway and tbh they aren't very interested - in particular, it's not coming up on the doorstep in Bexley. On the other hand, almost nobody thinks the government is very competent, and that is a stronger suit for Labour, since people find Keir boringly managerial but they do think he inspires confidence, precisely as a manager. Reeves is seen as doing well as Shadow Chancellor - everyone I talked to likes Dodds personally, but they think Reeves has more of a cutting edge. On the whole, the Labour MPs were moderately confident that progress is being made.
COP is seen by most of the people I talked to (mostly not political types) as a half-full glass, which is better than expected though falling short of what most think is actually needed. I was struck by the genuine enthusiasm and engagement of the delegates, including people from places that I know embarassingly little about (Guinea, Costa Rica, Madagascar...) - I'd expected a high proportion of portly time-servers on a jolly, but that really wasn't in evidence. Everyone had an agenda, but there was a consensus that there was a real climate problem and we all had to muck in.
When you say "all had to muck in" you mean the governments. Not the people. Because the people seem strangely unwilling to "muck in".
Well, nearly every delegate there was part of a government delegation, so yes, they were talking about what "we the governments" need to do.
Not sure you're right about people in general. They aren't very interested in tremendous personal effort if nobody else is bothering, but on the whole seem up for both (a) modest personal effort (sorting recyclable rubbish, turning the heating down a notch) and (b) government action even if if diverts money from something else (green new deal and all that). I'm not pollyannaish about it but one can be too cynical too.
Fair enough and that sounds like a sensible approach. There is imo far too much we're all going to burn rhetoric around this which evidently people don't believe or they would modify their own behaviour further. Which they don't seem to be doing.
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
They might, but that's no reason to keep the rest of us locked down.
Who has locked you down? And conversely who has locked Germany et al down?
"I don't want to be locked down" - great, I agree. But that isn't the debate. In reality its "I don't want to wear a mask". Neither do I, but I'm not propagating bad science to attack them as some do on here.
Wearing a mask in certain settings is not keeping "the rest of us locked down"
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
Isn't the point that countries which held onto their NPIs are about to also go through this anyway? Looking across at Germany it is definitely going to happen exactly as you describe, yet they have got NPIs and we haven't. I think we need to be realistic and understand that there's no escaping COVID and there's no escaping the exit wave.
There are better and worse ways of dealing with Covid. Given that Germany has had about half the number of deaths per capita as the UK, but has performed no worse than the UK economically, it would seem that Germans have thus far been making a better job of it than we have. Mind you, they will probably catch us up a bit in terms of deaths over the winter due primarily to antivax twats in the east of the country.
Good lad. Yes I know he is not short of a bob or two. But they respect that in Yarkshire. We need a northern PM instead of these southern wusses.
Honestly, Sunak is as far from these effete self-aggrandising idiots in most of the rest of the cabinet as you can get.
He doesn't need to do corruption. He already has all the cash
There's his hedge fund days though. The word is, not clean.
He worked for Chris Hohn at the Childrens Investment Fund and CIF made a LOT of enemies through being extremely aggressive. No matter how clean or otherwise the CIF may have been, it was roundly loathed for its public aggression and private threats. Many would look for payback on that.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Yes. No plan B - being WFH and masks mandate since vaxports are imo a NHE - right now but it certainly shouldn't be ruled out. It depends on NHS pressures. If they get bad enough the govt ought to act. Fwiw I think the decision has been made to butch it out till Feb, when Covid should be background, and it'll take a lot to change that.
Buy a block of basic student like flats. Offer that to MPs to use whilst they're in London. Stick a canteen at the bottom. Job done.
I know you’re being facetious, but I would actually do something like this
But make them big, luxury flats owned by the state in a nice part of Westminster. So the state ultimately gets the capital value of the investment - but the MPs get free accommodation in a very agreeable part of town
It would be a decent perk of the job. All MPs would be equal. No one would be forced to live there but if they decide not to, they won’t get any expenses for somewhere else
Simple.
Wasn't there somewhere like that at one time? Dolphin Square, Court or something like that. Got, after a while, a slightly 'iffy' reputation.
Dolphin Square. But it was never official, just a block used by a lot of MPs because of proximity. And yes it got a seedy rep
Also really ugly
But super convenient. You could walk to Chelsea or the West End.
Only slight downside was that Lupus Street was (and still is I believe) pretty iffy.
Iffy? In what way!? It is the middle of Pimlico!
Take a stroll along it now and you'll see what I mean. I lived in Dolphin Square and then later in "The Grid" in Pimlico. I had a scooter at the time and whenever and I mean whenever I left the box locked, it would be broken into. It is not the SW1 that people think it is!
NEW: EU official says the EU has always made it clear that the "objectives set out by the UK" in the Command Paper on the NI Protocol are "unattainable", but says the EU is committed to the current EU UK technical talks
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
They might, but that's no reason to keep the rest of us locked down.
Who has locked you down? And conversely who has locked Germany et al down?
"I don't want to be locked down" - great, I agree. But that isn't the debate. In reality its "I don't want to wear a mask". Neither do I, but I'm not propagating bad science to attack them as some do on here.
Wearing a mask in certain settings is not keeping "the rest of us locked down"
Its absolutely an uncomfortable and unpleasant restriction that is entirely unnecessary and pretty damned useless though.
The people demanding we wear masks will be the day after they're 'required' be demanding further steps because mask mandates [as opposed to masks] are as close to useless as it gets.
Mask mandates if people don't want to wear masks just means masks around necks etc, which doesn't do jack.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
If we have another surge...
The job of people in charge is to have contingency plans for all sorts of unlikely scenarios, but realistically how would we have another surge of sufficient scale to risk complete collapse?
We have enough people immunized, we have a booster programme - where are the people vulnerable to the virus who might fill the hospitals as last winter?
We are back to normal risks to be managed in normal ways.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
No, anyone who wants to send us back into lockdown restrictions needs to get fucked.
This needs to be a country with an NHS, not an NHS with a country. If the NHS gets swamped from here, it gets swamped from here. It needs to do the best it can, with the resources it has, and that's that.
What a heartless, selfish prick you are.
Come now, it's wee computer chair tough guys who wouldn't say boo to a goose in real life that are the backbone of this country.
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
Isn't the point that countries which held onto their NPIs are about to also go through this anyway? Looking across at Germany it is definitely going to happen exactly as you describe, yet they have got NPIs and we haven't. I think we need to be realistic and understand that there's no escaping COVID and there's no escaping the exit wave.
There are better and worse ways of dealing with Covid. Given that Germany has had about half the number of deaths per capita as the UK, but has performed no worse than the UK economically, it would seem that Germans have thus far been making a better job of it than we have. Mind you, they will probably catch us up a bit in terms of deaths over the winter due primarily to antivax twats in the east of the country.
This was from the BBC yesterday and looks very serious
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
Isn't the point that countries which held onto their NPIs are about to also go through this anyway? Looking across at Germany it is definitely going to happen exactly as you describe, yet they have got NPIs and we haven't. I think we need to be realistic and understand that there's no escaping COVID and there's no escaping the exit wave.
There are better and worse ways of dealing with Covid. Given that Germany has had about half the number of deaths per capita as the UK, but has performed no worse than the UK economically, it would seem that Germans have thus far been making a better job of it than we have. Mind you, they will probably catch us up a bit in terms of deaths over the winter due primarily to antivax twats in the east of the country.
But that's sort of the point, isn't it better for them to take those hospital admissions in the summer? Given that we know they are all going to get it anyway. The parameters are that everyone will get COVID, some people are idiots and won't get the vaccine, anti-virals are still months away at least and also require a lot of stars to align to hit those dazzling 90% efficacy figures. I don't see what is to be gained by displacing infections into tomorrow when tomorrow is closer and closer to winter when there will also be other respiratory viruses and general ice/cold to swamp healthcare services.
It might seem like a pretty harsh decision but it's probably saved thousands of lives this winter to have our exit wave in the summer/autumn rather than kick the can down the road and get swamped with cases in winter as Germany and other European countries are about to be.
What's striking, comparing the UK to other countries around the world, is how much of a laggard Britain seems to be.
The US economy is now already bigger than it was before the pandemic struck.
France is close to regaining its pre-crisis levels.
Indeed, of the major European countries only Spain remains further from its pre-pandemic GDP than the UK.
The problem for the chancellor is not only does this raise questions about whether Britain's economic measures could have been stronger in helping people get back into work, it all comes ahead of a difficult winter for the economy.
Prices are rising, energy costs are at historic levels and real earnings - wages adjusted for inflation - are stagnating.
In other words, any prospect that strong economic growth could turn into the much-vaunted "feelgood factor" seems to look dim at present.
I suspect the hope was that by lagging behind the rest of the world, Britain would enjoy a larger bounce conveniently timed for the election, though the revised figures suggest even that might be pushing it.
Could be a problem for Sunak
“ONS say that adds up to annualised GDP growth of 5.1%. That's well down from the OBR's revision up to 6.5% for this year at the Budget only two weeks ago. That means less tax takings for Rishi Sunak, so either spending cuts on his plans... or more tax rises (2)”
However post-pandemic growth is going to be super volatile. Could go either way, yet
Q4 looks pretty strong this year and last year we were in lockdown.
Yes, if we stay unlocked down we might see a decent surge. Especially in comparison to parts of Europe. 50,000 cases in Germany yesterday, they will have to bring in strict vaxports nationwide, at the very least.
I read a report that one reason the government has resisted vaxports is the big hit to to the economy they impose. Even a rather mild vaxport scheme would cost the UK £18bn in a few months
Belgium today has the UK equivalent of 90k new cases:
The decision there to reimpose restrictions in July looks increasingly dubious.
It's not really clear whether that's true. When they brought back some restrictions in July they had 7 million fully vaccinated, whereas now nearly 12 million. Buying time to get a much higher percentage vaccinated isn't totally unreasonable. Indeed many people described the situation over the summer as a "race" between the vaccines and the delta variant - which could have been kind of won except for people deciding not to get vaccinated.
The problem is in places where the number of vaccine refusers is still way more than enough to overwhelm the health system. We are in effect having restrictions imposed on us by the sadly misinformed choices of a large minority, which is also starting to create a lot of anger among the vaccinated.
Expect much stricter 2g rules in Germany very soon, the current 3g rules have barely been enforced at all up to now. And then noisy protests from the so-called Querdenker types.
Buy a block of basic student like flats. Offer that to MPs to use whilst they're in London. Stick a canteen at the bottom. Job done.
I know you’re being facetious, but I would actually do something like this
But make them big, luxury flats owned by the state in a nice part of Westminster. So the state ultimately gets the capital value of the investment - but the MPs get free accommodation in a very agreeable part of town
It would be a decent perk of the job. All MPs would be equal. No one would be forced to live there but if they decide not to, they won’t get any expenses for somewhere else
Simple.
There was a block of flats at the bottom of Waterloo bridge (Stamford street?) they looked at and passed on. Imperial turned it into student accommodation.
Your proposal seems reasonable. I’d make them 2 bedroom flats (no need to be mean). If MPs want to bring their families to London they can rent a hotel like everyone else.
Yes, no need to scrimp. The taxpayer will benefit as the state will get the capital gain from the property. Spacious 2 bed flats.
Takes away all the hassle of renting in London. You can move in immediately. Day one of Parliament. Don’t like it, fine, don’t live there but you won’t get money for anywhere else
A nice little perk of the job, but impossible to abuse the system. Sorted
Don’t MEPs have something like this? Official apartments owned by the EU? Or maybe they just sleep in their offices. They are known for their selflessness
No.
They just get ~10k Euro per month in their Daily Allowance, which covers accommodation and related costs.
Paid tax-free into their personal bank account, and from which they pay their staff and expenses.
None of this having to actually account for the spending stuff.
No. That 10k per month is purely for the personal stuf.
They get another 4.6k Euro a month for office rental, computers etc. And then another 26k Euros per month on top of that for office staff etc.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
No, anyone who wants to send us back into lockdown restrictions needs to get fucked.
This needs to be a country with an NHS, not an NHS with a country. If the NHS gets swamped from here, it gets swamped from here. It needs to do the best it can, with the resources it has, and that's that.
You do accept though that your "fuck the NHS" approach isn't widely shared?
Sadly more widely shared than either of us would wish though.
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
Isn't the point that countries which held onto their NPIs are about to also go through this anyway? Looking across at Germany it is definitely going to happen exactly as you describe, yet they have got NPIs and we haven't. I think we need to be realistic and understand that there's no escaping COVID and there's no escaping the exit wave.
There are better and worse ways of dealing with Covid. Given that Germany has had about half the number of deaths per capita as the UK, but has performed no worse than the UK economically, it would seem that Germans have thus far been making a better job of it than we have. Mind you, they will probably catch us up a bit in terms of deaths over the winter due primarily to antivax twats in the east of the country.
Careful with those comparisons, big fella, or we will have to bring up Sw*d*n and the s*ngl* p*rs*n h**s*h*lds which explains everything anyone needs to know about global Covid deaths discrepancies.
I suggested at the end of the last thread that we should be congratulating Cox on both his contributions to the trade deficit and the fiscal deficit. The man will be paying enough tax to cover his MP salary several times over. So the Commons and his constituents get the benefits of his considerable knowledge and expertise for free.
MPs who hang around Westminster all the time as unqualified but seriously overpaid social workers contributing nothing to the public good should really stand in awe and hang their heads in shame.
And it's not just the tax that he's paying.
His clients pay VAT on top of his charges for his services, which I think should appear at least parenthetically in his credit column.
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Chatted to various MPs and political journalists at COP. The general view is that sleaze isn't especially cutting through - people can see there's a problem and they do think the Tories are significantly worse, but their expectations were low anyway and tbh they aren't very interested - in particular, it's not coming up on the doorstep in Bexley. On the other hand, almost nobody thinks the government is very competent, and that is a stronger suit for Labour, since people find Keir boringly managerial but they do think he inspires confidence, precisely as a manager. Reeves is seen as doing well as Shadow Chancellor - everyone I talked to likes Dodds personally, but they think Reeves has more of a cutting edge. On the whole, the Labour MPs were moderately confident that progress is being made.
COP is seen by most of the people I talked to (mostly not political types) as a half-full glass, which is better than expected though falling short of what most think is actually needed. I was struck by the genuine enthusiasm and engagement of the delegates, including people from places that I know embarassingly little about (Guinea, Costa Rica, Madagascar...) - I'd expected a high proportion of portly time-servers on a jolly, but that really wasn't in evidence. Everyone had an agenda, but there was a consensus that there was a real climate problem and we all had to muck in.
When you say "all had to muck in" you mean the governments. Not the people. Because the people seem strangely unwilling to "muck in".
Well, nearly every delegate there was part of a government delegation, so yes, they were talking about what "we the governments" need to do.
Not sure you're right about people in general. They aren't very interested in tremendous personal effort if nobody else is bothering, but on the whole seem up for both (a) modest personal effort (sorting recyclable rubbish, turning the heating down a notch) and (b) government action even if if diverts money from something else (green new deal and all that). I'm not pollyannaish about it but one can be too cynical too.
Fair enough and that sounds like a sensible approach. There is imo far too much we're all going to burn rhetoric around this which evidently people don't believe or they would modify their own behaviour further. Which they don't seem to be doing.
The Green Party rep who took a plane from London to Glasgow deserves his own “Hypocrite of the Conference” award.
When *we* see *them* changing *their* behaviour, then maybe we might think about changing our own…
We need a further fall before this wave is done, but I'm confident it is the last wave to conceivably justify restrictions.
It is already a wave consisting mainly of younger people who get much less ill. Who is the next wave going to hit? And if it does, additional treatment drugs will be available.
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
If we have another surge...
The job of people in charge is to have contingency plans for all sorts of unlikely scenarios, but realistically how would we have another surge of sufficient scale to risk complete collapse?
We have enough people immunized, we have a booster programme - where are the people vulnerable to the virus who might fill the hospitals as last winter?
We are back to normal risks to be managed in normal ways.
So says you with all your knowledge and experience. The medics and the scientists disagree. Remember that the NHS - which was in a mess before Covid - is now on its knees. So we don't need as massive a surge to swamp it, have people dying on trollies and all the headlines badness that makes politicians unhappy.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
No, anyone who wants to send us back into lockdown restrictions needs to get fucked.
This needs to be a country with an NHS, not an NHS with a country. If the NHS gets swamped from here, it gets swamped from here. It needs to do the best it can, with the resources it has, and that's that.
You do accept though that your "fuck the NHS" approach isn't widely shared?
Sadly more widely shared than either of us would wish though.
In summary Boris and his team were briefed about masks, decided to ignore the hospital management and put them in the impossible situation of how do you manage a PM in clear breach of his own guidance putting staff and patients in danger?
Listening to the radio this morning the second job controversy was not mentioned or referenced
Indeed the news stories seem largely to have moved on even on BBC and Sky
Actually it seems Megan Markle has dominated the news this morning and not in a good way for her
Having to stand up in court and state that your client apologises for having previously misled the court is what every barrister dreams of (sarcasm alert on).
Interesting that the focus is on people with 2nd jobs who don't have a conflict of interest and not on the conflict of interest jobs which I consider a greater ssue.
Now 2nd jobs alone is an issue, but less so than those who then abuse a conflict because of their 2nd job.
I feel that Geoffrey Cox is getting the focus while not being the chief offender more out of envy for his wealth. Let's focus on those who abuse their conflict of interest.
The Cox story is chaff. The IDS story is much worse. He had a clear conflict of interest, failed to declare it and acted in a way which was favourable to a client which was paying him for what, exactly?
Chatted to various MPs and political journalists at COP. The general view is that sleaze isn't especially cutting through - people can see there's a problem and they do think the Tories are significantly worse, but their expectations were low anyway and tbh they aren't very interested - in particular, it's not coming up on the doorstep in Bexley. On the other hand, almost nobody thinks the government is very competent, and that is a stronger suit for Labour, since people find Keir boringly managerial but they do think he inspires confidence, precisely as a manager. Reeves is seen as doing well as Shadow Chancellor - everyone I talked to likes Dodds personally, but they think Reeves has more of a cutting edge. On the whole, the Labour MPs were moderately confident that progress is being made.
COP is seen by most of the people I talked to (mostly not political types) as a half-full glass, which is better than expected though falling short of what most think is actually needed. I was struck by the genuine enthusiasm and engagement of the delegates, including people from places that I know embarassingly little about (Guinea, Costa Rica, Madagascar...) - I'd expected a high proportion of portly time-servers on a jolly, but that really wasn't in evidence. Everyone had an agenda, but there was a consensus that there was a real climate problem and we all had to muck in.
When you say "all had to muck in" you mean the governments. Not the people. Because the people seem strangely unwilling to "muck in".
Well, nearly every delegate there was part of a government delegation, so yes, they were talking about what "we the governments" need to do.
Not sure you're right about people in general. They aren't very interested in tremendous personal effort if nobody else is bothering, but on the whole seem up for both (a) modest personal effort (sorting recyclable rubbish, turning the heating down a notch) and (b) government action even if if diverts money from something else (green new deal and all that). I'm not pollyannaish about it but one can be too cynical too.
Fair enough and that sounds like a sensible approach. There is imo far too much we're all going to burn rhetoric around this which evidently people don't believe or they would modify their own behaviour further. Which they don't seem to be doing.
The Green Party rep who took a plane from London to Glasgow deserves his own “Hypocrite of the Conference” award.
When *we* see *them* changing *their* behaviour, then maybe we might think about changing our own…
Easy to say 'do as I say', but the sums don't always, I understand, work out the way one would expect them to.
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
I would be interested to see some reports of this, if you can share?
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
No, anyone who wants to send us back into lockdown restrictions needs to get fucked.
This needs to be a country with an NHS, not an NHS with a country. If the NHS gets swamped from here, it gets swamped from here. It needs to do the best it can, with the resources it has, and that's that.
You do accept though that your "fuck the NHS" approach isn't widely shared?
Sadly more widely shared than either of us would wish though.
Today at 3pm, we will release a bonus Westminster Voting Intention poll. The Conservatives were 1% ahead of Labour in Monday’s poll—will they hold on to that lead? Follow us
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
No, anyone who wants to send us back into lockdown restrictions needs to get fucked.
This needs to be a country with an NHS, not an NHS with a country. If the NHS gets swamped from here, it gets swamped from here. It needs to do the best it can, with the resources it has, and that's that.
You do accept though that your "fuck the NHS" approach isn't widely shared?
Sadly more widely shared than either of us would wish though.
Hope you are doing as OK as you can be BJO.
Thanks it is still very raw but time heals.
It's the post mortem today even though my mum died 12 days ago. Lots to do when I get death certificates.
In summary Boris and his team were briefed about masks, decided to ignore the hospital management and put them in the impossible situation of how do you manage a PM in clear breach of his own guidance putting staff and patients in danger?
We have also forgotten already that just a few days earlier he was “at it” at COP, sitting next to Attenborough.
He’s got form in not giving a shit about anyone but himself.
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
Maybe, but I’d rather just not have Boris full stop.
He is a total liability and frankly I don’t trust his so called libertarian instincts either; it is mostly about what suits himself or what he think might play well in the Telegraph.
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
The current Labour party would not have ever moved into a post-COVID world. They'd be very much like New Zealand where every case is still seen as a tragedy rather than a fact of life.
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
Granted, it's a fine line. On the one hand, you do indeed want to avoid a wave of patients over the winter, especially if your health service is somewhat on the rickety side. On the other hand, though, the longer you keep it at bay, the more time you have to get people vaccinated, develop new treatments and generally prepare. It could be that what makes sense for us (avoiding a winter wave at all costs) makes less sense for countries with greater medical capacity.
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
I would be interested to see some reports of this, if you can share?
Just think how much worse it would have been if we were in the same position as the rest of Europe with rapidly rising cases. Thankfully they took the right decision in July.
I presume people die, sadly, in such circumstances every year. IT is sad but nothing new.
What's striking, comparing the UK to other countries around the world, is how much of a laggard Britain seems to be.
The US economy is now already bigger than it was before the pandemic struck.
France is close to regaining its pre-crisis levels.
Indeed, of the major European countries only Spain remains further from its pre-pandemic GDP than the UK.
The problem for the chancellor is not only does this raise questions about whether Britain's economic measures could have been stronger in helping people get back into work, it all comes ahead of a difficult winter for the economy.
Prices are rising, energy costs are at historic levels and real earnings - wages adjusted for inflation - are stagnating.
In other words, any prospect that strong economic growth could turn into the much-vaunted "feelgood factor" seems to look dim at present.
I suspect the hope was that by lagging behind the rest of the world, Britain would enjoy a larger bounce conveniently timed for the election, though the revised figures suggest even that might be pushing it.
Could be a problem for Sunak
“ONS say that adds up to annualised GDP growth of 5.1%. That's well down from the OBR's revision up to 6.5% for this year at the Budget only two weeks ago. That means less tax takings for Rishi Sunak, so either spending cuts on his plans... or more tax rises (2)”
However post-pandemic growth is going to be super volatile. Could go either way, yet
Q4 looks pretty strong this year and last year we were in lockdown.
Yes, if we stay unlocked down we might see a decent surge. Especially in comparison to parts of Europe. 50,000 cases in Germany yesterday, they will have to bring in strict vaxports nationwide, at the very least.
I read a report that one reason the government has resisted vaxports is the big hit to to the economy they impose. Even a rather mild vaxport scheme would cost the UK £18bn in a few months
Belgium today has the UK equivalent of 90k new cases:
The decision there to reimpose restrictions in July looks increasingly dubious.
It's not really clear whether that's true. When they brought back some restrictions in July they had 7 million fully vaccinated, whereas now nearly 12 million. Buying time to get a much higher percentage vaccinated isn't totally unreasonable. Indeed many people described the situation over the summer as a "race" between the vaccines and the delta variant - which could have been kind of won except for people deciding not to get vaccinated.
The problem is in places where the number of vaccine refusers is still way more than enough to overwhelm the health system. We are in effect having restrictions imposed on us by the sadly misinformed choices of a large minority, which is also starting to create a lot of anger among the vaccinated.
Expect much stricter 2g rules in Germany very soon, the current 3g rules have barely been enforced at all up to now. And then noisy protests from the so-called Querdenker types.
The other problem is that even if you get 95% of the eligible population vaccinated, that leaves alot of people vulnerable to the virus.
Exit waves are inevitable.
The problem on top of that is that Delta seems to make most precautions much less effective. My guesstimate is that a full lockdown would slow a Delta surge down, but not stop it, unless you had a very high level of vaccination. As well....
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
Maybe, but I’d rather just not have Boris full stop.
He is a total liability and frankly I don’t trust his so called libertarian instincts either; it is mostly about what suits himself or what he think might play well in the Telegraph.
Maybe and you may have spotted that I am no great fan of the man. But I am happy to ride on the coattails of that libertarian instinct whatever the motive.
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
The current Labour party would not have ever moved into a post-COVID world. They'd be very much like New Zealand where every case is still seen as a tragedy rather than a fact of life.
And the coincidence of more restrictions with a natural downturn in cases would have meant they would be deemed to have worked.
Forget Cox, the IDS stuff is still boiling my piss.
I am actually tempted to make a complaint to The Met, that's how angry I am at it.
The Met is not who you should be complaining to. The chances of there being evidence of actual fraud or corruption are low. And they couldn't investigate their way out of a paper bag in any case. The Met - as we learned this summer (in the Morgan report) - doesn't even have a working definition of corruption for itself so the chances of them recognising it anywhere else are not good.
Write to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner instead. If there is evidence of something worse she can refer it.
In summary Boris and his team were briefed about masks, decided to ignore the hospital management and put them in the impossible situation of how do you manage a PM in clear breach of his own guidance putting staff and patients in danger?
We have also forgotten already that just a few days earlier he was “at it” at COP, sitting next to Attenborough.
He’s got form in not giving a shit about anyone but himself.
Chatted to various MPs and political journalists at COP. The general view is that sleaze isn't especially cutting through - people can see there's a problem and they do think the Tories are significantly worse, but their expectations were low anyway and tbh they aren't very interested - in particular, it's not coming up on the doorstep in Bexley. On the other hand, almost nobody thinks the government is very competent, and that is a stronger suit for Labour, since people find Keir boringly managerial but they do think he inspires confidence, precisely as a manager. Reeves is seen as doing well as Shadow Chancellor - everyone I talked to likes Dodds personally, but they think Reeves has more of a cutting edge. On the whole, the Labour MPs were moderately confident that progress is being made.
COP is seen by most of the people I talked to (mostly not political types) as a half-full glass, which is better than expected though falling short of what most think is actually needed. I was struck by the genuine enthusiasm and engagement of the delegates, including people from places that I know embarassingly little about (Guinea, Costa Rica, Madagascar...) - I'd expected a high proportion of portly time-servers on a jolly, but that really wasn't in evidence. Everyone had an agenda, but there was a consensus that there was a real climate problem and we all had to muck in.
When you say "all had to muck in" you mean the governments. Not the people. Because the people seem strangely unwilling to "muck in".
Well, nearly every delegate there was part of a government delegation, so yes, they were talking about what "we the governments" need to do.
Not sure you're right about people in general. They aren't very interested in tremendous personal effort if nobody else is bothering, but on the whole seem up for both (a) modest personal effort (sorting recyclable rubbish, turning the heating down a notch) and (b) government action even if if diverts money from something else (green new deal and all that). I'm not pollyannaish about it but one can be too cynical too.
Fair enough and that sounds like a sensible approach. There is imo far too much we're all going to burn rhetoric around this which evidently people don't believe or they would modify their own behaviour further. Which they don't seem to be doing.
The Green Party rep who took a plane from London to Glasgow deserves his own “Hypocrite of the Conference” award.
When *we* see *them* changing *their* behaviour, then maybe we might think about changing our own…
LOL I hadn't noticed that. I think @algarkirk summed it up pretty well earlier.
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
The current Labour party would not have ever moved into a post-COVID world. They'd be very much like New Zealand where every case is still seen as a tragedy rather than a fact of life.
Imagine the counter-factual where Corbyn is PM, we joined in the EU vaccine procurement programme, then boycotted the Pfizer vaccine because they also sold them to Israel, didn’t drop the police-state app, still have the pubs at half capacity and sports played in empty stadia…
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
Maybe, but I’d rather just not have Boris full stop.
He is a total liability and frankly I don’t trust his so called libertarian instincts either; it is mostly about what suits himself or what he think might play well in the Telegraph.
IT will not be long, if he carries on like this, that the party and his MP's come to that conclusion in significant numbers.
I cannot see him being leader by the next election.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
Miss Cyclefree, just like expenses. An inept media spraying shit all over everyone means that serious cases don't get the attention they deserve and minor or non-cases are subject to undeserved censure.
Buy a block of basic student like flats. Offer that to MPs to use whilst they're in London. Stick a canteen at the bottom. Job done.
I know you’re being facetious, but I would actually do something like this
But make them big, luxury flats owned by the state in a nice part of Westminster. So the state ultimately gets the capital value of the investment - but the MPs get free accommodation in a very agreeable part of town
It would be a decent perk of the job. All MPs would be equal. No one would be forced to live there but if they decide not to, they won’t get any expenses for somewhere else
Simple.
There was a block of flats at the bottom of Waterloo bridge (Stamford street?) they looked at and passed on. Imperial turned it into student accommodation.
Your proposal seems reasonable. I’d make them 2 bedroom flats (no need to be mean). If MPs want to bring their families to London they can rent a hotel like everyone else.
Yes, no need to scrimp. The taxpayer will benefit as the state will get the capital gain from the property. Spacious 2 bed flats.
Takes away all the hassle of renting in London. You can move in immediately. Day one of Parliament. Don’t like it, fine, don’t live there but you won’t get money for anywhere else
A nice little perk of the job, but impossible to abuse the system. Sorted
Don’t MEPs have something like this? Official apartments owned by the EU? Or maybe they just sleep in their offices. They are known for their selflessness
No.
They just get ~10k Euro per month in their Daily Allowance, which covers accommodation and related costs.
Paid tax-free into their personal bank account, and from which they pay their staff and expenses.
None of this having to actually account for the spending stuff.
Imo that is a feature, not a bug. We should pay our MPs allowances, not expenses, and let them worry spend it how they like (although imo we should also centralise supply and support of IT and similar). It might even be cheaper as we'd not need to audit expense claims if there are none.
Great idea, so long as other small businesses are subject to the same level of compliance and audit as the MPs.
MPs are not small businesses (or they are but that is what has landed them in the soup). My experience of working for global megacorps with PITA expense procedures is these can be made to disappear by, for instance, and these are genuine instances, swallowing the cost of personal phone calls, nodding through small travel claims and using in-house travel agents for big ones. Coming closer to MPs, there have long been jobs with allowances, not expenses, for uniforms and cost of living (though MPs are unusual in out-of-Londoners having higher costs).
So to repeat, we should pay MPs allowances not expenses (and arguably what caused the original scandal was pretending to do one while actually doing the other).
John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch · 30m NEW: England has recorded 18 successive days of week-on-week declines in cases, its longest sequence of declines since February, suggesting its autumn/winter wave may have peaked
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
The current Labour party would not have ever moved into a post-COVID world. They'd be very much like New Zealand where every case is still seen as a tragedy rather than a fact of life.
And the coincidence of more restrictions with a natural downturn in cases would have meant they would be deemed to have worked.
Yes, the screams for plan b were loudest a few weeks ago because the lockdown fascists realised it was their final chance to get another lockdown. If they could get plan b implemented just before herd immunity then it would be plan b that drove the reduction rather than what looks very much like herd immunity. They know they've lost now, lockdown is gone and won't ever come back.
Listening to the radio this morning the second job controversy was not mentioned or referenced
Indeed the news stories seem largely to have moved on even on BBC and Sky
Actually it seems Megan Markle has dominated the news this morning and not in a good way for her
Having to stand up in court and state that your client apologises for having previously misled the court is what every barrister dreams of (sarcasm alert on).
Interesting that the focus is on people with 2nd jobs who don't have a conflict of interest and not on the conflict of interest jobs which I consider a greater ssue.
Now 2nd jobs alone is an issue, but less so than those who then abuse a conflict because of their 2nd job.
I feel that Geoffrey Cox is getting the focus while not being the chief offender more out of envy for his wealth. Let's focus on those who abuse their conflict of interest.
The Cox story is chaff. The IDS story is much worse. He had a clear conflict of interest, failed to declare it and acted in a way which was favourable to a client which was paying him for what, exactly?
A cynical person might suggest the Mail (and others?) are focusing on Cox to distract attention from IDS and others...
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
Yup, I've said it a few times - it's the only policy of note for which I can give credit to this shambles of a government.
The decision in most European countries to keep hold of NPIs in the summer while vaccine efficacy was high and delta taking over was poor. I think there is still a lack of understanding that every single person is now going to get COVID at some point in the next year so the race is to vaccinate and protect people from severe symptoms not to prevent them from ever getting it.
A lot of people still seem to think that covid is going to be beaten or simply fade away. There is no reason to think either of those outcomes is likely. People need to understand that covid will become endemic, and so in the medium to long term EVERYBODY is going to get covid. Thinking you can avoid covid forever is about as likely, maybe even less likely, as being able to avoid getting a cold or flu for the rest of your life.
Forget Cox, the IDS stuff is still boiling my piss.
I am actually tempted to make a complaint to The Met, that's how angry I am at it.
The Met is not who you should be complaining to. The chances of there being evidence of actual fraud or corruption are low. And they couldn't investigate their way out of a paper bag in any case. The Met - as we learned this summer (in the Morgan report) - doesn't even have a working definition of corruption for itself so the chances of them recognising it anywhere else are not good.
Write to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner instead. If there is evidence of something worse she can refer it.
Certain people, in the cases of Hancock and Bethell, seem to be doing a good job of making crucially important evidence strangely hard to find, while the media huffs and puffs about Cox in a frustrated displacement activity.
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
The current Labour party would not have ever moved into a post-COVID world. They'd be very much like New Zealand where every case is still seen as a tragedy rather than a fact of life.
Imagine the counter-factual where Corbyn is PM, we joined in the EU vaccine procurement programme, then boycotted the Pfizer vaccine because they also sold them to Israel, didn’t drop the police-state app, still have the pubs at half capacity and sports played in empty stadia…
Jez as PM would have us living in caves so COVID might have been a nice distraction for the nation.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
A couple of quickies: 1. National covid levels aren't the same as regional. What does where you are look like?2. Primary school likely under the guidance of the LEA with Covid management 3. Could be a great school you are passing on for frankly ideological reasons. Will you pick one that is crap academically because they fit more with your views on Covid?
Covid has been bloody awful for our kids. No denying that.
Esther Webber @estwebber · 1h After the Times/Tel story of MPs getting drunk on a visit, a parliamentary source queries whether the govt really wants to open the can of worms which is MPs' behaviour on foreign trips
===
As I highlighted yesterday, if the papers move on to the drunken behaviour of MPs we are in for a fine old few days.
Buy a block of basic student like flats. Offer that to MPs to use whilst they're in London. Stick a canteen at the bottom. Job done.
I know you’re being facetious, but I would actually do something like this
But make them big, luxury flats owned by the state in a nice part of Westminster. So the state ultimately gets the capital value of the investment - but the MPs get free accommodation in a very agreeable part of town
It would be a decent perk of the job. All MPs would be equal. No one would be forced to live there but if they decide not to, they won’t get any expenses for somewhere else
Simple.
There was a block of flats at the bottom of Waterloo bridge (Stamford street?) they looked at and passed on. Imperial turned it into student accommodation.
Your proposal seems reasonable. I’d make them 2 bedroom flats (no need to be mean). If MPs want to bring their families to London they can rent a hotel like everyone else.
Yes, no need to scrimp. The taxpayer will benefit as the state will get the capital gain from the property. Spacious 2 bed flats.
Takes away all the hassle of renting in London. You can move in immediately. Day one of Parliament. Don’t like it, fine, don’t live there but you won’t get money for anywhere else
A nice little perk of the job, but impossible to abuse the system. Sorted
Don’t MEPs have something like this? Official apartments owned by the EU? Or maybe they just sleep in their offices. They are known for their selflessness
No.
They just get ~10k Euro per month in their Daily Allowance, which covers accommodation and related costs.
Paid tax-free into their personal bank account, and from which they pay their staff and expenses.
None of this having to actually account for the spending stuff.
When the UK MPs expense scandal happened, the European Parliament reacted quickly, decisively and nearly unanimously.
They made their expenses a specially protected secret, with severe penalties for leaking them.
Yes. There was an investigation for German TV which showed dozens of MEPs turning up on Friday morning at the singing-in office (to qualify for teh daily 300 Euro or whatever allowance) with their suitcases ready to go straight to their travel arrangements.
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
Yup, I've said it a few times - it's the only policy of note for which I can give credit to this shambles of a government.
The decision in most European countries to keep hold of NPIs in the summer while vaccine efficacy was high and delta taking over was poor. I think there is still a lack of understanding that every single person is now going to get COVID at some point in the next year so the race is to vaccinate and protect people from severe symptoms not to prevent them from ever getting it.
A lot of people still seem to think that covid is going to be beaten or simply fade away. There is no reason to think either of those outcomes is likely. People need to understand that covid will become endemic, and so in the medium to long term EVERYBODY is going to get covid. Thinking you can avoid covid forever is about as likely, maybe even less likely, as being able to avoid getting a cold or flu for the rest of your life.
Yes and this is why continuing to crush the infection wave with NPIs is futile.
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
I would be interested to see some reports of this, if you can share?
The piece says that this is at least in part caused by people turning up post-pandemic with hidden problems essentially caused by lock-down.
It is an exit wave of untreated illness. I'm not sure how delaying this particular exit wave by locking down again will help.
The piece doesn't even mention lockdown, so I don't know where you got that from. The piece does mention the "pandemic and the disruption it has caused to health care and everyday life" which one would think consists primarily of inability to access healthcare due to the hospitals being swamped with Covid patients as well as limitations imposed by measures to prevent cross infection in healthcare settings.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
If we have another surge...
The job of people in charge is to have contingency plans for all sorts of unlikely scenarios, but realistically how would we have another surge of sufficient scale to risk complete collapse?
We have enough people immunized, we have a booster programme - where are the people vulnerable to the virus who might fill the hospitals as last winter?
We are back to normal risks to be managed in normal ways.
So says you with all your knowledge and experience. The medics and the scientists disagree. Remember that the NHS - which was in a mess before Covid - is now on its knees. So we don't need as massive a surge to swamp it, have people dying on trollies and all the headlines badness that makes politicians unhappy.
I have a lot of respect for experts. I've been one in a small way in the past.
That doesn't mean their words are to be accepted as gospel uncritically. We can all see the data and see the difference vaccines have made. It's not unreasonable to conclude that we can now return to normal.
Obviously people working within the NHS will always see ways that it might be improved, and since they will be used to wearing masks more routinely they will have a different perspective to everyone else. To other people, like my wife, masks represent fear and danger and they act as a barrier to her being able to live a life outside of the home, even though the vaccine means that the risks are pretty much back to normal compared to 2020.
As a democracy we can choose how to balance these competing priorities. We stayed at home when a new virus created a situation the NHS wasn't able to cope with. Now that we are vaccinated the situation is one that the NHS can cope with, albeit as ever we might wish it had more resources, or was differently organised, so that it would do a better job.
A new post-pandemic normal can include things that make lives better, like less commuting, but we have to make an effort to stop a lingering fear from being a persistent feature of our lives.
I've been pondering how one distinguishes legitimate outside work done by MPs, and outside work that is, at best, dubious, and have come up with a solution.
Any MP that claims in the Register that their role is "providing strategic advice" to a profit-making concern is, in all likelihood, raking in money in exchange for influence on government decision-making, and is therefore corrupt. Easy.
I provided such a test yesterday. If the services the MP provides are ones unrelated to being an MP and for which someone would pay anyway, that's fine.
Esther Webber @estwebber · 1h After the Times/Tel story of MPs getting drunk on a visit, a parliamentary source queries whether the govt really wants to open the can of worms which is MPs' behaviour on foreign trips
===
As I highlighted yesterday, if the papers move on to the drunken behaviour of MPs we are in for a fine old few days.
The problem with this story is that it was the military police who reported their alleged behaviour
As was said earlier, and in the absence of names by the broadcast media, further action may follow, who knows
Esther Webber @estwebber · 1h After the Times/Tel story of MPs getting drunk on a visit, a parliamentary source queries whether the govt really wants to open the can of worms which is MPs' behaviour on foreign trips
===
As I highlighted yesterday, if the papers move on to the drunken behaviour of MPs we are in for a fine old few days.
That would be incredibly funny, one assumes that there’s at least one drunken story on hundreds of MPs.
Remember back to 2013, and Eric Joyce being arrested in a Commons bar, that started a chain of events that led to a lot of the Labour party’s subsequent problems.
Good lad. Yes I know he is not short of a bob or two. But they respect that in Yarkshire. We need a northern PM instead of these southern wusses.
Honestly, Sunak is as far from these effete self-aggrandising idiots in most of the rest of the cabinet as you can get.
He doesn't need to do corruption. He already has all the cash
There's his hedge fund days though. The word is, not clean.
He worked for Chris Hohn at the Childrens Investment Fund and CIF made a LOT of enemies through being extremely aggressive. No matter how clean or otherwise the CIF may have been, it was roundly loathed for its public aggression and private threats. Many would look for payback on that.
There is more to it than that. It would certainly be of interest to people in the City etc and it ought to be to others. But whether it would cut through to the public I don't know, not least because if journalists did try and publish m'learned friends would doubtless get involved.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
You have a choice ?
I have just looked on the postcode checker (For potential future reference), and there's a grand total of 1 primary in my catchment area
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
The people dying while waiting for an ambulance that is stuck in a queue outside a hospital stuffed with Covid and other patients would probably disagree.
I would be interested to see some reports of this, if you can share?
The piece says that this is at least in part caused by people turning up post-pandemic with hidden problems essentially caused by lock-down.
It is an exit wave of untreated illness. I'm not sure how delaying this particular exit wave by locking down again will help.
The piece doesn't even mention lockdown, so I don't know where you got that from. The piece does mention the "pandemic and the disruption it has caused to health care and everyday life" which one would think consists primarily of inability to access healthcare due to the hospitals being swamped with Covid patients as well as limitations imposed by measures to prevent cross infection in healthcare settings.
From the article: "People who did not come forward during the pandemic are coming forward now. Their situations have deteriorated... people turning up at emergency departments with quite advanced diseases."
I would imagine that having a lockdown encourages people to think that the situation is so bad that they don't want to go near a hospital, whatever their symptoms.
You could argue it is high case levels that do that, but given we've still got a fairly high case levels now and most things are back to normal, I'm not convinced.
I believe the decision to effectively ride the exit wave from July (although not advertised as such), was one of the best decisions this government has made.
For many months now I have been living as if Covid never happened, although I have worn a mask on the tube when I’ve had a cold (but not otherwise).
When I move to New York in January I feel like I’ll be going backwards.
Yup, I've said it a few times - it's the only policy of note for which I can give credit to this shambles of a government.
The decision in most European countries to keep hold of NPIs in the summer while vaccine efficacy was high and delta taking over was poor. I think there is still a lack of understanding that every single person is now going to get COVID at some point in the next year so the race is to vaccinate and protect people from severe symptoms not to prevent them from ever getting it.
A lot of people still seem to think that covid is going to be beaten or simply fade away. There is no reason to think either of those outcomes is likely. People need to understand that covid will become endemic, and so in the medium to long term EVERYBODY is going to get covid. Thinking you can avoid covid forever is about as likely, maybe even less likely, as being able to avoid getting a cold or flu for the rest of your life.
Yes and this is why continuing to crush the infection wave with NPIs is futile.
There was a story I saw earlier about covid in deer, which reminded me of I think it was TimT saying there are something like 200 known animal species that can act as a resevoir for the virus. We would need some miraculously effective vaccines to supress the virus in the human population, and all the time new variants could still be evolving in animals.
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
The one thing amongst the whole response is that one gets the feeling that at a visceral level Boris is very anti-lockdown. I would rather that than the Lab approach which has been to lock down and for more restrictions throughout the past 20 months.
The current Labour party would not have ever moved into a post-COVID world. They'd be very much like New Zealand where every case is still seen as a tragedy rather than a fact of life.
Imagine the counter-factual where Corbyn is PM, we joined in the EU vaccine procurement programme, then boycotted the Pfizer vaccine because they also sold them to Israel, didn’t drop the police-state app, still have the pubs at half capacity and sports played in empty stadia…
Imagine the counter-counter-factual where Jeremy Corbyn killed all our first-born and then we had plagues of frogs and locusts. That would be even worse than what is actually happening under the actual government led by the actual Prime Minister, so we'd better keep tight hold of nurse Boris.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
No, anyone who wants to send us back into lockdown restrictions needs to get fucked.
This needs to be a country with an NHS, not an NHS with a country. If the NHS gets swamped from here, it gets swamped from here. It needs to do the best it can, with the resources it has, and that's that.
You do accept though that your "fuck the NHS" approach isn't widely shared?
Sadly more widely shared than either of us would wish though.
Hope you are doing as OK as you can be BJO.
Thanks it is still very raw but time heals.
It's the post mortem today even though my mum died 12 days ago. Lots to do when I get death certificates.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
A couple of quickies: 1. National covid levels aren't the same as regional. What does where you are look like?2. Primary school likely under the guidance of the LEA with Covid management 3. Could be a great school you are passing on for frankly ideological reasons. Will you pick one that is crap academically because they fit more with your views on Covid?
Covid has been bloody awful for our kids. No denying that.
Valid questions.
1. Falling here (in line with the national trend, pretty much). I did ask about school cases - they had been falling too, before half term and maintained - so far - since then (the person just thought nationally cases were on the up, I guess). 2. Possibly, but other local schools are behaving differently (this one was under the LEA, as was one other; the other two we've seen are academies, so more autonomy, I guess) 3. It wasn't. All the ones we've looked at are fine academically as far as we can tell (Ofsted etc). We're in an area where there probably aren't any terrible schools. There are other reasons this was my least favourite of the ones we've seen, although it was fine - I'd still be happy to send my son there.
As for ideology, I think it's more than that. I'm not yet in the group that thinks schools should never have been closed (I think that's finely balanced and, to be frank, we still need for research on the role of schools in transmission, particularly if everything else is locked down). But this was having, for me, obvious effects on the kids' experiences. Parts of classrooms blocked off, areas where we were told there would normally be things out but they were packed away for now. My son's playgroup did some of these things last year and I support them in that, but they've brought things back to normal for this academic year. Other schools have had a few restrictions on place, but were mostly telling us about things they now feel able to do again and plans to reinstate activities over the coming year, all being well with Covid.
Offtopic, but overall the schools have all been fine. He'll probably go, first choice, to the one two of his cousins go to - it's one of the two most convenient, near his playgroup (so some kids from there will go) and obviously - with cousins there and my sister-in law a former teacher there (and father in law the head a decade or so ago) -it's the one we know most about.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
You have a choice ?
I have just looked on the postcode checker (For potential future reference), and there's a grand total of 1 primary in my catchment area
We could save a lot of carbon footprint by eliminating parental choice and sending kids to their nearest school rather than driving them across town. The net result is the same number of schools teaching the same number of pupils.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
Seems a bit mad to be having bubbles and the rest of it, to what end are they implementing this stuff? It does feel like some people are unable to let go of COVID. It's been imprinted in their soul.
As far as I can tell there are two measures, with different methodologies.
On a quarterly basis, U.K. is the clear laggard of the G7; on a monthly basis there’s not much separating us from France and Germany.
The figures are construed as disappointing, however, and the pound has fallen on the news.
Analysts seem divided on whether we should expect a great Q4 or a sluggish one.
It's to do with where the quarterly measure starts I think. The monthly measure compares to Feb 2020 and the quarterly one compares to December 2019.
On Q4, the data is coming in pretty hot, the October indices were much stronger than expected and the real time data for November is a continuation of that with some sings of a pick up in activity. One of the key drivers has been the government standing firm on plan b and lockdown measures. Businesses seem more confident investing this month than they did in September.
The big question mark is still the whole plan b saga, the government needs to stand really firm on it and tell the forever lockdowners to get fucked.
And when the main advocate of Plan B remains Whitty / Taylor et al looking at pants-shitting NHS data? We don't need it now. We might do in a few weeks unless we see a sustained drop on all metrics.
Nobody sane wants more lockdown or masks. But the people saying that we should ignore the scientists and the NHS managers with their real world data because their personal clicky research / ideology disagrees can, how did you put it, "get fucked".
Seriously though, what pants-shitting NHS data?
Are we supposed to squash the sombrero for ever?
I don't think we are there yet, but they already have some hospitals beyond overflowing. Remember that Covid and cuts have utterly shagged the system so that everything is backlogged.
The way they set it out was that if we had another surge the NHS would be swamped. Whilst we have seen some encouraging data in the last week it needs to be sustained. If we swing back the other way (and the daily count already has) then we could be in trouble.
That is all they are planning for. Its their jobs. Not sure why planning by NHS managers based on science and live data to avoid massive problems warrants the "get fucked" approach from pray the pox away types. We all want it to be over. Its certainly better than it was. But clearly not over.
No, anyone who wants to send us back into lockdown restrictions needs to get fucked.
This needs to be a country with an NHS, not an NHS with a country. If the NHS gets swamped from here, it gets swamped from here. It needs to do the best it can, with the resources it has, and that's that.
You do accept though that your "fuck the NHS" approach isn't widely shared?
Sadly more widely shared than either of us would wish though.
Hope you are doing as OK as you can be BJO.
Thanks it is still very raw but time heals.
It's the post mortem today even though my mum died 12 days ago. Lots to do when I get death certificates.
I think it's that phenomenon where the edge case/emotional impact generates a lot of debate, whilst clear cut examples of corruption don't, because they are obvious so little to discuss.
But Johnson has assured us that there's little or no corruption here.
Esther Webber @estwebber · 1h After the Times/Tel story of MPs getting drunk on a visit, a parliamentary source queries whether the govt really wants to open the can of worms which is MPs' behaviour on foreign trips
===
As I highlighted yesterday, if the papers move on to the drunken behaviour of MPs we are in for a fine old few days.
That would be incredibly funny, one assumes that there’s at least one drunken story on hundreds of MPs.
Remember back to 2013, and Eric Joyce being arrested in a Commons bar, that started a chain of events that led to a lot of the Labour party’s subsequent problems.
Surely, one would expect MPs to be inebriated on foreign excursions. The Yes Minister trip to Qumran was more of a documentary than a comedy.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
You have a choice ?
I have just looked on the postcode checker (For potential future reference), and there's a grand total of 1 primary in my catchment area
We could save a lot of carbon footprint by eliminating parental choice and sending kids to their nearest school rather than driving them across town. The net result is the same number of schools teaching the same number of pupils.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
You have a choice ?
I have just looked on the postcode checker (For potential future reference), and there's a grand total of 1 primary in my catchment area
Catchment areas are not all they're cracked up to be (we checked when buying the house, pre-children*) and there were only two. But people narby send them to 4-5 different schools. The school we saw today has, we were told by them, most of its kids from outside its official catchment.
*Actually to correct my earlier comment, there is one school relatively nearby (at least as the crow flies - it's across a river and some fields) which is in what passes locally for the badlands, so we wanted to see at the time whether that came up, but - due to population distributions, I guess - it didn't
Buy a block of basic student like flats. Offer that to MPs to use whilst they're in London. Stick a canteen at the bottom. Job done.
I know you’re being facetious, but I would actually do something like this
But make them big, luxury flats owned by the state in a nice part of Westminster. So the state ultimately gets the capital value of the investment - but the MPs get free accommodation in a very agreeable part of town
It would be a decent perk of the job. All MPs would be equal. No one would be forced to live there but if they decide not to, they won’t get any expenses for somewhere else
Simple.
There was a block of flats at the bottom of Waterloo bridge (Stamford street?) they looked at and passed on. Imperial turned it into student accommodation.
Your proposal seems reasonable. I’d make them 2 bedroom flats (no need to be mean). If MPs want to bring their families to London they can rent a hotel like everyone else.
Yes, no need to scrimp. The taxpayer will benefit as the state will get the capital gain from the property. Spacious 2 bed flats.
Takes away all the hassle of renting in London. You can move in immediately. Day one of Parliament. Don’t like it, fine, don’t live there but you won’t get money for anywhere else
A nice little perk of the job, but impossible to abuse the system. Sorted
Don’t MEPs have something like this? Official apartments owned by the EU? Or maybe they just sleep in their offices. They are known for their selflessness
No.
They just get ~10k Euro per month in their Daily Allowance, which covers accommodation and related costs.
Paid tax-free into their personal bank account, and from which they pay their staff and expenses.
None of this having to actually account for the spending stuff.
No. That 10k per month is purely for the personal stuf.
They get another 4.6k Euro a month for office rental, computers etc. And then another 26k Euros per month on top of that for office staff etc.
These are "up to" limits that have to be justified. But arranging to pay nearly up to the max is childsplay.
Without full transparency fraud is inevitable.
I can’t immediately find them, but both Dan Hannan and Nigel Farage wrote quite good pieces on the EU allowances system - neither of them could quite believe it when they turned up in Brussels and had everything explained to them.
Don’t also forget that the EU has its own income tax rate of 15%, for EU officials and employees, and that member states are prohibited from taxing them where they live.
There seems to be a running theme on this thread where certain uhh y I hung we ff red g people are confusing expenses and pay.
Expenses are provided as needed to enable you to do your work in a business. That's why they're expenses and not pay.
If you live and work in Derbyshire, say, and own a flat in London, are you required to stay there when travelling on business? Or can you stay in a hotel like your colleagues?
Can you stay in the flat overnight at immediate notice ? If so, no you can't expense the hotel.
Erste et eh Dewe we’re qq have qqqqbs BD MBF hi u
Cox can’t - he has a tenant
The relevant question is whether he was living in the flat when he became an MP, and only began renting it out î when he had an opportunity for the state to pay his rent on a different flat?
If he already had a tenant when he became an MP then it would be unreasonable to expect the tenant to be evicted, but otherwise I would see it as an abuse of the system.
AIUI he bought the flat and claimed mortgage interest as an expense when it was allowed
From 2011-2017 he lived there without claiming expenses
In 2017 he moved to a new rented apartment (which he claims for) and rented out the old flat
I’ve no idea why he moved out, but my guess is the flat was no longer what he needed (too large may be?) put rather than sell at a discount post Brexit he rented it out.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
Seems a bit mad to be having bubbles and the rest of it, to what end are they implementing this stuff? It does feel like some people are unable to let go of COVID. It's been imprinted in their soul.
Maybe they'd been influenced by questions from other parents, not sure. But it was noticeable that other schools were saying the last couple of years have been rubbish, here's what we've done to get as close back to normal as we can and here's what we plan to do before September, while this school (person, at least) seemed to be proud of all the things they'd curtailed due to Covid.
Esther Webber @estwebber · 1h After the Times/Tel story of MPs getting drunk on a visit, a parliamentary source queries whether the govt really wants to open the can of worms which is MPs' behaviour on foreign trips
===
As I highlighted yesterday, if the papers move on to the drunken behaviour of MPs we are in for a fine old few days.
That would be incredibly funny, one assumes that there’s at least one drunken story on hundreds of MPs.
Remember back to 2013, and Eric Joyce being arrested in a Commons bar, that started a chain of events that led to a lot of the Labour party’s subsequent problems.
Surely, one would expect MPs to be inebriated on foreign excursions. The Yes Minister trip to Qumran was more of a documentary than a comedy.
I think the problem with this incident is that it was a specific flight to Gibraltar for remembrance day, and the mps were representing Parliament at the service
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
You have a choice ?
I have just looked on the postcode checker (For potential future reference), and there's a grand total of 1 primary in my catchment area
We could save a lot of carbon footprint by eliminating parental choice and sending kids to their nearest school rather than driving them across town. The net result is the same number of schools teaching the same number of pupils.
And increasing selection by house price.
Had quite an argument with one of my children over the education of his children. Why, Mrs C & I wanted to know, wasn't he sending them to the school at the bottom of the road. Poor Ofsted report was his answer. So he and his wife had to drive about 5 miles to the one with the 'good Ofsted'. By the time the grandchildren left the situation was reversed.
That was quite a few years ago now. All the grandchildren's friends live some distance away.
Rather strange set of local by-elections today. The simplest is Denbighshire which should be a PC hold. In Cardiff there is an Ind defence which will probably be a Labour gain. In Lancaster there is an Econ-Soc elected as Lab defence. In Melton there is an Opposition elected as Con defence. Finally there is a Green defence in Thanet. Try looking for trends in that lot.
Listening to the radio this morning the second job controversy was not mentioned or referenced
Indeed the news stories seem largely to have moved on even on BBC and Sky
Actually it seems Megan Markle has dominated the news this morning and not in a good way for her
I wonder if the Mirror's Cox story might have more cut-through. It smacks more of plain old-fashioned greed rather than Cox being good at his job, and has echoes of the expenses scandal.
Tory MP Geoffrey Cox’s two homes greed exposed as he rents out taxpayer-funded flat MP Geoffrey Cox rents out London flat you helped fund; he then claims more for a second home in the capital; he even received £3,800 for two months he was in the Caribbean https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-mp-geoffrey-coxs-two-25429742
It is unreasonable though? If his colleagues are entitled to rent a flat on expenses why should he not?
No-one should be allowed to do that.
Expenses and public money should never have got involved in helping to fund MPs' property speculation.
Those that need accommodation in London should be covered the costs of their rent. End of.
So because he owns a flat in London he should be “paid” less?
And if he sells his Battersea flat and invests the money elsewhere his compensation should go up?
I agree that the previous system was wrong, but it’s inequitable to treat people today differently.
What on earth are you on about?
MP1 already owns a flat in London, so they live in it, zero loss zero gain.
MP2 doesn’t own a flat in London so they rent one and the exact cost of the rent is covered as an expense, zero loss zero gain.
You are requiring MP1 to use his/her capital to benefit the state.
The economically rationale thing to do would be for MP1 to sell their flat and reinvest the proceeds elsewhere. They then don’t own a flat and can get one paid for by the state
No I’m not. MP1 could sell their home then rent one if they wish, however I imagine one may prefer to live in their own home.
But why should they be paid less than their colleagues?
They're not.
An expense isn't supposed to be a payment for their benefit, but to cover a cost.
I agree. But @Gallowgate is proposing to penalise them for owning a flat in London even if it is not their primary home.
All MPs should have the same rights to claim expenses. If one MP chooses to rent out a flat they own and rent an alternative in expenses that should be permissible.
Your language reveals your mindset. Expenses aren't pay.
No-one is being "penalised" if they already have accommodation near their work, since those who are having it rented with no financial benefit to themselves aren't benefitting financially.
That’s why I put “pay” in inverted commas. It was a simplification.
If I stay with friends while travelling on business I am entitled to claim £150 as a per diem (not that o have ever known anyone claim this!).
Why, because an MP owns a property in London should he/she be obligated to live there rather than having the ability to re t it out like anyone else might choose to do? If they choose to live there they don’t get to claim expenses. If they want to rent somewhere else (may be more convenient for Westminster) they should have the same rights as any MP to claim the cost back
Do you know what the rules are for housing benefit?
Can someone working a minimum wage job and on Universal Credit claim housing benefit if they own a home they're choosing to let to someone else?
If not, why should the rules for housing benefits for MPs be any different to the law they have set for others?
Benefits are a contribution by the state to people in need of support. If you have significant capital you are not in need of support.
Expenses are paid to MPs in order to allow them to perform their democratic function. This often requires additional accommodation close to Westminster.
There is a fundamental difference
And if an MP already has a home in the capital then they don't require additional accommodation any more than somebody who owns their own home needs a benefit. There is absolutely no fundamental difference.
If the MP wants to earn extra money, they can get a job to earn it, not maximise their "expenses" as pay. Just as someone on benefits can.
But if he rents out the house then he doesn’t have access to it
Neither does an individual working on Universal Credit.
Universal credit is a benefit paid by tax payers to support an individual in need of support.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
You have a choice ?
I have just looked on the postcode checker (For potential future reference), and there's a grand total of 1 primary in my catchment area
We could save a lot of carbon footprint by eliminating parental choice and sending kids to their nearest school rather than driving them across town. The net result is the same number of schools teaching the same number of pupils.
And increasing selection by house price.
Indeed, the dirty little secret of the education system.
Any public education system needs to start from the premise that parents choose schools, not the other way around.
I've been pondering how one distinguishes legitimate outside work done by MPs, and outside work that is, at best, dubious, and have come up with a solution.
Any MP that claims in the Register that their role is "providing strategic advice" to a profit-making concern is, in all likelihood, raking in money in exchange for influence on government decision-making, and is therefore corrupt. Easy.
I provided such a test yesterday. If the services the MP provides are ones unrelated to being an MP and for which someone would pay anyway, that's fine.
Good lad. Yes I know he is not short of a bob or two. But they respect that in Yarkshire. We need a northern PM instead of these southern wusses.
Honestly, Sunak is as far from these effete self-aggrandising idiots in most of the rest of the cabinet as you can get.
He doesn't need to do corruption. He already has all the cash
There's his hedge fund days though. The word is, not clean.
I have some rather more precise information about what those hedge funds were doing. It is quite a story.
That test would be a swamp of grey areas. What aspects of commercial life are untouched by government regulation? Every time the government does anything, or, crucially, decides NOT to do anything, someone wins and someone else loses. Your test is freighted with a conservative bias, because it's easier to deny a conflict of interest when MPs are changing nothing, doing nothing, talking about nothing.
There seems to be a running theme on this thread where certain people are confusing expenses and pay.
Expenses are provided as needed to enable you to do your work in a business. That's why they're expenses and not pay.
If you live and work in Derbyshire, say, and own a flat in London, are you required to stay there when travelling on business? Or can you stay in a hotel like your colleagues?
Can you stay in the flat overnight at immediate notice ? If so, no you can't expense the hotel.
Cox can’t - he has a tenant
If Cox has a flat in London he shouldn't be claiming accommodation expenses from taxpayers. End of story. If he chooses to rent that flat out then he can use the rental income to pay for his own accommodation. A man earning £millions and he expects taxpayers on the minimum wage to pay for his accommodation in a city where he owns a flat? Unbelievable greed, and shocked to see anyone defending it on here. He's got to go.
I wonder how many legal actions such a stance would generate?
"We sacked you because we assumed..."
It's a nice fantasy, but how would you enforce it practically?
Would you sack Chris Bryant for doing the same thing between 2012 and 2017?
In my opinion, anyone who claims for London living expenses while owning a property in London that they could be living in should go. Perhaps an exemption if they are renting in their constituency (ie the London property is their only property). There are too many landlord MPs anyway.
So you are saying that no MP can make an investment in the Londom property market?
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
You have a choice ?
I have just looked on the postcode checker (For potential future reference), and there's a grand total of 1 primary in my catchment area
We could save a lot of carbon footprint by eliminating parental choice and sending kids to their nearest school rather than driving them across town. The net result is the same number of schools teaching the same number of pupils.
We'll have to drive to all the options and we live in the town (technically - towards the end of a long road heading out of town). There are two we could get to by bike if there was a decent path, but both are 60mph limit roads with no cycle lane, blind bends and occasional idiot drivers. Oddly, we do have a secondary school within easy walking distance; the distribution of primary schools is just a bit odd, I guess.
Just been to see a primary school for our eldest. Masks required (we and the person showing us round the only people wearing them, not the teachers or kids, at least). The person showing us round mentioned that cases were going up - I let that slide. Then proceeded to go through a big list of things that the school isn't doing at the moment with the kids due to Covid - it is bringing back bubbles, no assemblies, limited indoor play/PE, classes no allowed to mix. Fair to say it won't be top of our list!
You have a choice ?
I have just looked on the postcode checker (For potential future reference), and there's a grand total of 1 primary in my catchment area
We could save a lot of carbon footprint by eliminating parental choice and sending kids to their nearest school rather than driving them across town. The net result is the same number of schools teaching the same number of pupils.
And increasing selection by house price.
Had quite an argument with one of my children over the education of his children. Why, Mrs C & I wanted to know, wasn't he sending them to the school at the bottom of the road. Poor Ofsted report was his answer. So he and his wife had to drive about 5 miles to the one with the 'good Ofsted'. By the time the grandchildren left the situation was reversed.
That was quite a few years ago now. All the grandchildren's friends live some distance away.
A poor Ofsted report can be the catalyst for significant change. No school sits there when faced with a poor Ofsted report and thinks so what. The direction of travel is what is important, the calibre of the management and what they are doing now.
Listening to the radio this morning the second job controversy was not mentioned or referenced
Indeed the news stories seem largely to have moved on even on BBC and Sky
Actually it seems Megan Markle has dominated the news this morning and not in a good way for her
I wonder if the Mirror's Cox story might have more cut-through. It smacks more of plain old-fashioned greed rather than Cox being good at his job, and has echoes of the expenses scandal.
Tory MP Geoffrey Cox’s two homes greed exposed as he rents out taxpayer-funded flat MP Geoffrey Cox rents out London flat you helped fund; he then claims more for a second home in the capital; he even received £3,800 for two months he was in the Caribbean https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-mp-geoffrey-coxs-two-25429742
It is unreasonable though? If his colleagues are entitled to rent a flat on expenses why should he not?
No-one should be allowed to do that.
Expenses and public money should never have got involved in helping to fund MPs' property speculation.
Those that need accommodation in London should be covered the costs of their rent. End of.
So because he owns a flat in London he should be “paid” less?
And if he sells his Battersea flat and invests the money elsewhere his compensation should go up?
I agree that the previous system was wrong, but it’s inequitable to treat people today differently.
What on earth are you on about?
MP1 already owns a flat in London, so they live in it, zero loss zero gain.
MP2 doesn’t own a flat in London so they rent one and the exact cost of the rent is covered as an expense, zero loss zero gain.
You are requiring MP1 to use his/her capital to benefit the state.
The economically rationale thing to do would be for MP1 to sell their flat and reinvest the proceeds elsewhere. They then don’t own a flat and can get one paid for by the state
No I’m not. MP1 could sell their home then rent one if they wish, however I imagine one may prefer to live in their own home.
But why should they be paid less than their colleagues?
They're not.
An expense isn't supposed to be a payment for their benefit, but to cover a cost.
I agree. But @Gallowgate is proposing to penalise them for owning a flat in London even if it is not their primary home.
All MPs should have the same rights to claim expenses. If one MP chooses to rent out a flat they own and rent an alternative in expenses that should be permissible.
Your language reveals your mindset. Expenses aren't pay.
No-one is being "penalised" if they already have accommodation near their work, since those who are having it rented with no financial benefit to themselves aren't benefitting financially.
That’s why I put “pay” in inverted commas. It was a simplification.
If I stay with friends while travelling on business I am entitled to claim £150 as a per diem (not that o have ever known anyone claim this!).
Why, because an MP owns a property in London should he/she be obligated to live there rather than having the ability to re t it out like anyone else might choose to do? If they choose to live there they don’t get to claim expenses. If they want to rent somewhere else (may be more convenient for Westminster) they should have the same rights as any MP to claim the cost back
Do you know what the rules are for housing benefit?
Can someone working a minimum wage job and on Universal Credit claim housing benefit if they own a home they're choosing to let to someone else?
If not, why should the rules for housing benefits for MPs be any different to the law they have set for others?
Benefits are a contribution by the state to people in need of support. If you have significant capital you are not in need of support.
Expenses are paid to MPs in order to allow them to perform their democratic function. This often requires additional accommodation close to Westminster.
There is a fundamental difference
And if an MP already has a home in the capital then they don't require additional accommodation any more than somebody who owns their own home needs a benefit. There is absolutely no fundamental difference.
If the MP wants to earn extra money, they can get a job to earn it, not maximise their "expenses" as pay. Just as someone on benefits can.
But if he rents out the house then he doesn’t have access to it
Neither does an individual working on Universal Credit.
Universal credit is a benefit paid by tax payers to support an individual in need of support.
And expenses are a benefit paid by tax payers to support an individual in need of support.
If the support is needed for one, its needed for both. If it isn't, it isn't.
Just back from Waitrose and for the first time noticed a serious shortage problem. Many gaps on shelves with apologetic notices in lieu of products. Snacks section particularly denuded. No hula hoops, no crisps apart from poncy rip off brands, not much by way of nuts. Any impact on me? Yes, a very tangible one. Pringles aren't my idea of a taste sensation but I was left with little choice other than to buy some of those. Blow cushioned just slightly by them being on special offer, £1 off.
Is there a particular problem with crisps?
They are garbage and not even food but are easily the best accelerant if you want to burn a car with no suspicious forensics left behind.
You've always been one of my favourite posters on this site, but I'm not sure I can trust someone who doesn't like crisps.
DA obviously likes his cars more than he likes crisps. But he's right in at least one sense. Edit: both, actually.
Comments
There was an opinion that this needs urgent attention from within the NHS organisation as training new paramedics is not a quick fix as it takes 4 years
We have bent over backwards to "save the NHS", we've sacrificed years that nobody is ever going to get back. We've got the vaccines, we've put up taxes, we've given the NHS billions extra.
My eldest daughter is in Year 3, her last uninterrupted year of education was when she was in Reception.
There comes a point where we need to say enough is enough, and I am well past that point now.
"I don't want to be locked down" - great, I agree. But that isn't the debate. In reality its "I don't want to wear a mask". Neither do I, but I'm not propagating bad science to attack them as some do on here.
Wearing a mask in certain settings is not keeping "the rest of us locked down"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-59247115
NEW: EU official says the EU has always made it clear that the "objectives set out by the UK" in the Command Paper on the NI Protocol are "unattainable", but says the EU is committed to the current EU UK technical talks
https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1458727848194322435?s=20
The people demanding we wear masks will be the day after they're 'required' be demanding further steps because mask mandates [as opposed to masks] are as close to useless as it gets.
Mask mandates if people don't want to wear masks just means masks around necks etc, which doesn't do jack.
The job of people in charge is to have contingency plans for all sorts of unlikely scenarios, but realistically how would we have another surge of sufficient scale to risk complete collapse?
We have enough people immunized, we have a booster programme - where are the people vulnerable to the virus who might fill the hospitals as last winter?
We are back to normal risks to be managed in normal ways.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59234443
It might seem like a pretty harsh decision but it's probably saved thousands of lives this winter to have our exit wave in the summer/autumn rather than kick the can down the road and get swamped with cases in winter as Germany and other European countries are about to be.
The problem is in places where the number of vaccine refusers is still way more than enough to overwhelm the health system. We are in effect having restrictions imposed on us by the sadly misinformed choices of a large minority, which is also starting to create a lot of anger among the vaccinated.
Expect much stricter 2g rules in Germany very soon, the current 3g rules have barely been enforced at all up to now. And then noisy protests from the so-called Querdenker types.
They get another 4.6k Euro a month for office rental, computers etc.
And then another 26k Euros per month on top of that for office staff etc.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/15/staffing-arrangements-parliamentary-assistants
These are "up to" limits that have to be justified. But arranging to pay nearly up to the max is childsplay.
Without full transparency fraud is inevitable.
@RedfieldWilton
Today at 3pm, we will release a bonus Westminster Voting Intention poll. The Conservatives were 1% ahead of Labour in Monday’s poll—will they hold on to that lead? Follow us
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10:45 AM · Nov 11, 2021·Twitter Web
When *we* see *them* changing *their* behaviour, then maybe we might think about changing our own…
It is already a wave consisting mainly of younger people who get much less ill. Who is the next wave going to hit? And if it does, additional treatment drugs will be available.
The report cites one or two cases of unacceptable waits for ambulance service, and I don’t deny that the NHS is very strained and wrestling with a massive backlog.
However, I’m totally unconvinced that new (or the resumption of old) NPIs would make any difference on NHS pressures.
I don’t think we’ve handled the overall pandemic very well, specifically the failure to lock down quickly enough on three separate occasions in 2019/20.
But I still believe that the decision in July was the right one, indeed about the only good thing this wretched government has done.
https://twitter.com/campbellclaret/status/1458557645758115840?s=21
In summary Boris and his team were briefed about masks, decided to ignore the hospital management and put them in the impossible situation of how do you manage a PM in clear breach of his own guidance putting staff and patients in danger?
It is an exit wave of untreated illness. I'm not sure how delaying this particular exit wave by locking down again will help.
It's the post mortem today even though my mum died 12 days ago. Lots to do when I get death certificates.
Can finally have a proper send off.
Off now for more house clearing.
He’s got form in not giving a shit about anyone but himself.
He is a total liability and frankly I don’t trust his so called libertarian instincts either; it is mostly about what suits himself or what he think might play well in the Telegraph.
I presume people die, sadly, in such circumstances every year. IT is sad but nothing new.
Exit waves are inevitable.
The problem on top of that is that Delta seems to make most precautions much less effective. My guesstimate is that a full lockdown would slow a Delta surge down, but not stop it, unless you had a very high level of vaccination. As well....
Write to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner instead. If there is evidence of something worse she can refer it.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/22A8/production/_121327880_b95c0cd4-b0dd-4631-991f-f5be8a9ac268.jpg
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/70C8/production/_121327882_ca2bf57e-46ca-4ae5-b4be-f2e7f8a9bb81.jpg
Fine, it isn't really a balanced situation given Attenborough is 95 and Boris doesn't seem to be able to wear a mask properly, but still...
I cannot see him being leader by the next election.
So to repeat, we should pay MPs allowances not expenses (and arguably what caused the original scandal was pretending to do one while actually doing the other).
@jburnmurdoch
·
30m
NEW: England has recorded 18 successive days of week-on-week declines in cases, its longest sequence of declines since February, suggesting its autumn/winter wave may have peaked
1. National covid levels aren't the same as regional. What does where you are look like?2. Primary school likely under the guidance of the LEA with Covid management
3. Could be a great school you are passing on for frankly ideological reasons. Will you pick one that is crap academically because they fit more with your views on Covid?
Covid has been bloody awful for our kids. No denying that.
@estwebber
· 1h
After the Times/Tel story of MPs getting drunk on a visit, a parliamentary source queries whether the govt really wants to open the can of worms which is MPs' behaviour on foreign trips
===
As I highlighted yesterday, if the papers move on to the drunken behaviour of MPs we are in for a fine old few days.
That doesn't mean their words are to be accepted as gospel uncritically. We can all see the data and see the difference vaccines have made. It's not unreasonable to conclude that we can now return to normal.
Obviously people working within the NHS will always see ways that it might be improved, and since they will be used to wearing masks more routinely they will have a different perspective to everyone else. To other people, like my wife, masks represent fear and danger and they act as a barrier to her being able to live a life outside of the home, even though the vaccine means that the risks are pretty much back to normal compared to 2020.
As a democracy we can choose how to balance these competing priorities. We stayed at home when a new virus created a situation the NHS wasn't able to cope with. Now that we are vaccinated the situation is one that the NHS can cope with, albeit as ever we might wish it had more resources, or was differently organised, so that it would do a better job.
A new post-pandemic normal can include things that make lives better, like less commuting, but we have to make an effort to stop a lingering fear from being a persistent feature of our lives.
As was said earlier, and in the absence of names by the broadcast media, further action may follow, who knows
Remember back to 2013, and Eric Joyce being arrested in a Commons bar, that started a chain of events that led to a lot of the Labour party’s subsequent problems.
I have just looked on the postcode checker (For potential future reference), and there's a grand total of 1 primary in my catchment area
"People who did not come forward during the pandemic are coming forward now. Their situations have deteriorated... people turning up at emergency departments with quite advanced diseases."
I would imagine that having a lockdown encourages people to think that the situation is so bad that they don't want to go near a hospital, whatever their symptoms.
You could argue it is high case levels that do that, but given we've still got a fairly high case levels now and most things are back to normal, I'm not convinced.
1. Falling here (in line with the national trend, pretty much). I did ask about school cases - they had been falling too, before half term and maintained - so far - since then (the person just thought nationally cases were on the up, I guess).
2. Possibly, but other local schools are behaving differently (this one was under the LEA, as was one other; the other two we've seen are academies, so more autonomy, I guess)
3. It wasn't. All the ones we've looked at are fine academically as far as we can tell (Ofsted etc). We're in an area where there probably aren't any terrible schools. There are other reasons this was my least favourite of the ones we've seen, although it was fine - I'd still be happy to send my son there.
As for ideology, I think it's more than that. I'm not yet in the group that thinks schools should never have been closed (I think that's finely balanced and, to be frank, we still need for research on the role of schools in transmission, particularly if everything else is locked down). But this was having, for me, obvious effects on the kids' experiences. Parts of classrooms blocked off, areas where we were told there would normally be things out but they were packed away for now. My son's playgroup did some of these things last year and I support them in that, but they've brought things back to normal for this academic year. Other schools have had a few restrictions on place, but were mostly telling us about things they now feel able to do again and plans to reinstate activities over the coming year, all being well with Covid.
Offtopic, but overall the schools have all been fine. He'll probably go, first choice, to the one two of his cousins go to - it's one of the two most convenient, near his playgroup (so some kids from there will go) and obviously - with cousins there and my sister-in law a former teacher there (and father in law the head a decade or so ago) -it's the one we know most about.
*Actually to correct my earlier comment, there is one school relatively nearby (at least as the crow flies - it's across a river and some fields) which is in what passes locally for the badlands, so we wanted to see at the time whether that came up, but - due to population distributions, I guess - it didn't
Don’t also forget that the EU has its own income tax rate of 15%, for EU officials and employees, and that member states are prohibited from taxing them where they live.
From 2011-2017 he lived there without claiming expenses
In 2017 he moved to a new rented apartment (which he claims for) and rented out the old flat
I’ve no idea why he moved out, but my guess is the flat was no longer what he needed (too large may be?) put rather than sell at a discount post Brexit he rented it out.
I really can’t see what he has done wrong.
By the time the grandchildren left the situation was reversed.
That was quite a few years ago now. All the grandchildren's friends live some distance away.
Any public education system needs to start from the premise that parents choose schools, not the other way around.
Whatever happens, it couldn't happen to a more malevolent barsteward.
If the support is needed for one, its needed for both. If it isn't, it isn't.
https://www.gre.ac.uk/articles/public-relations/arsonists-use-crisps-to-start-fires-research