“Young people, in their 20s to just over their late 30s, are coming in with moderate to severe disease, some needing intensive care. About 65% are not vaccinated and most of the rest are only half-vaccinated.”
i.e. her critical care facility is filling up primarily with the unvaccinated, just like ours have been for months.
An early indication here of a mixed bag. It's possible, given that we've previously been getting reports of rapid spread, that Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, but not necessarily much better at defeating the immunity conferred by vaccines. This would be consistent with two previously advanced theories: that Covid-19 will evolve to become more transmissible but less pathogenic over time, and that vaccine escape is likely to be gradual rather than sudden.
ICNARC reported on rates of admission to critical care by vaccination status for patients admitted between 1 May and 31 July 2021.
For those vaccinated with 2 doses, the admission rate per 100k per week at the time was approximately 0.1 for under 40s and 0.2 for ages 40+. For the unvaccinated, the critical care admission rates was 3 times this level for the under 30s, rising to 70 times for ages 60 to 69.
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
A fantasy world where he is some superman bringing salvation.
The worst Chancellor and second-to-May the worst PM in a very long time. Utterly trashed the economy and is so delusional he suckers people into believing his mythologies.
We still have people on this site even who buy into his twisted worldview over a decade on.
Brown did not trash the economy and David Cameron was our worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
He turned a budget surplus into a major deficit before the recession, which left the economy with a 10% budget deficit years after the end of the recession.
Inexcusable recklessness.
He turned a budget deficit into a budget surplus and then a small deficit again but even so it made no difference to the global financial crisis.
He made the fundamental mistake of confusing cyclical and structural revenues.
Based on a temporary upswing in revenues he splurged on spending in ways that can’t easily be unwound.
He abused PFI to finance off balance sheet spending and locked many schools’n’hospitals into onerous maintenance contracts.
In the short term we were very exposed to the global financial crisis because of his decisions. In the long term we are still living with the consequences of his mistakes (pensions, in work benefits, PFI)
Reportedly, the (unvaccinated) omicron patient in Belgium returned from Egypt 11 days ago.
To me this strongly indicates community transmission in Belgium. I don't see how reconcile an actual 11-day incubation time with the claims of rapid spread in South Africa.
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
If we know we’re going to get punished for detecting new variants, as in the past...then surely, we should know what we’re dealing with before we go and announce it to the world.
Morning all! The morning after the night before. Need a roofer and a tree surgeon. Roof is intact but several sections of ridge tiles are gone. Cars both intact despite debris around them. The trees in our side garden have been torn apart. Two trucks ripped off, next door's drive completely blocked. Not that you can go anywhere anyway as most of the roads are also blocked...
Morning all! The morning after the night before. Need a roofer and a tree surgeon. Roof is intact but several sections of ridge tiles are gone. Cars both intact despite debris around them. The trees in our side garden have been torn apart. Two trucks ripped off, next door's drive completely blocked. Not that you can go anywhere anyway as most of the roads are also blocked...
R4 reporting actor Matthew Macfadyen on why he doesn't use social media - his son told him "Twitter is for old angry people, Facebook is for old people and Instagram is for people who want to feel better about their lives but end up feeling worse.' As one of the presenters observed "we should get him to do Thought for the Day".
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Because there is no political purity test in employment decisions?
“Young people, in their 20s to just over their late 30s, are coming in with moderate to severe disease, some needing intensive care. About 65% are not vaccinated and most of the rest are only half-vaccinated.”
i.e. her critical care facility is filling up primarily with the unvaccinated, just like ours have been for months.
An early indication here of a mixed bag. It's possible, given that we've previously been getting reports of rapid spread, that Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, but not necessarily much better at defeating the immunity conferred by vaccines. This would be consistent with two previously advanced theories: that Covid-19 will evolve to become more transmissible but less pathogenic over time, and that vaccine escape is likely to be gradual rather than sudden.
We have done this a million times before, but there's no good theoretical reason for the virus to become less pathogenic over time, nor much in the way of observation. Smallpox and rabies are still not the equivalent of a rather nasty cold.
Which is why we're still being massacred annually by the Spanish Flu.
R4 reporting actor Matthew Macfadyen on why he doesn't use social media - his son told him "Twitter is for old angry people, Facebook is for old people and Instagram is for people who want to feel better about their lives but end up feeling worse.' As one of the presenters observed "we should get him to do Thought for the Day".
Interesting observations, sat opposite him once on the tube
David Miliband popped up on Today this morning to remind us of how we might have a moderate Labour government led by a top quality political communicator with intelligent views.
He also noted that the refugee crisis is mostly a burden for people a long way away from us, and that solutions lie in better governance and better diplomacy in the states from which they originate.
Controversially… they need to shake up the map in the Sahel.
Turns out that colonial derived borders aren’t always appropriate
David Miliband popped up on Today this morning to remind us of how we might have a moderate Labour government led by a top quality political communicator with intelligent views.
He also noted that the refugee crisis is mostly a burden for people a long way away from us, and that solutions lie in better governance and better diplomacy in the states from which they originate.
If it wasn't for the ambitions of his ridiculous brother I've no doubt he would have become Prime Minister and we would have been spared Brexit and Johnson and all that followed
Although Ed is probably the more intelligent, more emotionally intelligent and the more visionary politician. Just geeky so the press can slaughter him with a banana 🍌 or bacon 🥓 roll
My devil at the moment used to work in Ed's office. He was telling us a story about accompanying him to the cenotaph in the pub recently. An equerry asked who he was with and he replied Ed. Next thing he knew he was on a balcony with Cherie and Norma overlooking the ceremony on the basis that he was there as his partner! When he tried to leave he then found the door was locked. The walls opposite were lined with cameras and he, who is over 6 foot, was trying to find a way to hide.
Mr. Roger, you didn't cite racism you cited supporting a political figure.
It's worth recalling that people are innocent until proven guilty. This isn't Cardassia Prime.
If the political leaders you support are racist-Trump and Farage- is it unreasonable to believe there is a case to answer? Particularly when you add tweets such as "Not many English people live in London. I'll need to learn a Foreign language...." plus others too distasteful to mention.
David Miliband popped up on Today this morning to remind us of how we might have a moderate Labour government led by a top quality political communicator with intelligent views.
He also noted that the refugee crisis is mostly a burden for people a long way away from us, and that solutions lie in better governance and better diplomacy in the states from which they originate.
Wow! What a colossus to finally work out people flee dictators, despots and bad governance that creates violence poverty or misery.
I agree that his remarks were not stellar in insight, but none the less correct; and that that most discussion at the moment appears to believe that the refugee problem and solution lies somewhere in how we police the inflatable dinghy industry and the channel coastline.
As no solution is possible within western Europe, because western Europeans are not fleeing torture and dungeon, we may as well focus on where solutions may be found.
Morning all! The morning after the night before. Need a roofer and a tree surgeon. Roof is intact but several sections of ridge tiles are gone. Cars both intact despite debris around them. The trees in our side garden have been torn apart. Two trucks ripped off, next door's drive completely blocked. Not that you can go anywhere anyway as most of the roads are also blocked...
It was certainly the nosiest night I can remember in a very long time. We have a thin covering of snow this morning. Still blowy but nothing like last night. I must go and find some bins...
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
A fantasy world where he is some superman bringing salvation.
The worst Chancellor and second-to-May the worst PM in a very long time. Utterly trashed the economy and is so delusional he suckers people into believing his mythologies.
We still have people on this site even who buy into his twisted worldview over a decade on.
Brown did not trash the economy and David Cameron was our worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
He turned a budget surplus into a major deficit before the recession, which left the economy with a 10% budget deficit years after the end of the recession.
Inexcusable recklessness.
He turned a budget deficit into a budget surplus and then a small deficit again but even so it made no difference to the global financial crisis.
He made the fundamental mistake of confusing cyclical and structural revenues.
Based on a temporary upswing in revenues he splurged on spending in ways that can’t easily be unwound.
He abused PFI to finance off balance sheet spending and locked many schools’n’hospitals into onerous maintenance contracts.
In the short term we were very exposed to the global financial crisis because of his decisions. In the long term we are still living with the consequences of his mistakes (pensions, in work benefits, PFI)
You're absolutely right about PFI but not the other stuff. We were very exposed to the financial crisis because we have an outsized financial sector which at the time of the crisis had leveraged up and over-extended itself internationally. Fiscal policy was at most a small contributor, more likely an irrelevance.
“Young people, in their 20s to just over their late 30s, are coming in with moderate to severe disease, some needing intensive care. About 65% are not vaccinated and most of the rest are only half-vaccinated.”
i.e. her critical care facility is filling up primarily with the unvaccinated, just like ours have been for months.
An early indication here of a mixed bag. It's possible, given that we've previously been getting reports of rapid spread, that Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, but not necessarily much better at defeating the immunity conferred by vaccines. This would be consistent with two previously advanced theories: that Covid-19 will evolve to become more transmissible but less pathogenic over time, and that vaccine escape is likely to be gradual rather than sudden.
We have done this a million times before, but there's no good theoretical reason for the virus to become less pathogenic over time, nor much in the way of observation. Smallpox and rabies are still not the equivalent of a rather nasty cold.
Which is why we're still being massacred annually by the Spanish Flu.
AIUI, the smallpox virus was very stable, and hardly changed at all in centuries. That's one reason why vaccines wiped it out.
This thing's changed more often than an explanation for cancelling HS2 put to the House by Grant Shapps.
If we know we’re going to get punished for detecting new variants, as in the past...then surely, we should know what we’re dealing with before we go and announce it to the world.
One has to feel a little sorry for SA in all this. They happen to have more scientific resource directed towards mapping variants, than anyone else within several thousand miles, so when something novel appears, it has their name on it.
The UK Beta variant probably wasn’t from Kent either, it was just there that it was first noticed officially.
“Young people, in their 20s to just over their late 30s, are coming in with moderate to severe disease, some needing intensive care. About 65% are not vaccinated and most of the rest are only half-vaccinated.”
i.e. her critical care facility is filling up primarily with the unvaccinated, just like ours have been for months.
An early indication here of a mixed bag. It's possible, given that we've previously been getting reports of rapid spread, that Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, but not necessarily much better at defeating the immunity conferred by vaccines. This would be consistent with two previously advanced theories: that Covid-19 will evolve to become more transmissible but less pathogenic over time, and that vaccine escape is likely to be gradual rather than sudden.
We have done this a million times before, but there's no good theoretical reason for the virus to become less pathogenic over time, nor much in the way of observation. Smallpox and rabies are still not the equivalent of a rather nasty cold.
Which is why we're still being massacred annually by the Spanish Flu.
Yes. "Sometimes happens" doesn't create much of a natural law, does it? You were wrongly implying Always or usually happens, on the basis (you probably don't know this) of a couple of studies of myxomatosis in rabbits.
Would love to hear a fair defence of this behaviour. French ministers make ad hominem attacks on UK counterparts—accurate or not—then officially tweet them out, but the publication of a letter crosses a line? This ongoing Anglo-French row is pathetic.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, addressing the Omicronpanic on Radio 4 a few minutes ago:
If you look at where most of the mutations are, they are similar to regions of the spike protein that have been seen with other variants so far and that tells you that, despite mutations existing in other variants, the vaccines have continued to prevent very severe disease as we’ve moved through Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.
At least from a speculative point of view we have some optimism that the vaccine should still work against this variant for severe disease but really we need to wait several weeks to have that confirmed.
But it is extremely unlikely that a reboot of a pandemic in a vaccinated population like we saw last year is going to happen.
Mr. Roger, I do not believe everyone who supported Corbyn is a Communist, or soft (to be excessively polite) on terror.
Supporting or voting for someone is not an endorsement of everything that individual stands for personally and politically, it's a choice between alternatives.
I'll take a lettuce sandwich if I'm starving to death. Doesn't mean I love lettuce sandwiches.
And condemning people out of hand because they support someone you dislike politically is absolutely censorious.
Would love to hear a fair defence of this behaviour. French ministers make ad hominem attacks on UK counterparts—accurate or not—then officially tweet them out, but the publication of a letter crosses a line? This ongoing Anglo-French row is pathetic.
Mr. Roger, I do not believe everyone who supported Corbyn is a Communist, or soft (to be excessively polite) on terror.
Supporting or voting for someone is not an endorsement of everything that individual stands for personally and politically, it's a choice between alternatives.
I'll take a lettuce sandwich if I'm starving to death. Doesn't mean I love lettuce sandwiches.
And condemning people out of hand because they support someone you dislike politically is absolutely censorious.
Agree with all of this. Would also add that the role he was hired for had nothing to do with politics.
If the allegations of casual racism are true then I'm happy to say that should disqualify him. But simply having political views of some kind aren't enough.
Mr. HYUFD, if almost anyone Labour but Corbyn had been leader in the referendum that might also have tipped the scales.
Mr. H, to be fair, it was his own team that set up the Woe of Bacon.
I doubt who was Labour leader was decisive in the EU referendum, just because a Miliband was Labour leader rather than Corbyn that would not have stopped the Red Wall voting to end free movement and get more money for the NHS from the EU.
However as I said had David Miliband been Labour leader in 2015 and prevented a Tory majority so that the Cameron-Clegg coalition continued or there was a Tory minority government there would have been no EU referendum at all. Indeed David Miliband may just have become PM at the 2020 general election having beaten new Tory PM George Osborne with Farage getting 20% of the vote.
Such was the consequence of Ed beating David in 2010, you could argue it directly led to the Tory majority of 2015, the EU referendum and Brexit, Corbyn becoming Labour leader and now PM Boris.
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
I wonder if Whitty really did say the new variant was less worrying than Delta, as the headline claims.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Mr. Roger, I do not believe everyone who supported Corbyn is a Communist, or soft (to be excessively polite) on terror.
Supporting or voting for someone is not an endorsement of everything that individual stands for personally and politically, it's a choice between alternatives.
I'll take a lettuce sandwich if I'm starving to death. Doesn't mean I love lettuce sandwiches.
And condemning people out of hand because they support someone you dislike politically is absolutely censorious.
Agree with all of this. Would also add that the role he was hired for had nothing to do with politics.
If the allegations of casual racism are true then I'm happy to say that should disqualify him. But simply having political views of some kind aren't enough.
If we were to blacklist all supporters of racist leaders who falsely claimed victory in an election where they lost more narrowly than expected, there would be no Corbynistas left in the media.
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
I wonder if Whitty really did say the new variant was less worrying than Delta, as the headline claims.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Otoh in the same article
Sir John Bell, one of the Government's most senior advisers on vaccines, said the new variant may end up causing no more than "runny noses and headaches" in those who have been vaccinated.
Sir John, the regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said that while the new variant might evade antibodies, it would be less likely to escape T-cells and other parts of the immune system that provide broader protection.
"You could still have a highly infectious virus that scoots around and causes lots of trouble, but causes lots of, you know, runny noses and headaches but doesn't put people into hospital. Honestly, you could live with that, I think," he said.
I'll take that. Good news breaking out all over this morning.
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Even if he was a Trump supporter that does not necessarily mean he is a racist, after all 19% of Black American men voted for Trump in 2020 as did 36% of US Asians and 57% of US whites.
Nor does it have anything to do with his ability as a cricket commentator. That should be judged on his ability to give effective commentary not because of political thought police
Absolutely. Very silly post from Roger. Support for Trump confirms he’s a numpty, but it’s a very long way indeed from grounds for dismissal.
I’m not a massive Vaughan fan (as a commentator), and there some dodgy old tweets about Muslims and terrorism, but it’s arguably an overreaction by the BBC.
Cricket, and especially YCCC, does need to get its house in order, though.
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
I wonder if Whitty really did say the new variant was less worrying than Delta, as the headline claims.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Possibly, I don't have access to the article. But his advice as reported is sound. The priority right now is to get as many people as possible boosted before Christmas and the peak of the flu season. In respect of Nu, what will be will be. Let's not get distracted. Another 396k boosters yesterday. That is what is important.
Not that concerned about Omicron (at least, not yet. Hopefully this post won't come back and bite me).
- "Vaccine escape" should better be termed "immunity erosion" because it's never a binary on/off but a gradual drift (both Alpha and Delta have immunity erosion over the original strain, for example). And whilst mutations are in the areas associated with that, no-one knows how they'll interact with each other (Additive? Cancelling?). And if, say, it's at the level of Beta - well, three doses of Pfizer gave better protection from Beta than two doses against the original strain. - In addition, a huge chunk of the boosted here will have heterologous vaccine immunity: from two different methods (adenovector/AZ plus mRNA/Pfizer or Moderna). That's demonstrated to give broader-based immunity against potential mutations - T-cell mediated immunity gives excellent protection against severe disease even if the virus gets past the antibody line of defence, and it's not mutating away from that - If it's a transmissibility advantage, Delta's already at the point way beyond the inflection line on the graph, where big increases in transmissibility give limited movement of the herd immunity threshold. An R0 of 6 gives an HiT of 83%; one of 12 (double the level) gives an HiT of 92%. Getting 9% more of us immune is a far smaller step than getting 83% of us immune. (The estimates of a 500% boost in transmissibility currently fail the sniff test with me. Measles is the most infectious one we know with an R0 of 15-18. One of 36 (which a 500% transmissibility would indicate) would be astonishing - I don't know if it could be possible)
... and we're at a point where the level of immunity in the population is such as to push Delta's R down from 6 to just over 1 with negligible restrictions, so we're not far off that 83% area.
I can't see the need for and significant restrictions coming back now. Obviously they help to reduce transmission while in use (you'd have to be eyebrow-deep in denial to deny that they work for that), but at this point, would they be necessary?
We're already trucking along well with boosters, and another chunk of the population have two-dose-plus-breakthrough immunity (hybrid immunity, which is considerably better than 2-dose immunity even if not quite up there with 3-dose immunity).
I think the message should just be Keep Calm And Carry On Boosting
“Young people, in their 20s to just over their late 30s, are coming in with moderate to severe disease, some needing intensive care. About 65% are not vaccinated and most of the rest are only half-vaccinated.”
i.e. her critical care facility is filling up primarily with the unvaccinated, just like ours have been for months.
An early indication here of a mixed bag. It's possible, given that we've previously been getting reports of rapid spread, that Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, but not necessarily much better at defeating the immunity conferred by vaccines. This would be consistent with two previously advanced theories: that Covid-19 will evolve to become more transmissible but less pathogenic over time, and that vaccine escape is likely to be gradual rather than sudden.
We have done this a million times before, but there's no good theoretical reason for the virus to become less pathogenic over time, nor much in the way of observation. Smallpox and rabies are still not the equivalent of a rather nasty cold.
Which is why we're still being massacred annually by the Spanish Flu.
Yes. "Sometimes happens" doesn't create much of a natural law, does it? You were wrongly implying Always or usually happens, on the basis (you probably don't know this) of a couple of studies of myxomatosis in rabbits.
Nonetheless, I'm pretty confident that this disease is going to gradually fade away. The 1918 episode was far from the first mass outbreak of a highly transmissible respiratory illness to inflict carnage on the human race, but all of the previous ones have come and gone, without the benefit of genomic sequencing, tracking and tracing, and modern medical therapies and techniques.
I was confident that Covid-19 had done its worst before the Omicronpanic began, and I've seen nothing in the early reports of the variant to imply the contrary.
Not that concerned about Omicron (at least, not yet. Hopefully this post won't come back and bite me).
- "Vaccine escape" should better be termed "immunity erosion" because it's never a binary on/off but a gradual drift (both Alpha and Delta have immunity erosion over the original strain, for example). And whilst mutations are in the areas associated with that, no-one knows how they'll interact with each other (Additive? Cancelling?). And if, say, it's at the level of Beta - well, three doses of Pfizer gave better protection from Beta than two doses against the original strain. - In addition, a huge chunk of the boosted here will have heterologous vaccine immunity: from two different methods (adenovector/AZ plus mRNA/Pfizer or Moderna). That's demonstrated to give broader-based immunity against potential mutations - T-cell mediated immunity gives excellent protection against severe disease even if the virus gets past the antibody line of defence, and it's not mutating away from that - If it's a transmissibility advantage, Delta's already at the point way beyond the inflection line on the graph, where big increases in transmissibility give limited movement of the herd immunity threshold. An R0 of 6 gives an HiT of 83%; one of 12 (double the level) gives an HiT of 92%. Getting 9% more of us immune is a far smaller step than getting 83% of us immune. (The estimates of a 500% boost in transmissibility currently fail the sniff test with me. Measles is the most infectious one we know with an R0 of 15-18. One of 36 (which a 500% transmissibility would indicate) would be astonishing - I don't know if it could be possible)
... and we're at a point where the level of immunity in the population is such as to push Delta's R down from 6 to just over 1 with negligible restrictions, so we're not far off that 83% area.
I can't see the need for and significant restrictions coming back now. Obviously they help to reduce transmission while in use (you'd have to be eyebrow-deep in denial to deny that they work for that), but at this point, would they be necessary?
We're already trucking along well with boosters, and another chunk of the population have two-dose-plus-breakthrough immunity (hybrid immunity, which is considerably better than 2-dose immunity even if not quite up there with 3-dose immunity).
I think the message should just be Keep Calm And Carry On Boosting
Quite. I continue to maintain that, if we do have any more restrictions, they'll most likely come after the festive season and will be in response to the cumulative effects of Covid *and* influenza on hospital capacity (even if Omicron is also deployed as an excuse.)
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Because there is no political purity test in employment decisions?
Good morning Charles. I didn't make myself clear. The world and his wife apparently knew he was a Farage/Trump supporter (though I didn't) but beyond that he was an avid tweeter of racist tweets.
My point was that knowing his penchant for racist leaders shouldn't the BBC in this time of ultra sensitivity not have checked his social media as so many others seem to have done?
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
A fantasy world where he is some superman bringing salvation.
The worst Chancellor and second-to-May the worst PM in a very long time. Utterly trashed the economy and is so delusional he suckers people into believing his mythologies.
We still have people on this site even who buy into his twisted worldview over a decade on.
Brown did not trash the economy and David Cameron was our worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
He turned a budget surplus into a major deficit before the recession, which left the economy with a 10% budget deficit years after the end of the recession.
Inexcusable recklessness.
He turned a budget deficit into a budget surplus and then a small deficit again but even so it made no difference to the global financial crisis.
He made the fundamental mistake of confusing cyclical and structural revenues.
Based on a temporary upswing in revenues he splurged on spending in ways that can’t easily be unwound.
He abused PFI to finance off balance sheet spending and locked many schools’n’hospitals into onerous maintenance contracts.
In the short term we were very exposed to the global financial crisis because of his decisions. In the long term we are still living with the consequences of his mistakes (pensions, in work benefits, PFI)
You're absolutely right about PFI but not the other stuff. We were very exposed to the financial crisis because we have an outsized financial sector which at the time of the crisis had leveraged up and over-extended itself internationally. Fiscal policy was at most a small contributor, more likely an irrelevance.
Brown's failures were mainly in the regulatory field rather than the fiscal field. As a result of the system he set up no one was minding the wheel or even responsible for manning it. That is where the over leveraging came from.
His errors on the fiscal side were significant too but what the current crisis has shown us once again is that there is a lot of ruining in a state the size of the UK and we had more room for fiscal recklessness and foolishness than people like me appreciated at the time.
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
A fantasy world where he is some superman bringing salvation.
The worst Chancellor and second-to-May the worst PM in a very long time. Utterly trashed the economy and is so delusional he suckers people into believing his mythologies.
We still have people on this site even who buy into his twisted worldview over a decade on.
Brown did not trash the economy and David Cameron was our worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
He turned a budget surplus into a major deficit before the recession, which left the economy with a 10% budget deficit years after the end of the recession.
Inexcusable recklessness.
He turned a budget deficit into a budget surplus and then a small deficit again but even so it made no difference to the global financial crisis.
He made the fundamental mistake of confusing cyclical and structural revenues.
Based on a temporary upswing in revenues he splurged on spending in ways that can’t easily be unwound.
He abused PFI to finance off balance sheet spending and locked many schools’n’hospitals into onerous maintenance contracts.
In the short term we were very exposed to the global financial crisis because of his decisions. In the long term we are still living with the consequences of his mistakes (pensions, in work benefits, PFI)
You're absolutely right about PFI but not the other stuff. We were very exposed to the financial crisis because we have an outsized financial sector which at the time of the crisis had leveraged up and over-extended itself internationally. Fiscal policy was at most a small contributor, more likely an irrelevance.
And a lot of that was due to the "separation of powers" between the FSA and the BofE, which is squarely on Brown. The FSA had the powers to regulate the financial sector, but no in-depth knowledge, while the BofE had the knowledge of the financial companies but had lost the power to do anything about the problems you describe.
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
I wonder if Whitty really did say the new variant was less worrying than Delta, as the headline claims.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Seems likely. He cannot know more than anyone else right now, and his focus is on the delta variant, as that is behind the cases/hospitalisation/deaths in the U.K. right now. It’s my approach too - why worry when you don’t know if it needs to be worried about. @Leon is as ever seeking out his sensation to divert him from his hollow, empty, oversexed life... He’s probably hoping for an excuse to head to a South Wales boot hole for Christmas...
“Young people, in their 20s to just over their late 30s, are coming in with moderate to severe disease, some needing intensive care. About 65% are not vaccinated and most of the rest are only half-vaccinated.”
i.e. her critical care facility is filling up primarily with the unvaccinated, just like ours have been for months.
An early indication here of a mixed bag. It's possible, given that we've previously been getting reports of rapid spread, that Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, but not necessarily much better at defeating the immunity conferred by vaccines. This would be consistent with two previously advanced theories: that Covid-19 will evolve to become more transmissible but less pathogenic over time, and that vaccine escape is likely to be gradual rather than sudden.
We have done this a million times before, but there's no good theoretical reason for the virus to become less pathogenic over time, nor much in the way of observation. Smallpox and rabies are still not the equivalent of a rather nasty cold.
Which is why we're still being massacred annually by the Spanish Flu.
Yes. "Sometimes happens" doesn't create much of a natural law, does it? You were wrongly implying Always or usually happens, on the basis (you probably don't know this) of a couple of studies of myxomatosis in rabbits.
Interestingly, Spanish Flu originally mutated to become more deadly. The first wave of it wasn't so bad; it then mutated so that the second and third waves had the horrific toll we recall.
And of course, ebola mutated to become more deadly more than once. Fairly recently, the West Nile virus mutated into a more deadly form (1999). And loads of viruses from history kept coming at us without mutating into non-deadly forms. Smallpox has been given as an example. And it's not like we're fine with rabies without controls on it. HIV has yet to mutate into a cuddly and harmless form.
Mutating into a less deadly form conveys an competitive advantage to a variant if it allows the virus to spread more. Unfortunately, the pre-symptomatic and early symptomatic phases of covid is when it spreads most, so what evolutionary benefit to the variant is there of the host surviving past that point?
There's no magic or intent there - simply whether a mutation conveys a competitive advantage or not. In a virus that spreads before the deadly phase takes hold, there's no competitive advantage in changing anything about the deadly phase in either direction.
Mr. Roger, someone holding a political opinion that isn't yours is not sufficient grounds for blacklisting them.
Mr. Quincel, I did check Betfair for said market and it wasn't up.
One of the reasons I opted for Ladbrokes for most of my F1 betting was that it had more betting options than some other sites.
Even if that political opinion includes a distaste for Pakistanis?
Yes, I think so. I remember the Berufsverbot era when leftist people like me were banned from all kinds of non-political professions in Germany, and it seemed to me fundamentally unfair - why shouldn't I be able to drive a train or deliver post just because I favoured taxing the rich more heavily or nationalising the utilities? It's a slippery slope if we start banning people from non-political jobs because of their opinions, if they're legal (NB inciting to hatred is not legal, so a cricketer who supported a race riot should of course be banned).
I'd favour cricket clubs saying that their players shouldn't indulge in public behaviour which brought the club into disrepute, or harrass players on any grounds whatsoever. But if he wants to admire Trump and vote for a right-wing party privately, I don't think it's any of the club's business.
Mr. HYUFD, if almost anyone Labour but Corbyn had been leader in the referendum that might also have tipped the scales.
Mr. H, to be fair, it was his own team that set up the Woe of Bacon.
I doubt who was Labour leader was decisive in the EU referendum, just because a Miliband was Labour leader rather than Corbyn that would not have stopped the Red Wall voting to end free movement and get more money for the NHS from the EU.
However as I said had David Miliband been Labour leader in 2015 and prevented a Tory majority so that the Cameron-Clegg coalition continued or there was a Tory minority government there would have been no EU referendum at all. Indeed David Miliband may just have become PM at the 2020 general election having beaten new Tory PM George Osborne with Farage getting 20% of the vote.
Such was the consequence of Ed beating David in 2010, you could argue it directly led to the Tory majority of 2015, the EU referendum and Brexit, Corbyn becoming Labour leader and now PM Boris.
David Miliband, a weak foreign Secretary who was a capable administrator but lacked imagination and rhetorical skills, and who would have been a meh Labour leader - Starmer without the gravitas - is a classic example of absence makes the heart grow fonder.
I think the really unpalatable truth for Labour is not (with the dazzling exception of 2015) that they have overlooked the best candidate - it's that all their candidates have just not been very good.
Mr. HYUFD, if almost anyone Labour but Corbyn had been leader in the referendum that might also have tipped the scales.
Mr. H, to be fair, it was his own team that set up the Woe of Bacon.
I doubt who was Labour leader was decisive in the EU referendum, just because a Miliband was Labour leader rather than Corbyn that would not have stopped the Red Wall voting to end free movement and get more money for the NHS from the EU.
However as I said had David Miliband been Labour leader in 2015 and prevented a Tory majority so that the Cameron-Clegg coalition continued or there was a Tory minority government there would have been no EU referendum at all. Indeed David Miliband may just have become PM at the 2020 general election having beaten new Tory PM George Osborne with Farage getting 20% of the vote.
Such was the consequence of Ed beating David in 2010, you could argue it directly led to the Tory majority of 2015, the EU referendum and Brexit, Corbyn becoming Labour leader and now PM Boris.
David Miliband, a weak foreign Secretary who was a capable administrator but lacked imagination and rhetorical skills, and who would have been a meh Labour leader - Starmer without the gravitas - is a classic example of absence makes the heart grow fonder.
I think the really unpalatable truth for Labour is not (with the dazzling exception of 2015) that they have overlooked the best candidate - it's that all their candidates have just not been very good.
And that's something that can be laid at Brown's door - they systematic sidelining of potential replacements rather their promotion into roles to allow them to grow.
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Because there is no political purity test in employment decisions?
Good morning Charles. I didn't make myself clear. The world and his wife apparently knew he was a Farage/Trump supporter (though I didn't) but beyond that he was an avid tweeter of racist tweets.
My point was that knowing his penchant for racist leaders shouldn't the BBC in this time of ultra sensitivity not have checked his social media as so many others seem to have done?
I hope any employer of you Roger doesnt look at your posts on social media or here - you may struggle to get a job then in your nasty spy on everyone utopia
In any event, it is clear that there is still work for the SNP to do before it would have a good chance of winning any second independence ballot. On average four polls of indyref2 vote intentions put (after excluding Don’t Knows) Yes on 48% and No on 52%. That puts Yes slightly adrift of the 49% it registered between June and September, but is in line with the 48% recorded in those polls conducted immediately before last May’s Holyrood election. Meanwhile, the latest reading of the alternative question preferred by the Scotland in Union campaign, which asks people whether they would vote to remain in or leave the UK, put support for remaining (at 59%) up slightly (by two points) on the previous figure in September. The electoral needle on Scotland’s constitutional question appears currently to be stuck at a point where holding indyref2 any time soon would look like a considerable gamble for Nicola Sturgeon.
Not proud to say it but I’m switching off from covid coverage. I have had my jabs and wear my mask, but beyond that I just can’t take any more. I have reached saturation point and these days avoid all covid stories. I suspect I’m not alone.
Hasn't Vaughan been dropped because he is part of a major and highly controversial cricketing story and so would not be able to provide disinterested coverage and comment on it? His political views are not the reason - as he has been expressing those very clearly and very publicly for a number of years.
In any event, it is clear that there is still work for the SNP to do before it would have a good chance of winning any second independence ballot. On average four polls of indyref2 vote intentions put (after excluding Don’t Knows) Yes on 48% and No on 52%. That puts Yes slightly adrift of the 49% it registered between June and September, but is in line with the 48% recorded in those polls conducted immediately before last May’s Holyrood election. Meanwhile, the latest reading of the alternative question preferred by the Scotland in Union campaign, which asks people whether they would vote to remain in or leave the UK, put support for remaining (at 59%) up slightly (by two points) on the previous figure in September. The electoral needle on Scotland’s constitutional question appears currently to be stuck at a point where holding indyref2 any time soon would look like a considerable gamble for Nicola Sturgeon.
Quite remarkable that you can ask a simple binary question like that twice, and get 7% of the entire population to switch sides just by phrasing it differently.
If that second referendum ever happens, it's entirely possible that the UK Government could win it at the outset just by dictating the wording of the proposition.
Not proud to say it but I’m switching off from covid coverage. I have had my jabs and wear my mask, but beyond that I just can’t take any more. I have reached saturation point and these days avoid all covid stories. I suspect I’m not alone.
Yep. Long ago I accepted I didn’t have much control over covid, so I adopted the same stance. Just take the basic precautions and get on with things.
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
I wonder if Whitty really did say the new variant was less worrying than Delta, as the headline claims.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Otoh in the same article
Sir John Bell, one of the Government's most senior advisers on vaccines, said the new variant may end up causing no more than "runny noses and headaches" in those who have been vaccinated.
Sir John, the regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said that while the new variant might evade antibodies, it would be less likely to escape T-cells and other parts of the immune system that provide broader protection.
"You could still have a highly infectious virus that scoots around and causes lots of trouble, but causes lots of, you know, runny noses and headaches but doesn't put people into hospital. Honestly, you could live with that, I think," he said.
I'll take that. Good news breaking out all over this morning.
It should be obvious, Flu mutates all the time but it hasn't mutated such that previous immunity is null and void for over 100 years. And in a non-naive population flu and covid are really quite similar in severity.
Mr. Roger, someone holding a political opinion that isn't yours is not sufficient grounds for blacklisting them.
Mr. Quincel, I did check Betfair for said market and it wasn't up.
One of the reasons I opted for Ladbrokes for most of my F1 betting was that it had more betting options than some other sites.
Even if that political opinion includes a distaste for Pakistanis?
Yes, I think so. I remember the Berufsverbot era when leftist people like me were banned from all kinds of non-political professions in Germany, and it seemed to me fundamentally unfair - why shouldn't I be able to drive a train or deliver post just because I favoured taxing the rich more heavily or nationalising the utilities? It's a slippery slope if we start banning people from non-political jobs because of their opinions, if they're legal (NB inciting to hatred is not legal, so a cricketer who supported a race riot should of course be banned).
I'd favour cricket clubs saying that their players shouldn't indulge in public behaviour which brought the club into disrepute, or harrass players on any grounds whatsoever. But if he wants to admire Trump and vote for a right-wing party privately, I don't think it's any of the club's business.
I agree in many ways with what you're saying. Freedom of speach and thought is a fine thing but we don't have it anymore. So I was starting from where we are.....
If calling Rafiq 'a Paki' is reason enough for someone to be censored or even lose their job then the racism bar is extremely low. As a cricketer would you be more comfortable suffering the banter of being called Paki Yid or Mick or knowing you were in a changing room of Tommy Robinson followers? Using stereotypes doesn't make someone a racist. Believing England is for the White English does.
Would love to hear a fair defence of this behaviour. French ministers make ad hominem attacks on UK counterparts—accurate or not—then officially tweet them out, but the publication of a letter crosses a line? This ongoing Anglo-French row is pathetic.
There is no fair defence. It was a pathetic reaction. It was also an entirely predictable one. If the UK government did not realise that then it is deeply troubling and suggests it has very little understanding of the dynamics of decision making and politics in France. If the UK government did realise it but decided to publish anyway, then it was clearly playing to its domestic base rather than genuinely seeking solutions. Either way, it does not reflect well on the UK government. Both sides are behaving ridiculously. The problem from the UK perspective, though, is that while the French may not be stopping all the small boats they are stopping a fair few while also making ferry and train routes just about impassable. They could decide not to.
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
I wonder if Whitty really did say the new variant was less worrying than Delta, as the headline claims.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Otoh in the same article
Sir John Bell, one of the Government's most senior advisers on vaccines, said the new variant may end up causing no more than "runny noses and headaches" in those who have been vaccinated.
Sir John, the regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said that while the new variant might evade antibodies, it would be less likely to escape T-cells and other parts of the immune system that provide broader protection.
"You could still have a highly infectious virus that scoots around and causes lots of trouble, but causes lots of, you know, runny noses and headaches but doesn't put people into hospital. Honestly, you could live with that, I think," he said.
I'll take that. Good news breaking out all over this morning.
It should be obvious, Flu mutates all the time but it hasn't mutated such that previous immunity is null and void for over 100 years. And in a non-naive population flu and covid are really quite similar in severity.
If previous immunity is not null and void why is there a flu jab every single year, and a different one each year? I don't think analogies are very helpful here.
I agree in many ways with what you're saying. Freedom of speach and thought is a fine thing but we don't have it anymore. So I was starting from where we are.....
If calling Rafiq 'a Paki' is reason enough for someone to be censored or even lose their job then the racism bar is extremely low. As a cricketer would you be more comfortable suffering the banter of being called Paki Yid or Mick or knowing you were in a changing room of Michael Robinson followers? Using stereotypes doesn't make someone a racist. Believing England is for the White English does.
Yes, I think the case is overwhelming when any player is subject to insulting language. A club should give one warning on the subject and dismiss anyone who breaches it. And a perpetrator is obviously unsuited to be a BBC star presenter as well. The line I'd draw is between personal abuse (a sacking offence) and opinions on politics in general (not a sacking offence).
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
I wonder if Whitty really did say the new variant was less worrying than Delta, as the headline claims.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Otoh in the same article
Sir John Bell, one of the Government's most senior advisers on vaccines, said the new variant may end up causing no more than "runny noses and headaches" in those who have been vaccinated.
Sir John, the regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said that while the new variant might evade antibodies, it would be less likely to escape T-cells and other parts of the immune system that provide broader protection.
"You could still have a highly infectious virus that scoots around and causes lots of trouble, but causes lots of, you know, runny noses and headaches but doesn't put people into hospital. Honestly, you could live with that, I think," he said.
I'll take that. Good news breaking out all over this morning.
It should be obvious, Flu mutates all the time but it hasn't mutated such that previous immunity is null and void for over 100 years. And in a non-naive population flu and covid are really quite similar in severity.
If previous immunity is not null and void why is there a flu jab every single year, and a different one each year? I don't think analogies are very helpful here.
Same as with Delta, they could tweak the current covid vaccine to make it more relevant to delta, but the old jab still works perfectly well.
There's a new flu jab every year, but the vast majority of the population never gets it, and the acquired immunity from previous flus does perfectly well at stopping it being too bad unless they're in a vulnerable category.
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
I wonder if Whitty really did say the new variant was less worrying than Delta, as the headline claims.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Otoh in the same article
Sir John Bell, one of the Government's most senior advisers on vaccines, said the new variant may end up causing no more than "runny noses and headaches" in those who have been vaccinated.
Sir John, the regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said that while the new variant might evade antibodies, it would be less likely to escape T-cells and other parts of the immune system that provide broader protection.
"You could still have a highly infectious virus that scoots around and causes lots of trouble, but causes lots of, you know, runny noses and headaches but doesn't put people into hospital. Honestly, you could live with that, I think," he said.
I'll take that. Good news breaking out all over this morning.
It should be obvious, Flu mutates all the time but it hasn't mutated such that previous immunity is null and void for over 100 years. And in a non-naive population flu and covid are really quite similar in severity.
If previous immunity is not null and void why is there a flu jab every single year, and a different one each year? I don't think analogies are very helpful here.
Because whilst previous immunity is not null and void, nor is it perfect or 100%. Thus for people vulnerable to serious effects from flu a booster jab each year is a sensible precaution.
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
A fantasy world where he is some superman bringing salvation.
The worst Chancellor and second-to-May the worst PM in a very long time. Utterly trashed the economy and is so delusional he suckers people into believing his mythologies.
We still have people on this site even who buy into his twisted worldview over a decade on.
Brown did not trash the economy and David Cameron was our worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
He turned a budget surplus into a major deficit before the recession, which left the economy with a 10% budget deficit years after the end of the recession.
Inexcusable recklessness.
He turned a budget deficit into a budget surplus and then a small deficit again but even so it made no difference to the global financial crisis.
He made the fundamental mistake of confusing cyclical and structural revenues.
Based on a temporary upswing in revenues he splurged on spending in ways that can’t easily be unwound.
He abused PFI to finance off balance sheet spending and locked many schools’n’hospitals into onerous maintenance contracts.
In the short term we were very exposed to the global financial crisis because of his decisions. In the long term we are still living with the consequences of his mistakes (pensions, in work benefits, PFI)
You're absolutely right about PFI but not the other stuff. We were very exposed to the financial crisis because we have an outsized financial sector which at the time of the crisis had leveraged up and over-extended itself internationally. Fiscal policy was at most a small contributor, more likely an irrelevance.
We are both right 😺
The exposure was greater because of the size and profile of our financial sector
Our structural weaknesses magnified the impact and limited our ability to respond
That's really encouraging. As I noted the other day Chris Whitty has been an absolute star in his judgements throughout this. Even the one's he seemed to get wrong in the short term have come out pretty much the way that he predicted over the medium term. We are very fortunate to have him.
I wonder if Whitty really did say the new variant was less worrying than Delta, as the headline claims.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Otoh in the same article
Sir John Bell, one of the Government's most senior advisers on vaccines, said the new variant may end up causing no more than "runny noses and headaches" in those who have been vaccinated.
Sir John, the regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said that while the new variant might evade antibodies, it would be less likely to escape T-cells and other parts of the immune system that provide broader protection.
"You could still have a highly infectious virus that scoots around and causes lots of trouble, but causes lots of, you know, runny noses and headaches but doesn't put people into hospital. Honestly, you could live with that, I think," he said.
I'll take that. Good news breaking out all over this morning.
It should be obvious, Flu mutates all the time but it hasn't mutated such that previous immunity is null and void for over 100 years. And in a non-naive population flu and covid are really quite similar in severity.
If previous immunity is not null and void why is there a flu jab every single year, and a different one each year? I don't think analogies are very helpful here.
Because you can still catch the different strains. In addition flu has a set of binding tools on it surface (spike proteins), known as H and N (heamaglutenin and neuramidinase). You remember this from flu taxonomy, e.g H1N1. The precise dominant form of flu (I.e which H and N) is predicted each year, but it changes from year to year too. Matching it is the key to the vaccine working well. Our issues with the Covid spike protein is similar, but, and I may be wrong in this, the H and N variants are significantly different from each other, not just a few mutations as we are seeing in Covid. Ultimately you wonder if Covid will go down a similar route.
I agree in many ways with what you're saying. Freedom of speach and thought is a fine thing but we don't have it anymore. So I was starting from where we are.....
If calling Rafiq 'a Paki' is reason enough for someone to be censored or even lose their job then the racism bar is extremely low. As a cricketer would you be more comfortable suffering the banter of being called Paki Yid or Mick or knowing you were in a changing room of Michael Robinson followers? Using stereotypes doesn't make someone a racist. Believing England is for the White English does.
Yes, I think the case is overwhelming when any player is subject to insulting language. A club should give one warning on the subject and dismiss anyone who breaches it. And a perpetrator is obviously unsuited to be a BBC star presenter as well. The line I'd draw is between personal abuse (a sacking offence) and opinions on politics in general (not a sacking offence).
I know it's tricky, though!
Surely it depends on whether the language is used in the performance of the job or outside of it.
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
A fantasy world where he is some superman bringing salvation.
The worst Chancellor and second-to-May the worst PM in a very long time. Utterly trashed the economy and is so delusional he suckers people into believing his mythologies.
We still have people on this site even who buy into his twisted worldview over a decade on.
Brown did not trash the economy and David Cameron was our worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
He turned a budget surplus into a major deficit before the recession, which left the economy with a 10% budget deficit years after the end of the recession.
Inexcusable recklessness.
He turned a budget deficit into a budget surplus and then a small deficit again but even so it made no difference to the global financial crisis.
He made the fundamental mistake of confusing cyclical and structural revenues.
Based on a temporary upswing in revenues he splurged on spending in ways that can’t easily be unwound.
He abused PFI to finance off balance sheet spending and locked many schools’n’hospitals into onerous maintenance contracts.
In the short term we were very exposed to the global financial crisis because of his decisions. In the long term we are still living with the consequences of his mistakes (pensions, in work benefits, PFI)
You're absolutely right about PFI but not the other stuff. We were very exposed to the financial crisis because we have an outsized financial sector which at the time of the crisis had leveraged up and over-extended itself internationally. Fiscal policy was at most a small contributor, more likely an irrelevance.
And a lot of that was due to the "separation of powers" between the FSA and the BofE, which is squarely on Brown. The FSA had the powers to regulate the financial sector, but no in-depth knowledge, while the BofE had the knowledge of the financial companies but had lost the power to do anything about the problems you describe.
The regime failed - that's true - but I massively doubt the old one would have headed off the crash or lessened it to any substantial degree. The prevailing US/UK business & political culture at the time was 'light touch' and 'markets self correct' - ie these guys, Wall St, the City, they know what they're doing, look at that growth, look at those profits, look at that tax revenue, just leave them be. The Greenspan doctrine. Which became everybody else's doctrine, inc Gordon Brown and almost all mainstream politicians of note and influence. Sadly it turned out to be a nonsense. Large parts of the sector abdicated on a core banking skill - risk management - and instead chased remuneration and status through confected complexity and leverage, feeding ever more junk into the machine, needing ever more derivative action to keep it spinning, until it had a seizure. I just can't see how retaining old school 'Can you come round for a chat, Simon?' BoE oversight would have made much difference.
In any event, it is clear that there is still work for the SNP to do before it would have a good chance of winning any second independence ballot. On average four polls of indyref2 vote intentions put (after excluding Don’t Knows) Yes on 48% and No on 52%. That puts Yes slightly adrift of the 49% it registered between June and September, but is in line with the 48% recorded in those polls conducted immediately before last May’s Holyrood election. Meanwhile, the latest reading of the alternative question preferred by the Scotland in Union campaign, which asks people whether they would vote to remain in or leave the UK, put support for remaining (at 59%) up slightly (by two points) on the previous figure in September. The electoral needle on Scotland’s constitutional question appears currently to be stuck at a point where holding indyref2 any time soon would look like a considerable gamble for Nicola Sturgeon.
Quite remarkable that you can ask a simple binary question like that twice, and get 7% of the entire population to switch sides just by phrasing it differently.
If that second referendum ever happens, it's entirely possible that the UK Government could win it at the outset just by dictating the wording of the proposition.
It wouldn't be the UK Government - it would be the Electoral Commission which after the 2014 SindyRef but before the 2016EuRef decided that "positively" phrased questions "yes/no" were biased in favour of "yes" which is why the Brexit referendum was not "Should the UK leave (or remain in) the EU Yes/No" but the posed "Leave/Remain" question.
I expect a huge fight then claims of a "rigged" result when "Leave" doesn't win - which is strange, as last time a Leave/Remain question was posed "Leave" won.
Mr. Roger, someone holding a political opinion that isn't yours is not sufficient grounds for blacklisting them.
Mr. Quincel, I did check Betfair for said market and it wasn't up.
One of the reasons I opted for Ladbrokes for most of my F1 betting was that it had more betting options than some other sites.
Even if that political opinion includes a distaste for Pakistanis?
Yes, I think so. I remember the Berufsverbot era when leftist people like me were banned from all kinds of non-political professions in Germany, and it seemed to me fundamentally unfair - why shouldn't I be able to drive a train or deliver post just because I favoured taxing the rich more heavily or nationalising the utilities? It's a slippery slope if we start banning people from non-political jobs because of their opinions, if they're legal (NB inciting to hatred is not legal, so a cricketer who supported a race riot should of course be banned).
I'd favour cricket clubs saying that their players shouldn't indulge in public behaviour which brought the club into disrepute, or harrass players on any grounds whatsoever. But if he wants to admire Trump and vote for a right-wing party privately, I don't think it's any of the club's business.
That's an interesting reply.
I had to look up Berufsverbot to find the historical period - the original one was 1933-1945, and another one for "radicals" at the height of the 1970s Cold War. The latter was introduced in response to the terrorism campaign by the Red Army Faction.
As the RAF was trained and supported by the DDR Government, and given Cold War politics and the groups they worked through, I'm inclined to support the measure to some degree in the historical context. Professions have exceptional privileges, and it was lawyers who smuggled guns into prison for the RAF in 1977. Terrorist groups usually have tame lawyers.
We had similar here in some areas (eg around terrorism and Irish backgroun people), though I am not aware of eg +ve vetting for professions.
We have (now faint) echoes of that approach even now, such as BNP membership having been determined to be incompatible with employment in the police - which was setup in the 2004-2008 period. Should that be abolished if still in place?
I'd say that YCCC is a very different set of circs to national security.
(And the *&^% e key on my laptop has died again !!!)
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
A fantasy world where he is some superman bringing salvation.
The worst Chancellor and second-to-May the worst PM in a very long time. Utterly trashed the economy and is so delusional he suckers people into believing his mythologies.
We still have people on this site even who buy into his twisted worldview over a decade on.
You've made a typo. Where you meant to write "Johnson" you inadvertently put "May".
I agree in many ways with what you're saying. Freedom of speach and thought is a fine thing but we don't have it anymore. So I was starting from where we are.....
If calling Rafiq 'a Paki' is reason enough for someone to be censored or even lose their job then the racism bar is extremely low. As a cricketer would you be more comfortable suffering the banter of being called Paki Yid or Mick or knowing you were in a changing room of Michael Robinson followers? Using stereotypes doesn't make someone a racist. Believing England is for the White English does.
Yes, I think the case is overwhelming when any player is subject to insulting language. A club should give one warning on the subject and dismiss anyone who breaches it. And a perpetrator is obviously unsuited to be a BBC star presenter as well. The line I'd draw is between personal abuse (a sacking offence) and opinions on politics in general (not a sacking offence).
I know it's tricky, though!
Surely it depends on whether the language is used in the performance of the job or outside of it.
Up to a point. But there is a level of misbehaviour which makes employers understandably reluctant to engage an individual in any kind of public-facing function. Say Jimmy Savile had been a cricket commentator - would we expect the BBC to continue to use him, even though his horrible actions were nothing to do with cricket?
So the question is how far you can go before your behaviour brings your organisation into disrepute. For me, the distinction is between personal abuse and belief in political ideas. The latter, in the end, may simply be down to being misinformed, like people who sincerely believe that vaccination enables Bill Gates to control you. I wouldn't sack them either.
Canny social media from Andy Street - subliminal John Lewis branding, zero Conservative branding:
The redevelopment of the old MG Rover factory in Longbridge is brownfield-first in action
Great to be working with @GarySambrook89 in supporting @longbridgelife as they redevelop the iconic site, creating new homes, businesses, and jobs for the local community and wider WM.
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Because there is no political purity test in employment decisions?
Good morning Charles. I didn't make myself clear. The world and his wife apparently knew he was a Farage/Trump supporter (though I didn't) but beyond that he was an avid tweeter of racist tweets.
My point was that knowing his penchant for racist leaders shouldn't the BBC in this time of ultra sensitivity not have checked his social media as so many others seem to have done?
I hope any employer of you Roger doesnt look at your posts on social media or here - you may struggle to get a job then in your nasty spy on everyone utopia
Ah, but for the days of the "Economic League". A group of wise right-minded Conservative businessmen who blacklisted Labour Party and Trade Union members, and anyone else who was foolish enough to write letters of complaint to the Guardian or Times bad-mouthing the Thatcher Government. And the Economic League sold their list to blue chip companies like British Leyland and the Ford Motor Company. Make the list and you don't get a job.
It turns out even if you agree with the notion of weeding out commie infiltrators, their methodology of name collection was random and prone to error.
I agree in many ways with what you're saying. Freedom of speach and thought is a fine thing but we don't have it anymore. So I was starting from where we are.....
If calling Rafiq 'a Paki' is reason enough for someone to be censored or even lose their job then the racism bar is extremely low. As a cricketer would you be more comfortable suffering the banter of being called Paki Yid or Mick or knowing you were in a changing room of Michael Robinson followers? Using stereotypes doesn't make someone a racist. Believing England is for the White English does.
Yes, I think the case is overwhelming when any player is subject to insulting language. A club should give one warning on the subject and dismiss anyone who breaches it. And a perpetrator is obviously unsuited to be a BBC star presenter as well. The line I'd draw is between personal abuse (a sacking offence) and opinions on politics in general (not a sacking offence).
I know it's tricky, though!
Surely it depends on whether the language is used in the performance of the job or outside of it.
Up to a point. But there is a level of misbehaviour which makes employers understandably reluctant to engage an individual in any kind of public-facing function. Say Jimmy Savile had been a cricket commentator - would we expect the BBC to continue to use him, even though his horrible actions were nothing to do with cricket?
So the question is how far you can go before your behaviour brings your organisation into disrepute. For me, the distinction is between personal abuse and belief in political ideas. The latter, in the end, may simply be down to being misinformed, like people who sincerely believe that vaccination enables Bill Gates to control you. I wouldn't sack them either.
Is there a valid distinction iyo between employment and freelance in this area? Eg, sacking somebody from their full time job is different to choosing not to renew someone's contract or to using them less or not at all when you used to use them frequently?
Hasn't Vaughan been dropped because he is part of a major and highly controversial cricketing story and so would not be able to provide disinterested coverage and comment on it? His political views are not the reason - as he has been expressing those very clearly and very publicly for a number of years.
And if it is proved that he was entirely innocent of the comments made - or at least there is no supporting evidence that he did make them and so should not have been dropped - do you think it would be reasonable that he should be compensated for lost earnings? Or should the BBC be able to operate without consequences based on their own bias?
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
A fantasy world where he is some superman bringing salvation.
The worst Chancellor and second-to-May the worst PM in a very long time. Utterly trashed the economy and is so delusional he suckers people into believing his mythologies.
We still have people on this site even who buy into his twisted worldview over a decade on.
Brown did not trash the economy and David Cameron was our worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
He turned a budget surplus into a major deficit before the recession, which left the economy with a 10% budget deficit years after the end of the recession.
Inexcusable recklessness.
He turned a budget deficit into a budget surplus and then a small deficit again but even so it made no difference to the global financial crisis.
He made the fundamental mistake of confusing cyclical and structural revenues.
Based on a temporary upswing in revenues he splurged on spending in ways that can’t easily be unwound.
He abused PFI to finance off balance sheet spending and locked many schools’n’hospitals into onerous maintenance contracts.
In the short term we were very exposed to the global financial crisis because of his decisions. In the long term we are still living with the consequences of his mistakes (pensions, in work benefits, PFI)
I agree (and have often posted here) that Brown should be excoriated for PFI.
Not proud to say it but I’m switching off from covid coverage. I have had my jabs and wear my mask, but beyond that I just can’t take any more. I have reached saturation point and these days avoid all covid stories. I suspect I’m not alone.
I'm the opposite. My Covid interest has been minimal for quite a while but this Omicron variant has brought it back. I'm paying attention again.
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
Just interviewed exPM @GordonBrown for tonight’s @BBCNewsnight who calls “hoarding”/wastage of vaccine by G20 nations “probably biggest international public policy failure of our times”…
And says SA President @CyrilRamaphosa “rightly” feels “very let down” over vaccine promises
FAKE NEWS, of course not properly challenged......and it will now become fact within a day or two.
South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.
A fantasy world where he is some superman bringing salvation.
The worst Chancellor and second-to-May the worst PM in a very long time. Utterly trashed the economy and is so delusional he suckers people into believing his mythologies.
We still have people on this site even who buy into his twisted worldview over a decade on.
Brown did not trash the economy and David Cameron was our worst Prime Minister since Lord North.
He turned a budget surplus into a major deficit before the recession, which left the economy with a 10% budget deficit years after the end of the recession.
Inexcusable recklessness.
He turned a budget deficit into a budget surplus and then a small deficit again but even so it made no difference to the global financial crisis.
He made the fundamental mistake of confusing cyclical and structural revenues.
Based on a temporary upswing in revenues he splurged on spending in ways that can’t easily be unwound.
He abused PFI to finance off balance sheet spending and locked many schools’n’hospitals into onerous maintenance contracts.
In the short term we were very exposed to the global financial crisis because of his decisions. In the long term we are still living with the consequences of his mistakes (pensions, in work benefits, PFI)
I think the problem with this is we would be justified in re-examining our obligations if we were meeting them at the moment and could reasonably claim they were putting an unrealistic burden on our state. We are a very very long way from that right now and to try and claim that we cannot take 'billions of refugees' (as I believe I saw mentioned yesterday) when we are not even taking a few tens of thousands, even though we could, is a massive and unacceptable straw man argument.
There are many things we could be doing to better separate economic migrants from real refugees and make sure the latter get the help and support they deserve. As long as we are utterly failing to do that, Western countries and the UK in particular has no right to bleat about billions of potential refugees.
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Because there is no political purity test in employment decisions?
Good morning Charles. I didn't make myself clear. The world and his wife apparently knew he was a Farage/Trump supporter (though I didn't) but beyond that he was an avid tweeter of racist tweets.
My point was that knowing his penchant for racist leaders shouldn't the BBC in this time of ultra sensitivity not have checked his social media as so many others seem to have done?
I hope any employer of you Roger doesnt look at your posts on social media or here - you may struggle to get a job then in your nasty spy on everyone utopia
Ah, but for the days of the "Economic League". A group of wise right-minded Conservative businessmen who blacklisted Labour Party and Trade Union members, and anyone else who was foolish enough to write letters of complaint to the Guardian or Times bad-mouthing the Thatcher Government. And the Economic League sold their list to blue chip companies like British Leyland and the Ford Motor Company. Make the list and you don't get a job.
It turns out even if you agree with the notion of weeding out commie infiltrators, their methodology of name collection was random and prone to error.
Hasn't Vaughan been dropped because he is part of a major and highly controversial cricketing story and so would not be able to provide disinterested coverage and comment on it? His political views are not the reason - as he has been expressing those very clearly and very publicly for a number of years.
And if it is proved that he was entirely innocent of the comments made - or at least there is no supporting evidence that he did make them and so should not have been dropped - do you think it would be reasonable that he should be compensated for lost earnings? Or should the BBC be able to operate without consequences based on their own bias?
There are now three witnesses to the comments. How much evidence is required?
As I think Rafiq has said, it is easy to believe that the comments were made out of ignorance of how they would be received, and with no conscious malicious intent. As a result it is not surprising that Vaughan does not remember making them - why should he? There must be some way of allowing a reconciliation between the two accounts, that allows Vaughan to carry on with a broadcasting career, without having to imply that Rafiq (and the other two witnesses) were lying.
Hasn't Vaughan been dropped because he is part of a major and highly controversial cricketing story and so would not be able to provide disinterested coverage and comment on it? His political views are not the reason - as he has been expressing those very clearly and very publicly for a number of years.
And if it is proved that he was entirely innocent of the comments made - or at least there is no supporting evidence that he did make them and so should not have been dropped - do you think it would be reasonable that he should be compensated for lost earnings? Or should the BBC be able to operate without consequences based on their own bias?
The whole point is not that the BBC has made a judgement on what he is alleged to have said but that Vaughan is part of the story, which is one that has rocked cricket to its foundations. As such he is not able to look at it in the dispassionate, neutral way a commentator is required to do. If the story is proved to be untrue then the people Vaughan should seek compensation from are his accusers.
Hasn't Vaughan been dropped because he is part of a major and highly controversial cricketing story and so would not be able to provide disinterested coverage and comment on it? His political views are not the reason - as he has been expressing those very clearly and very publicly for a number of years.
And if it is proved that he was entirely innocent of the comments made - or at least there is no supporting evidence that he did make them and so should not have been dropped - do you think it would be reasonable that he should be compensated for lost earnings? Or should the BBC be able to operate without consequences based on their own bias?
Depends on his employment contract. If a contractor BBC can pick and choose each time whether they use him or not. If an employee he has more rights.
It is a bit late for the hypothetical of no supporting evidence when he openly admits he made and regrets the tweets and 2 other players corroborated Rafiqs claim. Perhaps they are lying or there was a misunderstanding but there is most definitely supporting evidence.
Hasn't Vaughan been dropped because he is part of a major and highly controversial cricketing story and so would not be able to provide disinterested coverage and comment on it? His political views are not the reason - as he has been expressing those very clearly and very publicly for a number of years.
And if it is proved that he was entirely innocent of the comments made - or at least there is no supporting evidence that he did make them and so should not have been dropped - do you think it would be reasonable that he should be compensated for lost earnings? Or should the BBC be able to operate without consequences based on their own bias?
There are now three witnesses to the comments. How much evidence is required?
As I think Rafiq has said, it is easy to believe that the comments were made out of ignorance of how they would be received, and with no conscious malicious intent. As a result it is not surprising that Vaughan does not remember making them - why should he? There must be some way of allowing a reconciliation between the two accounts, that allows Vaughan to carry on with a broadcasting career, without having to imply that Rafiq (and the other two witnesses) were lying.
All good points but not really relevant to what I was saying, particularly given I made absolutely no implication that Rafiq was lying, exactly for the reasons you wrote here. The question is whether the BBC, as a public funded body, should be able to operate with impunity in attempting to destroy the careers of people for whatever reason - particularly bearing in mind they have a long record of doing this.
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Still claiming that 74 million Americans are racists misogynists?
In any event, it is clear that there is still work for the SNP to do before it would have a good chance of winning any second independence ballot. On average four polls of indyref2 vote intentions put (after excluding Don’t Knows) Yes on 48% and No on 52%. That puts Yes slightly adrift of the 49% it registered between June and September, but is in line with the 48% recorded in those polls conducted immediately before last May’s Holyrood election. Meanwhile, the latest reading of the alternative question preferred by the Scotland in Union campaign, which asks people whether they would vote to remain in or leave the UK, put support for remaining (at 59%) up slightly (by two points) on the previous figure in September. The electoral needle on Scotland’s constitutional question appears currently to be stuck at a point where holding indyref2 any time soon would look like a considerable gamble for Nicola Sturgeon.
Quite remarkable that you can ask a simple binary question like that twice, and get 7% of the entire population to switch sides just by phrasing it differently.
If that second referendum ever happens, it's entirely possible that the UK Government could win it at the outset just by dictating the wording of the proposition.
It wouldn't be the UK Government - it would be the Electoral Commission which after the 2014 SindyRef but before the 2016EuRef decided that "positively" phrased questions "yes/no" were biased in favour of "yes" which is why the Brexit referendum was not "Should the UK leave (or remain in) the EU Yes/No" but the posed "Leave/Remain" question.
I expect a huge fight then claims of a "rigged" result when "Leave" doesn't win - which is strange, as last time a Leave/Remain question was posed "Leave" won.
No solution to the problem of the nature of the question is possible; we have not evolved for billions of years to be good at fine intellectual distinctions as they have little survival value. But it provides fertile ground for manipulators of opinion and buying habits to exploit.
I agree in many ways with what you're saying. Freedom of speach and thought is a fine thing but we don't have it anymore. So I was starting from where we are.....
If calling Rafiq 'a Paki' is reason enough for someone to be censored or even lose their job then the racism bar is extremely low. As a cricketer would you be more comfortable suffering the banter of being called Paki Yid or Mick or knowing you were in a changing room of Michael Robinson followers? Using stereotypes doesn't make someone a racist. Believing England is for the White English does.
Yes, I think the case is overwhelming when any player is subject to insulting language. A club should give one warning on the subject and dismiss anyone who breaches it. And a perpetrator is obviously unsuited to be a BBC star presenter as well. The line I'd draw is between personal abuse (a sacking offence) and opinions on politics in general (not a sacking offence).
I know it's tricky, though!
Surely it depends on whether the language is used in the performance of the job or outside of it.
Up to a point. But there is a level of misbehaviour which makes employers understandably reluctant to engage an individual in any kind of public-facing function. Say Jimmy Savile had been a cricket commentator - would we expect the BBC to continue to use him, even though his horrible actions were nothing to do with cricket?
So the question is how far you can go before your behaviour brings your organisation into disrepute. For me, the distinction is between personal abuse and belief in political ideas. The latter, in the end, may simply be down to being misinformed, like people who sincerely believe that vaccination enables Bill Gates to control you. I wouldn't sack them either.
There is a difference between political beliefs and political statements, and a vast gulf from those to raping children. The BBC did continue to use Savile despite his hobnobbing with Mrs Thatcher, which was widely known. Since the child sex abuse allegations, the BBC no longer shows Savile even during Top of the Pops repeats. I've not been following cricket and Vaughan but from what I can see, he is not accused of assault or even using his power as captain to drop any players for racist reasons. (But maybe he did: I've not been paying attention.)
Parris has been saying this for some years. It is very obviously true. You cannot look to the policing of the European coastline to resolve a problem which lies at the heart of the quality of government thousands of miles away.
Parris has been saying this for some years. It is very obviously true. You cannot look to the policing of the European coastline to resolve a problem which lies at the heart of the quality of government thousands of miles away.
As was pointed out upthread, it's the structure of government as well as the quality. IIRC there's little logical about the 'national structures' in much of what we call the Middle East.
Hasn't Vaughan been dropped because he is part of a major and highly controversial cricketing story and so would not be able to provide disinterested coverage and comment on it? His political views are not the reason - as he has been expressing those very clearly and very publicly for a number of years.
And if it is proved that he was entirely innocent of the comments made - or at least there is no supporting evidence that he did make them and so should not have been dropped - do you think it would be reasonable that he should be compensated for lost earnings? Or should the BBC be able to operate without consequences based on their own bias?
There are now three witnesses to the comments. How much evidence is required?
As I think Rafiq has said, it is easy to believe that the comments were made out of ignorance of how they would be received, and with no conscious malicious intent. As a result it is not surprising that Vaughan does not remember making them - why should he? There must be some way of allowing a reconciliation between the two accounts, that allows Vaughan to carry on with a broadcasting career, without having to imply that Rafiq (and the other two witnesses) were lying.
All good points but not really relevant to what I was saying, particularly given I made absolutely no implication that Rafiq was lying, exactly for the reasons you wrote here. The question is whether the BBC, as a public funded body, should be able to operate with impunity in attempting to destroy the careers of people for whatever reason - particularly bearing in mind they have a long record of doing this.
The BBC should be free to choose who they employ just like any other employer. The BBC is not even the best paying cricket reporters gig. Nothing the BBC does is stopping Vaughan working at Sky, Talk Sport or elsewhere if they want him.
(And the *&^% e key on my laptop has died again !!!)
Clean it (depending on what sort of keyboard it is, sliding the sticky end of a post-it note round the key can remove dust and fluff). Failing that, remap one of the other keys to be "e". Then add "new laptop" to your letter to Father Christmas. ETA or use an external keyboard.
Also ETA replacement laptop keyboards are cheap but you might want to pay someone to fit it.
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Still claiming that 74 million Americans are racists misogynists?
No but -
100 Trumpsters in the kitchen. 100 random other people in the bathroom.
You surely don't deny there'll be tons more racists in the kitchen than the bathroom?
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Because there is no political purity test in employment decisions?
Good morning Charles. I didn't make myself clear. The world and his wife apparently knew he was a Farage/Trump supporter (though I didn't) but beyond that he was an avid tweeter of racist tweets.
My point was that knowing his penchant for racist leaders shouldn't the BBC in this time of ultra sensitivity not have checked his social media as so many others seem to have done?
I hope any employer of you Roger doesnt look at your posts on social media or here - you may struggle to get a job then in your nasty spy on everyone utopia
Ah, but for the days of the "Economic League". A group of wise right-minded Conservative businessmen who blacklisted Labour Party and Trade Union members, and anyone else who was foolish enough to write letters of complaint to the Guardian or Times bad-mouthing the Thatcher Government. And the Economic League sold their list to blue chip companies like British Leyland and the Ford Motor Company. Make the list and you don't get a job.
It turns out even if you agree with the notion of weeding out commie infiltrators, their methodology of name collection was random and prone to error.
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Still claiming that 74 million Americans are racists misogynists?
No but -
100 Trumpsters in the kitchen. 100 random other people in the bathroom.
You surely don't deny there'll be tons more racists in the kitchen than the bathroom?
(it's a big roomy property)
Also the kitchen smells of Cool Ranch Doritos and transmission fluid more than the bathroom.
Just being reading about Michael Vaughan. There's always more to these stories than meets the eye. The BBC treatment of him sounded harsh. A few ambiguous words on a cricket field doesn't sound like grounds to destroy someone's career.
After a small amount of investigation it turns out he's an avid Trump supporter. Why would someone who wasn't a racist misogynist climate change denying Brexiteer be a Trump fan? It's not because he's lowering the tax threshold in Yorkshire.....
The big question is why did the BBC emlploy such a person in the first place
Still claiming that 74 million Americans are racists misogynists?
Comments
For those vaccinated with 2 doses, the admission rate per 100k per week at the time was approximately 0.1 for under 40s and 0.2 for ages 40+. For the unvaccinated, the critical care admission rates was 3 times this level for the under 30s, rising to 70 times for ages 60 to 69.
https://covidactuaries.org/2021/11/26/the-friday-report-issue-56/
Based on a temporary upswing in revenues he splurged on spending in ways that can’t easily be unwound.
He abused PFI to finance off balance sheet spending and locked many schools’n’hospitals into onerous maintenance contracts.
In the short term we were very exposed to the global financial crisis because of his decisions. In the long term we are still living with the consequences of his mistakes (pensions, in work benefits, PFI)
I can't believe it
It's never been this far away from home.
Sorry for the glibness, but nothing to do but wait now.
I am officially unworried now.
If we know we’re going to get punished for detecting new variants, as in the past...then surely, we should know what we’re dealing with before we go and announce it to the world.
https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/covid-19-cape-town-mayor-lashes-out-at-government-over-handling-of-new-variant-announcement-20211126
No good deed goes unpunished...
Mr. H, to be fair, it was his own team that set up the Woe of Bacon.
Turns out that colonial derived borders aren’t always appropriate
But it will be messy and fraught
Ed subsequently found the whole thing hilarious.
As no solution is possible within western Europe, because western Europeans are not fleeing torture and dungeon, we may as well focus on where solutions may be found.
This thing's changed more often than an explanation for cancelling HS2 put to the House by Grant Shapps.
The UK Beta variant probably wasn’t from Kent either, it was just there that it was first noticed officially.
https://twitter.com/TomMcTague/status/1464150859198210048?s=20
If you look at where most of the mutations are, they are similar to regions of the spike protein that have been seen with other variants so far and that tells you that, despite mutations existing in other variants, the vaccines have continued to prevent very severe disease as we’ve moved through Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.
At least from a speculative point of view we have some optimism that the vaccine should still work against this variant for severe disease but really we need to wait several weeks to have that confirmed.
But it is extremely unlikely that a reboot of a pandemic in a vaccinated population like we saw last year is going to happen.
Supporting or voting for someone is not an endorsement of everything that individual stands for personally and politically, it's a choice between alternatives.
I'll take a lettuce sandwich if I'm starving to death. Doesn't mean I love lettuce sandwiches.
And condemning people out of hand because they support someone you dislike politically is absolutely censorious.
There, that's a fair defence.
From Macron's point of view.
If the allegations of casual racism are true then I'm happy to say that should disqualify him. But simply having political views of some kind aren't enough.
However as I said had David Miliband been Labour leader in 2015 and prevented a Tory majority so that the Cameron-Clegg coalition continued or there was a Tory minority government there would have been no EU referendum at all. Indeed David Miliband may just have become PM at the 2020 general election having beaten new Tory PM George Osborne with Farage getting 20% of the vote.
Such was the consequence of Ed beating David in 2010, you could argue it directly led to the Tory majority of 2015, the EU referendum and Brexit, Corbyn becoming Labour leader and now PM Boris.
The body of the article doesn't say that, but attributes these quotations to him: "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas [is Delta]" and "there's an awful lot we don't know and I think it's probably not terribly helpful to speculate". [my emphasis]
I'd suggest the headline reflects the opinion of the headline writer, not Whitty.
Sir John Bell, one of the Government's most senior advisers on vaccines, said the new variant may end up causing no more than "runny noses and headaches" in those who have been vaccinated.
Sir John, the regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said that while the new variant might evade antibodies, it would be less likely to escape T-cells and other parts of the immune system that provide broader protection.
"You could still have a highly infectious virus that scoots around and causes lots of trouble, but causes lots of, you know, runny noses and headaches but doesn't put people into hospital. Honestly, you could live with that, I think," he said.
I'll take that. Good news breaking out all over this morning.
Support for Trump confirms he’s a numpty, but it’s a very long way indeed from grounds for dismissal.
I’m not a massive Vaughan fan (as a commentator), and there some dodgy old tweets about Muslims and terrorism, but it’s arguably an overreaction by the BBC.
Cricket, and especially YCCC, does need to get its house in order, though.
- "Vaccine escape" should better be termed "immunity erosion" because it's never a binary on/off but a gradual drift (both Alpha and Delta have immunity erosion over the original strain, for example). And whilst mutations are in the areas associated with that, no-one knows how they'll interact with each other (Additive? Cancelling?). And if, say, it's at the level of Beta - well, three doses of Pfizer gave better protection from Beta than two doses against the original strain.
- In addition, a huge chunk of the boosted here will have heterologous vaccine immunity: from two different methods (adenovector/AZ plus mRNA/Pfizer or Moderna). That's demonstrated to give broader-based immunity against potential mutations
- T-cell mediated immunity gives excellent protection against severe disease even if the virus gets past the antibody line of defence, and it's not mutating away from that
- If it's a transmissibility advantage, Delta's already at the point way beyond the inflection line on the graph, where big increases in transmissibility give limited movement of the herd immunity threshold. An R0 of 6 gives an HiT of 83%; one of 12 (double the level) gives an HiT of 92%. Getting 9% more of us immune is a far smaller step than getting 83% of us immune.
(The estimates of a 500% boost in transmissibility currently fail the sniff test with me. Measles is the most infectious one we know with an R0 of 15-18. One of 36 (which a 500% transmissibility would indicate) would be astonishing - I don't know if it could be possible)
... and we're at a point where the level of immunity in the population is such as to push Delta's R down from 6 to just over 1 with negligible restrictions, so we're not far off that 83% area.
I can't see the need for and significant restrictions coming back now. Obviously they help to reduce transmission while in use (you'd have to be eyebrow-deep in denial to deny that they work for that), but at this point, would they be necessary?
We're already trucking along well with boosters, and another chunk of the population have two-dose-plus-breakthrough immunity (hybrid immunity, which is considerably better than 2-dose immunity even if not quite up there with 3-dose immunity).
I think the message should just be Keep Calm And Carry On Boosting
I was confident that Covid-19 had done its worst before the Omicronpanic began, and I've seen nothing in the early reports of the variant to imply the contrary.
My point was that knowing his penchant for racist leaders shouldn't the BBC in this time of ultra sensitivity not have checked his social media as so many others seem to have done?
His errors on the fiscal side were significant too but what the current crisis has shown us once again is that there is a lot of ruining in a state the size of the UK and we had more room for fiscal recklessness and foolishness than people like me appreciated at the time.
The FSA had the powers to regulate the financial sector, but no in-depth knowledge, while the BofE had the knowledge of the financial companies but had lost the power to do anything about the problems you describe.
It’s my approach too - why worry when you don’t know if it needs to be worried about. @Leon is as ever seeking out his sensation to divert him from his hollow, empty, oversexed life... He’s probably hoping for an excuse to head to a South Wales boot hole for Christmas...
And of course, ebola mutated to become more deadly more than once. Fairly recently, the West Nile virus mutated into a more deadly form (1999). And loads of viruses from history kept coming at us without mutating into non-deadly forms. Smallpox has been given as an example. And it's not like we're fine with rabies without controls on it. HIV has yet to mutate into a cuddly and harmless form.
Mutating into a less deadly form conveys an competitive advantage to a variant if it allows the virus to spread more. Unfortunately, the pre-symptomatic and early symptomatic phases of covid is when it spreads most, so what evolutionary benefit to the variant is there of the host surviving past that point?
There's no magic or intent there - simply whether a mutation conveys a competitive advantage or not. In a virus that spreads before the deadly phase takes hold, there's no competitive advantage in changing anything about the deadly phase in either direction.
I'd favour cricket clubs saying that their players shouldn't indulge in public behaviour which brought the club into disrepute, or harrass players on any grounds whatsoever. But if he wants to admire Trump and vote for a right-wing party privately, I don't think it's any of the club's business.
I think the really unpalatable truth for Labour is not (with the dazzling exception of 2015) that they have overlooked the best candidate - it's that all their candidates have just not been very good.
https://whatscotlandthinks.org/2021/11/runes-from-the-polls-as-the-snp-meet-again/
BF, Betdaq and Smarkets - all three. If you don't consider them all how can you be getting best prices?
Consider yourself ticked-off.
If that second referendum ever happens, it's entirely possible that the UK Government could win it at the outset just by dictating the wording of the proposition.
If calling Rafiq 'a Paki' is reason enough for someone to be censored or even lose their job then the racism bar is extremely low. As a cricketer would you be more comfortable suffering the banter of being called Paki Yid or Mick or knowing you were in a changing room of Tommy Robinson followers? Using stereotypes doesn't make someone a racist. Believing England is for the White English does.
I know it's tricky, though!
There's a new flu jab every year, but the vast majority of the population never gets it, and the acquired immunity from previous flus does perfectly well at stopping it being too bad unless they're in a vulnerable category.
The exposure was greater because of the size and profile of our financial sector
Our structural weaknesses magnified the impact and limited our ability to respond
I expect a huge fight then claims of a "rigged" result when "Leave" doesn't win - which is strange, as last time a Leave/Remain question was posed "Leave" won.
I had to look up Berufsverbot to find the historical period - the original one was 1933-1945, and another one for "radicals" at the height of the 1970s Cold War. The latter was introduced in response to the terrorism campaign by the Red Army Faction.
As the RAF was trained and supported by the DDR Government, and given Cold War politics and the groups they worked through, I'm inclined to support the measure to some degree in the historical context. Professions have exceptional privileges, and it was lawyers who smuggled guns into prison for the RAF in 1977. Terrorist groups usually have tame lawyers.
We had similar here in some areas (eg around terrorism and Irish backgroun people), though I am not aware of eg +ve vetting for professions.
We have (now faint) echoes of that approach even now, such as BNP membership having been determined to be incompatible with employment in the police - which was setup in the 2004-2008 period. Should that be abolished if still in place?
I'd say that YCCC is a very different set of circs to national security.
(And the *&^% e key on my laptop has died again !!!)
Happy to help.
So the question is how far you can go before your behaviour brings your organisation into disrepute. For me, the distinction is between personal abuse and belief in political ideas. The latter, in the end, may simply be down to being misinformed, like people who sincerely believe that vaccination enables Bill Gates to control you. I wouldn't sack them either.
The redevelopment of the old MG Rover factory in Longbridge is brownfield-first in action
Great to be working with @GarySambrook89 in supporting @longbridgelife as they redevelop the iconic site, creating new homes, businesses, and jobs for the local community and wider WM.
https://twitter.com/andy4wm/status/1464538290036563974?s=20
https://twitter.com/tom_nuttall/status/1464540035571671044?s=20
This apparent skipping of Xi is just pathetic.
It turns out even if you agree with the notion of weeding out commie infiltrators, their methodology of name collection was random and prone to error.
Happy times, eh?
Though to be fair he has made this point before.
There are many things we could be doing to better separate economic migrants from real refugees and make sure the latter get the help and support they deserve. As long as we are utterly failing to do that, Western countries and the UK in particular has no right to bleat about billions of potential refugees.
As I think Rafiq has said, it is easy to believe that the comments were made out of ignorance of how they would be received, and with no conscious malicious intent. As a result it is not surprising that Vaughan does not remember making them - why should he? There must be some way of allowing a reconciliation between the two accounts, that allows Vaughan to carry on with a broadcasting career, without having to imply that Rafiq (and the other two witnesses) were lying.
It is a bit late for the hypothetical of no supporting evidence when he openly admits he made and regrets the tweets and 2 other players corroborated Rafiqs claim. Perhaps they are lying or there was a misunderstanding but there is most definitely supporting evidence.
Also ETA replacement laptop keyboards are cheap but you might want to pay someone to fit it.
100 Trumpsters in the kitchen. 100 random other people in the bathroom.
You surely don't deny there'll be tons more racists in the kitchen than the bathroom?
(it's a big roomy property)